[optacon-l] Re: Fake Messages

From: "David Plumlee" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "knobman" for DMARC)
To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2020 11:53:00 -0500

Hi, Petra,

I hope the list owner takes that nasty message down; you are right that
there is no reason at all for such language on this list! As I understand
the guidelines for this list, that message is a blatant violation of those
guidelines!

-----Original Message-----
From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of petra
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2020 7:02 PM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Fake Messages

Good evening Charles?

Excuse people for thinking you had passed on. You were the one always
telling us how ill you were and then no posts from you for quite a while.

I'm glad you are alive, if it's really you, and hope you fully recover from
whatever is plaguing you.

I think the language in your message is appalling. No reason for that.

Petra

----- Original Message -----
From: CHARLES POND <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender wpg67 for
DMARC)
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Saturday, July 25, 2020 2:42 pm
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Fake Messages

List: This is Charles Pond in Ottawa. David Plumlee, Catherine Thomas
and the several others of like-mind: What the "Fake" is wrong with you
people? You are so full of brown-stuff and this is now so far gone
that you can't even be reasoned with at this point, let alone see

straight.

I'll address this ridiculous gossipy virtually slandrous crap about me
being deceased and a fake and scamming in a few days, but for now: for
"fake sake", this is Charles Pond very much alive in Ottawa.  I am nod
dead! What the f*** is wrong with you people!?  Do you want me to send
my rent receipt for July and my bank statements to prove this? Who
started this way-out Bull-S and perpetuates it?   They should be exposed
and publicly humiliated and help accountable in most blatant terms!  I
have been regularly and consistently on other lists and there are
people on the "optacon losers' (excuse me, users') list" who readily
know this and with whom I interact often en.  What is seriously  wrong
with you people?!

enough of this bull-shit from you - Catherine, David and a few others!

Charles Pond

On 2020-07-25 1:10 pddm., David Plumlee (Redacted sender knobman for
DMARC) wrote:

Hi, Pamela,

Notifying BBB or the local police would be an extremely great idea

except for one proverbial "fly in the ointment":  The ubiquitous practice of
that damnable number spoofing.  For one thing, I believe that number
spoofing makes the "DO NOT CALL" lists virtually WORTHLESS because there is
no way to capture the REAL PHONE NUMBER of these callers.  Occasionally, you
might get a true phone number for the caller; but when I have Googled
several of these suspicious callers, I have found that a whole branch of an
exchange (i.ei, (701) 238-****, covering 9,999 possible numbers) is listed
as scam, suspicious, or the like.

One day when I received a call from a guy who became very nasty and used

the F-word when I wouldn't tell him my age, I googled his number and found
it to belong to a woman in a small town not far from our home.  That call
was to me a "wake-up call" against calling any number found for one of these
calls since I could very easily be blaming an innocent person for calling
me.  As another "wake-up reminder" we had a call one day while Debbie was on
the phone with a friend, and our Caller ID said the call was from our own
number.  That call was obviously from a spoofed number, since you wouldn't
call your own number.  Debbie and our friend both laughed at that Caller ID
report.

I wish that phone companies would take action to eliminate all number

spoofing so that a caller would have to either have his number shown on
Caller ID or else come in as a "number unknown" so that a person could
easily choose to ignore all "number unknown" calls if desired.  I am already
moving more firmly in the direction of ignoring all calls that report
"toll-free call" or "out of area" calls.  Such calls are almost always junk
ads or scams.  How often have you answered a call and heard something like
"This is your final call'''."  THEY ARE LIARS - ALL OF THEM!  Since they
can't tell the truth on that statement (they keep calling), those callers
can't be trusted for anything!!!

Yes, I know I am pessimistic about reporting to BBB, the police, FTC, or

other agency, but that's the way I see the situation these days.  We simply
have NO IDEA who is placing most of these calls.  Sadly, I have heard on our
local news about persons in our area being scammed out of much of their
savings by these thieves.  It's sad indeed that at least one of them somehow
found our Optacon list; but we can render them ineffective by refusing to
click on any of their messages or send them any money or personal
information.

-----Original Message-----
From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Pamela Drake
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2020 2:31 PM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Fake Messages

David and all,
I would also suggest that anyone receiving such phone calls take a

moment to notify your local Better Business Bureau and even the police if
you believe it would be helpful. Yes indeed, scams are out there everywhere!
The BBB has a page on their site <beb.org> which they call scam Trackers.
You can report and find a lot of scamms, nationally and locally.

