Until today, when I received this email in my work email in-box:
"Dear Mr. Grundy;
Just to remind you that according to Charles, our Private Investigator, you have a 5pm deadline to keep today as regards removal of offensive and defamatory material from your website.
I suggest you do, and if so, we'll say no more about this issue between you and I. You've had your fun, now it's time for you to move on and stop this constant bothering and sullying of my name.
Yours sincerely;
Chris Devonshire-Ellis
Principal
Dezan Shira & Associates
Beijing"
Who was this "Charles" of whom CDE spoke? Well, on Sunday I received this bizarre, rambling, and threatening email from the address "charlespi@hotmail.co.uk":
"Mr. Grundy(my emphasis)
My name is Charles & I am a private investigator. You know me as 'anonymous' on your blog. I act as a go between on behalf on a group of four individuals. They have engaged me to establish your identity and to make contact with you. This concerns various comments and statements you have made on your blog & on those of others. I have now made you aware that I can track you down & also your colleagues family & friends. I also have records of your addresses in Brighton & Lansing full details of your movements throughout Asia & the people you met with professionally. I can stretch this further & add in contacts within the UK & immigration worldwide for your immigration & passport details. I can now find you & keep track of where you are. The question is what happens next. You are instructed to immediately delete from your website all references to the people you have harrassed online within the next 48 hours. Lets not have you getting smart asking who or what. Use your sense. I have a list of your comments & I will be watching. Take everything down & delete it. This means a deadline of close of business 5pm GMT on Tuesday 15 March. You are asked to do the same for references of the websites of Wang Jiangshuo & Rhondo Zeb. It is your problem if these sites are not under your control. If you comply with this request & abstain from making any further references to any of the individuals concerned no further action will be taken against you. If not then actions will be taken & this will involve your employers & other means that will not be to your amusement at my disposal. I have contacts in many places & Wroclow is a text away. There are no negotiations. It is better for you that it is not necessary to meet with any of my friends. That would not be a good idea. Do not piss me off or them off & we can bid goodbye & let all your bad behaviour be history.
Charles"
A quick check shows that there is no registered UK private investigator by the name of "Charles Pi", nor can any record be found of one in another country. None of the three UK private investigator's called Charles on the ABI registry know who Devonshire Ellis is or have had any contact with him. The most obvious explanation is therefore the simplest - "Charles Pi" is an alias.
CDE doesn't bother to identify what on this blog he considers "offensive and defamatory". Once again, the reason for this simple - nothing here is "defamatory", if it were he could have had the relevant material taken down years ago. Instead, CDE is trying to take down bona fide commentary on this blog through a campaign of thinly veiled threats against my friends, family, and job such as those highlighted above. He admits as much in his email.
I have not "defamed" him. Instead it is his own words that condemn him, now as before. Moreover, it is now Wednesday evening and the sky is yet to fall in, despite the 5 PM Tuesday deadline.
It seems that CDE is not merely in another time zone, but on a different planet all together.
10 comments:
"Just when I thought I was out (of the sino bridgeblogs for good)....they pull me back in".
What can you say! This schizo stalking creature must spend every waking hour and many sleepless nights turning this stuff over in his head.
Use this stuff profitably and turn it into a film script.
This is like kindergarten, but kinda creepy. Why people make up stuff like that is beyond my understanding, but I think they have some serious issues. This post was one of the best replies to trolls I've ever read, you totally exposed them.
The thinly veiled threats tell a story. The story of the mind of this man. Only people who are highly insecure and have lied their way into their presumed status will be so mad about comments that expose them.
I would not worry about him at all. If he takes it to the level of actual harassment and starts contacting others then you just file a case against him or keep exposing him. He knows that the other blogs don't give a shit about his threats so he wants you to clean it up. I know the Chinese blogger he referred to. I would like to see him pull one of these campaigns on him. Hell would be heaven compared to the shit storm he will have to deal with then.
I had a look at his personal blog. If these are not the ramblings of a delusional mind living in lala land then what is?
I would not lose any sleep over the guy if I were you. Completely ignoring him seems to be a good strategy. He starts harassing you then the green suits are nearby. He is already on their watch list anyway.
I think that guy exposed himself years ago, MKL. It's one of the dark sides of globalization, with comical characteristics.
Charles Pi is obviously threatening you; who would be dumb enough to put a threat online and carry through?
Chris Devonshire-Ellis seems a person who is very concerned about his public standing but does not fight these publications with a simple legal procedure to clear his name? No.
He resorts to intimidation and thus recognizes the fact that the accusations made by FOARP on this site are not made up but based on facts. What else can he do? He just gives it his best shot and hopes that it does not backfire but what I read here shows it invariably seems to backfire.
A few people seem to have pulled comments or articles when he threatened to sue them or pull some other trick as can be read in some of the comments under FOARP's blog entries.
However the accusations made by FOARP seem to have compelling evidence which turns them in just stating a number of facts about this person. This is difficult for Devonshire.
What I do not understand is why this man is so obsessed with a few blog entries. I Googled him and there are tons of articles by him online which I haven't all read but alas they seem relatively harmless.
Does he really think that people endlessly would check him out before engaging him for their business? If he makes the right impression and has good people doing the work would that be a problem? Hiring him as a lawyer may be not a good thing to do but as an advisor who has others do the work one needs qualifications for...why not?
I think he is just obsessed with himself and thus makes such a fuss about this.
I know Chris and I feel sorry for him. He probably was drunk when he wrote the Charles PI emails (I do not know that Chris Devonshire-Ellis actually wrote those, but let's just assume that he did for the sake of argument) and then he probably was even drunker when he wrote the ones using his own name (again, I am just assuming that it really was Chris Devonshire-Ellis who wrote those also). That alone warrants pity.
The real reason Chris Devonshire-Ellis deserves our pity though is because of why he would be writing these things, if he did. I am hearing that now that the world knows he is not a lawyer as he always claimed and not an accountant either and not even close to being fluent in Mandarin either, that his firm just isn't getting much business these days. Chris Devonshire-Ellis is, however, a very resourceful person and this has caused him to step up his publishing of books and magazines and expand to doing so for countries like Vietnam and Russia, which has caused those of us in Beijing to joke that he is now producing inaccurate information for more countries. Poor Chris Devonshire-Ellis, he really is a most pitiful person.
I absolutely like the picture on his personal blog about the RAF club. How he poses reminds me of the movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Great movie and so happy to finally see the release of DRS2.
haha pathetic chinese black hats
Please write more about Chris Devonshire-Ellis, or Lord Devonshire-Ellis or maybe Baron Colgach as perhaps we should now call him (see his blog for more on this topic). His middle name is Anthony, it appears. Did ever a parent give their child more appropriate initials?
CAD is so far removed from the norm that he wouldn't be credible if he were fictional, although doubtless he would take that for a compliment.
Our paths crossed briefly well over a decade ago when I was trying to retrieve some money he owed me. He was as slippery as a hagfish. At one stage I spoke to his then recently ex-fiance who told me that almost everything he said about himself was untrue. I never did get my money back. The closest I got was a cheque, but unsurprisingly it bounced.
I remember seeing him once chatting with friends outside a bar in Hong Kong. A large cockroach climbed onto his shoe and then up the outside of his trouser leg. I kept expecting one of his friends to notice and point it out, but they didn't and the cockroach kept creeping around his suit. It seemed such an appropriate image. Eventually it was a passing stranger who brushed it off.
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