Brent Fair, Scammer Extraordinaire??

if you've not been under a rock in any online paranormal dealings, you'll have heard of brent fair. i heard about him through his and/or his company's connections to chip coffey. birds of a feather and all that.

turns out brent fair used to run a ghost hunting group called paraex.org. Then it would seem he became thick as thieves (good descriptive, right!?) with the ghost hunters/TAPS people and started calling himself a TAPS family manager (whatever that is) and started a new undertaking, attempting to launch one of those ubiquitous paranormal/ghost hunting group convention tours: TAPSCON. evidently it was a success (sort of) and he advertised a TAPSCON 2.

only it seems as though brent fair had some problems. money problems. like ripping people off money problems. and he was going around advertising that "talent" were going to appear at his event when the "talent" actually didn't even know anything about the event.

so brent changed his company name to Odyssey Star Productions and incorporated it.

only now his associates within that organization who may or may not have been part of the problem are inheriting his money issues. ie, refund our money you scamming scumbags issues.

i remember when i first heard about this from my online pal DD, i shrugged it off and laughed "oh look, the scammers are getting scammed!" thinking that the 'talent' (ie the para-celebrity posers) were getting scammed in some way. i found that rather justified.

only i was mistaken - it's not the para-celebs getting scammed, but the poor paranormal peeps who forked over hundreds of dollars for tickets.

so where's the chip coffey connection? well, while the good plumbers at ghost hunters did a good job of disassociating themselves from fair early on - brent's company odyssey star (which is now being taken over by a couple of his associates) STILL represents chip coffey and has done so for many of these reedonkulous past paranormal conventions/appearances. apparently chip, in his psychic prowess, failed to see the scamming and is also still oblivious to brent fair's reputation -- chip's all-seeing eye is likely blinded by dollar signs.

in recently read online comments, chip coffey seems to be more than willing to give brent fair the benefit of the doubt - even with the FL Dept. of Justice knocking on peoples' doors. i would provide the links to this conversation but the blog where the conversation took place, scifake.com, has deleted / closed those comments for some reason. go figure.

chip coffey, such a pal - such a friend to the end to his money-grubbing cronies.

cha ching!!

oh, and here's an interesting tidbit -- according to this blog, brent fair's mother was some sort of "mothman" victim in 2001 and supposedly, back in 2005 brent fair had a book in the works about his mother's experiences. sadly, according to the article, his mom passed away. i wonder what happened to his book?

there are tons of links to actual paranormal peeps' blogs and articles on brent fair's odyssey star productions besides the scifake site -- here are a couple -- just google for more:

paranormalunderground and darkrealmlabs

(the really rather nice fellow at darkrealmlabs is the one who had to ban me from that TIPS forum -- as i recall he really seemed disappointed to have to do it. it's always a shame when skepticism has to pander to tender paranormal peeps' feelings.)

now i'm not a psychic, nor do i play one on TV like chip does, but since the proverbial poo is hitting the fan where paranormal peeps are concerned over this whole issue -- i predict chip coffey will be attempting to back pedal and bow out of his brent fair friendship in three....two....one.....