Jim, Dear Jim,
Here is the official story. It is true that Dr. Elwyn Jenkins started The Gold Economy website in October of 2000. It purported to be an "independent" magazine promoting the gold economy. It had a lot of interesting articles. In January 2001, upon the launch of GoldMoney, Dr. Jenkins wrote a negative article about GoldMoney in which he revealed that he was the CEO of Standard Reserve. At that time, Ken Griffith, who had posted a couple of articles there already, wrote to Dr. Jenkins and suggested that it was a conflict of interest for him to claim to have a neutral magazine when in fact he as the editor used it to criticize one of his competitors. Dr. Jenkins said, "You're right" and offered to sell TGE to Ken with a three year guaranteed advertising contract with Standard Reserve. Dr. Jenkins and Mr. Griffith created a contract under which Griffith would compensate Jenkins on a payment plan; but if SR defaulted on the advertising contract then Jenkins would forfeit his interest in the company to Griffith. Griffith took over as the editor of TGE in March 2001, but it took Jenkins six months to actually create the contract. The first thing that Griffith did as the editor was to remove the pro-HYIP articles previously posted by Jenkins. Griffith tried to make the magazine neutral, writing articles about a number of different companies in the gold economy, not just Standard Reserve. Other companies were welcome to advertise, and the articles were not paid advertisements. The contract was finally initiated in Septemer of 2001. The Gold Economy had paid three months in advance for certain advertising for SR on sites such as www.escapeartist.com. Griffith was able to demonstrate through the affiliate program link that this advertising produced a large number of debit card sales for Standard Reserve. SR made two payments and then defaulted, still owing TGE $6,000 for services that were provided. SR never paid the $6,000. >From November - January, Ken made a number of attempts to communicate with Dr. Jenkins, who would not return his calls or emails. According to the contract, as of January 2002, Dr. Elwyn Jenkins forfeited any interest he had in the company as well as the balance of payments that were owed to him. In January 2002, Ken contacted Barry Downey, the new CEO of Standard Reserve, and discussed the situation with him. Mr. Downey was completely unaware of the contract between SR and TGE. In retrospect, it is entirely possible that the board of SR never knew about the contract and that the contract itself was not valid. Nothing else was ever done about it. In February 2002, Ken transferred complete ownership of The Gold Economy to me. Dr. Jenkins has no influence or interest whatsoever in the The Gold Econonomy at this time. TGE is willing to accept articles from anyone in the industry, and Ken occasionally contributes articles to the site. As Paul Harvey says, "That's the rest of the story." --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