On Jul 25, 2020, at 10:34 AM, David Plumlee

<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"I also want to warn all listers about a telephone-based scam which has

come twice to our house on two different phone calls.  On one call, a fellow
said that he was offering me a grant of $80,000 which I could use for
anything I want, tax free, coming from something he called a reinvestment
and recovery act.  I knew that nobody, especially the U.S. Government, is
out there to give me EIGHTY THOUSAND DOLLARS with no strings attached!  I
recorded the information he gave me on how to apply for the grant.

When I discussed the call with Debbie, she agreed that there has to be a

"hook" somewhere by which the scammer would get money from us while
providing us nothing; or maybe the scam was to get us involved with some
crooks stealing government money. We stayed out of it!

A few days ago, I received a call from a woman supposedly offering me a

grant of $15,000.  Having already discussed this kind of scam with Debbie, I
told the woman on the phone that nobody is out there to give us that amount
of money and that we are not interested.  I then immediately hung up the
phone.  More than likely, the phone numbers from both of the callers were
spoofed and therefore untraceable.  The calls probably came from someone
overseas.  I haven't yet figured out how the scamming group was going to get
money while they were giving money to me with no requirement that I pay any
kind of fee to get it; but I'm sure there is a "hook" somewhere in those
deals, and our best approach was to leave both of them alone!

I take time on this list to tell of these scams because I wouldn't want

any of us to think, if we got such a call, that we could apply for a grant
in order to provide funds for research and development of a new Optacon.
Most of us are in no position to get scammed out of our own limited funds,
and it is sad indeed that scammers have apparently discovered this list and
sent some fake messages, perhaps "feelers" to see if anyone will offer to
advance some money "down the rat hole." I also share the opinion that we
cannot expect a new Optacon anytime soon - and maybe not at all. If I
understand "the way the wind blows" these days, education of young blind
children has moved so far into recordings and computerized speech that
nobody will seriously look at the device which has been so helpful to us.

-----Original Message-----
From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carolyn
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2020 9:19 AM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Fake Messages

That was why in my post, I said that $10,000 was a lot to an individual,

but not to a foundation or the like, and not much money for R&D.

-----Original Message-----
From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Noel Runyan
Sent: Friday, July 24, 2020 6:31 PM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Fake Messages

Catherine and listers,
I will start by echoing a strong warning about getting your hopes up for

a new Optacon 3 product anytime soon, and I encourage you to be extremely
suspicious about anyone asking for money to fund new Optacon research.

With that said, I hasten to point out that Charles Pond's recent
messages to this list were not asking for money, although he did
state that he needed
$10,000 to $13,000 in order to finish his new Optacon display

development.

Clearly, that relatively small sum of funding would not come anywhere

near the many hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to develop the rest of
an Optacon 3 device, assuming the tactile display development portion was
successful and working well.

I also encourage us all to be extremely careful when making and sharing

assumptions or suspicions about the poor health or death of individuals.

Does anyone on this list have any actual proof that Charles Pond is

truly deceased, or do we only have unsupported assumptions and irresponsible
gossip?

In two of his recent posts to this Optacon list, Charles Pond mentioned

being his brother and writing for Charles.

These appeared to me to be the kind of ill advised humor one might

expect from someone who has been falsely proclaimed to be deceased.

In the last several months, I have had two direct Email exchanges with

Charles, and they both were very consistent with his former writing style
and technical issues. He mentioned Halbach magnetic arrays, a technical
term for a special kind of magnet I told him about several years ago.

I am sure that a poser would not have known to use such a unique

technical reference in Optacon discussions with me.

Certainly, I am comfortably convinced that Charles Pond, the one we've

heard from in the past, is still alive and has recovered enough from his
severe health problems to be able to continue some discussions about Optacon
tactile displays.

However, I am also convinced that we have not had independent

observation of and confirmation of any working prototypes of Charles's
Optacon 3 tactile array devices, something that causes most experts in the
field to have serious doubts about its performance and viability.

To be taken seriously by researchers in the tactile display field,

Charles Pond will need to be more open and willing to share details of his
design concepts and any prototypes.

Sincerely,
Noel
-
Noel H. Runyan
Phone: 1-408-866-7564
Email: Noel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-
At 11:35 PM 7/23/2020, Catherine Thomas wrote:

I think someone is having a joke at the list's expense. I

doubt vey

seriously that the messages are authentically from Charles.

The english

is wrong, the writing style does not match and the tone is

wrong. If

anyone receives any private requests for funds claiming to

be from

Charles, just delete them. This is only my opinion based on

years of reading Charles'

messages.
Catherine

------------------------------------------------------
comCatherine Thomas
braille@xxxxxxxxx                     /

-----------------------------------------------------------

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