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5 Incredible Sagas of Fandom Scams and Deception


Sometimes it seems like fandom is a breeding ground for tangled webs of lies and deceit. It’s not surprising fans are so often targeted by scammers, con artists and plain old weirdos. Geeks tend to be obsessive, socially isolated people and it’s easy for people like us to get overexcited about something and hooked on someone and subsequently be caught in their web. Con artists and liars have to be pretty obsessive themselves, so they’re going to fit right in.

However, some sagas of fandom-oriented liars and cheats are so dramatic, ridiculous or out there that they seem like they seem like they should be a movie script or novel themselves. Let’s take look at the most torrid dramas fandom has to offer. Follow me into a twisted, nightmarish world full of identity theft, faked deaths, cult leaders and even undead shaman wizards.  A lot of these people are still at large as well, so let this article serve as a warning: don't fall for their tricks.

  1. Andrew Blake's Cult of Shamans and Sparrows

    Buckle up kids, we’re going for a ride. This is the story of Andrew Blake, a man who has claimed to channel hobbits, cheated people out of their money and pretended a sparrow was his son. He’s still going strong, having jumped from fandom to fandom, reinventing himself each time!

    (It should be noted that Blake was assigned female at birth and was presented as such until the time he took the name Jordan Wood. Using incorrect pronouns is not just hurtful to Blake, but to transgender people in general, so I will be using he/him throughout my narration, regardless of what pronouns he used at the time of the event I am describing. Commenters should do the same. I am only mentioning any of this because the story is confusing otherwise.)

    Blake’s first documented activity in fandom was in 1998. But Blake’s shenanigans really start with Victoria Bitter (VB). As VB, Blake entered the Lord of the Rings Fandom, started a LotR-themed charity group called “Bit of Earth” and quickly gained followers.

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    Blake (l) and Abbey Stone (r) as Hobbits in 2002, via kumquatwriter

    He told a select few friends he was actually channeling the deceased soul of Merry Brandybuck (Apparently a priestess had told him he was a “rare lesbian paladin” …) as well as several other people, including Elijah Wood, who he asserted  had a childhood rife with sexual abuse (he later claimed the same of Orlando Bloom when he “channeled” him). Blake (then known as Amy Player) eventually claimed he had Wood’s “duplicate soul”, and his original soul was now dead. Thus, he became “Jordan Wood” and VB disappeared from the internet.

    An ex of Blake’s noticed that Jordan was VB, but Blake’s current girlfriend Abbey Stone (who had fully bought into Blake’s fantasy world, comparing her experience to that of a cult member) informed everyone VB had committed suicide. Blake actually sent a fake suicide note to his real family claiming this as well, leading a detective to come to the door. (Blake claimed that Jordan Wood’s identity had been stolen by the supposedly deceased Amy). Blake gathered a live-in group of fellow fans and friends who were dubbed the Bagenders. One of this group writes that Blake sexually abused her and Blake has admitted to having sexually abused his partners as well.

    Andrew Blake (l), Sean Astin (c) and Abbey Stone (r) during Project Elanor, via kumquatwriter

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    The group decided to create a LotR convention, Tentmoot. In order to get a venue, they falsely claimed to be an official charity. Then came time to fly in LotR actors for the con. Blake’s friend, Jeanine Renne, received a call from him where he claimed the airline had “backed out” of the deal to fly the actors in for free. Renne paid the airline, only to discover the “deal” Blake claimed had never actually existed. She quickly canceled her funding, but three of the actors had already been flown in, only to find the convention had collapsed completely. Rather than face up to his lies, Blake (allegedly) chose to fake a suicide attempt and left the rest of his group to deal with the fallout.

    Renne reported Blake and his group to the police. Blake and Stone escaped charges by voluntarily signing an agreement to never do charity work in the state of Oregon again. They were also investigated for identity theft, since Blake had signed papers under "Jordan Wood".

    Elijah’s soul “died” and is replaced with Orlando Bloom’s. Blake legally changed his name to his current one.  Stone’s mother came to rescue her from falling further into Blake’s fantasy world. Stone was basically “deprogrammed”. She writes about it here and her further experiences with Blake here.

    Blake resurfaced in the Harry Potter fandom as “Thanfiction”. He wrote a novel length fanfic called Dumbledore’s Army and The Year of Darkness. It gained quite a following (though in my opinion it’s misogynistic grimdark nonsense, despite Blake's claims it’s better than Harry Potter itself).  

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    The cover to the self published and "for sale" edition of Andrew Blake's fanfic.

    Blake proceeded to claim he was an Irish genius who looked just like Harry Potter, had fought in wars and would soon die from a heart condition. He also claimed that Abbey Stone had taken his son from him…it was actually their pet sparrow. He gathered followers again and ends up claiming “undead shaman wizards” were trying to eat their children. His past as Amy Player was uncovered, but he assured everyone that Amy was actually just his evil twin sister.

    Things then get tragic. Brittany Quinn, Blake’s roommate and alleged follower (her father asserts (warning for misgendering) she was in his thrall similar to how Stone was) was murdered by her abusive ex in their home and Blake was the only survivor. Blake compared her murder to his fanfic (see May 16). He created both an unsettling website in her honor and also put on a disastrous hike in her name.

