“I have nothing to hide… [sic] that is why I returned to GGC to oust the ‘rescue’ team criminals from the GGC property…” Future convicted felon Ken Johnson on Facebook.
“But if he is just a conman, why not run off with the money? And why waste so many man hours, and go through the stress of cleaning, planting and transforming the property?” –Joshua Harris.
Workaway “volunteer” Joshua Harris told us that he worked for 2-3 weeks at the Galt’s Gulch Chile farm in exchange for room and board. This backpacker, young and inexperienced, can’t understand why future convicted felon Ken Johnson didn’t just, as they say, take a powder with our bucks. This is the second most common question we get about the GGC affinity fraud.
In fact, FCF Johnson did run off with his tail between his legs and loot in hand when two of the GGC Recovery members went to the farm to negotiate his departure. Reports were that after he voluntarily abandoned the farm, he fled to Paraguay. Wherever he went, he stole upwards of $630,000 in the final months of his tenure. This data were gleaned from investors’ wire receipts and doesn’t include any lemon sales he pocketed on his way out the gate.
Of course Johnson’s a drinker and gambler so some or even much of the money may have been scattered to the winds before he ran off, but he must have had enough to start over. It would have been difficult for us to find him, and even if we had, more difficult to drag him back to justice. Yet he returned. Everyone wants to know why.
Psychopaths Have Their Reasons
We reckon on two reasons. First, being a sadistic psychopath, Johnson wanted to get us investors back for daring to challenge him and take “his farm.” After all, he had stolen it, fair and square.
If Johnson were an honest man, he would have returned by simply walking onto the property and moving back into the house. We would have done nothing but ignore him.
That wouldn’t have worked for Johnson, though. To him, it was unthinkable to be ignored and irrelevant in his former kingdom. No, Johnson had to stick a red hot poker in our collective eye. He hired armed thugs to terrorize and threaten our employees, then re-installed his lackeys to run the operation.
The funny thing is we didn’t care as much as he thought we would. We investors were being bled dry paying the expenses of a money-losing farm. We were glad to be relieved of that pressure. Also, we then knew where to find him. So much for the red hot poker.
THE Reason: Play Acting to Stay out of Jail
The second reason, and the more important one, that we immediately deduced and announced to the investors was that returning to the farm was his only defense against our overwhelming criminal charges against him.
The quotation at the beginning of this post says it all. Johnson has to act as if he has nothing to hide. The only way to do that was to come back to the farm. His lawyer told him that his only hope of beating our open and shut case of defrauding 73 families of over $10 million is to pretend he’s innocent. So he returned and eventually cooked up the scheme of hoodwinking young, gullible Workaway volunteers to renovate the buildings and do all the labor on the farm. They even grow the food for the next shift of backpackers. Johnson’s out-of-pocket is minimal and he keeps the lemon sales that these dupes provide. He can then proclaim to the world, “See, I only want to build a community and give the GGC clients their due.”
Just a fly or two in that ointment. First, his current Workaway scam does not undo his past actions which are more than obviously fraudulent–unenforceable contracts, fraudulent marketing materials, no insurance or bond to protect investors, non-payment of vendors and employees of over $200,000, wire fraud, money laundering, etc, etc. Note that intent is not required to convict on many of these crimes.
Second, unlike gullible backpackers, prosecutors and judges have seen it all before. Li’l Kenny Fraudster can play at being a stand-up guy all he wants. It really doesn’t matter. That orange jumpsuit will be waiting for him no matter what tricks he tries to pull off.
Btw, there was immediate confirmation that our deduction about Li’l Kenny Fraudster’s motive was correct. When we sent our email blast to all investors exposing his desperate strategy to beat the rap, within minutes we received a rather crude and threatening email in return. We had hit the bull’s eye. Claro.
And what’s the most frequently asked question? Well, the obvious: How could you have been so stupid to invest in GGC?
We wish we knew…