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    Andrew Blake via Twitter

    Blake has jumped to Supernatural fandom and has claimed to be a reformed man of the people and champion of social justice who young, vulnerable people should totally come to for advice. His previous victims aren’t buying it. As they point out, Blake certainly repeatedly uses fandom to build an army of followers to manipulate. His recent actions don’t deviate from the pattern, so I’d steer clear.

  2. The Disaster of DashCon

    DashCon was a convention focusing on fandoms popular in Tumblr (Supernatural, Doctor Who, etc) held in July 2014 and some would put an emphasis on the con.  The convention was run by Megan Eli, Roxanne Schwieterman and Cain Hopkins.  The first disaster of the convention was when it was suddenly announced on the first night that everyone would be thrown out of the hotel that was hosting the con unless the current congoers could donate 17,000 dollars. Amazingly (partly through getting teenagers to throw a bunch of their cash into a bag), they managed to raise the money and promised to refund it all on Tumblr.

    Many people have yet to be refunded, apparently due to Eli and Hopkins refusal to turn the money needed for such an action over to Schwieterman, reportedly the only member of the team who tried to fix the mess the con turned out to be.

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    Dashcon footage via Youtube

    Several guests (the Welcome to Night Vale crew among others) arrived at the convention only to find their transportation, hotel and.or appearance fees hadn’t been paid for as promised. As a result the WTNV panel was canceled and DashCon subsequently changed their rules at the last minute to say that there were no refunds for panel attendees. Some DashCon Staff proceeded to insult these guests online. The fun didn’t stop there- it was discovered that the con had lied about being affiliated with the charity Random Acts and the money supposedly raised for the charity couldn't be accounted for. Then tales came in about DashCon offering hotel mints and an extra hour in their pitiful excuse for a ball pit as con prizes (see picture above).

    Meanwhile, the real prizes promised for the con’s kickstarter backers were apparently never delivered. To cap it all off, there were reports of Eli and Hopkins treating volunteers so poorly they had panic attacks. The con was an all around disaster, but at least we got a meme out of it.

    Emoti-con logo via Facebook

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    Despite having driven themselves thousands of dollars into debt with their last terrible convention, Eli and Hopkins decided to try to launch a new convention in 2015. Everyone quickly realized “EmotiCon” was Dashcon in all but name.

     Predictably, people and organizations were involved in the marketing of the con without their permission. Eli and Hopkins were caught in several lies and also came under fire for unprofessional behavior, including racist and sexist comments. The convention was quickly canceled due to the criticism and low ticket sales.  Soon after, Eli and Hopkins were dropped by their lawyer due to their behavior, Eli lost her job and filed for bankruptcy and Hopkins was caught shoplifting.  Wow. 

  3. The Sinking of the Arkh Project

    From the outside, The Arkh Project, which launched in 2012, would appear to be a simple kickstarter scam. An RPG fantasy game backed by a team with next-to-no game-making experience with nothing but character designs and really vague concepts to show for itself goes up for a kickstarter.  It’s no surprise when the 6,000 dollars the team raised disappeared and there’s nothing to show for it three years later.

    But what makes the kerfuffle more unique than the average scam is the personality behind it. The failed game pitch was headed up by Riley, who was most commonly known as dumbthingswhitepeoplesay and Gisei Nashi Ni. They claimed the project was supposed to be a haven for queer people of color and a rare fantasy video game aimed to represent and accommodate them. What a great act of social justice!

    Except…Riley was revealed to be someone who repeatedly harassed LGBT+ people of color, saying offensive things about East Asians while simultaneously fetishizing Japanese people (to the point where they once tried to make a Fullmetal Alchemist yaoi game entirely in Japanese despite not knowing any) and even harassing teenagers to the point of sexual threats and doxxing.

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    The Arkh Project concept art

    The very concept designs of the game itself was pointed out to be a mess from a social justice perspective- with a Japanese character inexplicably in Korean clothing just being the tip of the iceberg. But Riley simply took the money and ran, escaping the heat by making their tumblr private.

  4. The MsScribe Story

    It’s impossible to really give a short summary of the MsScribe saga and truly do it justice. The entire thing really has to be read it in full. But, to my best ability: from roughly 2003-2005, a woman assumed multiple online identities solely for the purpose of manipulating the online Harry Potter fandom at the time.  She pretended to be attacked by HP-hating homophobes and racists. She pretended to be a poor oppressed Pakistani woman who was inspired by the wonderful writings of…herself. She pretended to be her own live-in housekeeper. She pretended to be hospitalized. She dragged a forum’s reputation through the mud by pretending to be various members.

    But what was truly amazing was how many people she conned and how ardently they refused to believe she was lying with all this evidence against her. One of her con victims included Cassandra Claire, who made her name in fandom as a plagiarizing fanfic author and went on to be a successful young adult novelist.

    Perhaps in hindsight it’s not so surprising Harry Potter had so many of these sorts of people. After all, it was a magical fandom….and so much of magic is about illusions. 

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