Menard’s New Scheme!

[Burnaby49]

Since this seems to be the slowest weekend in Qualoos’ history I’ll pull myself out of my indolent slumbers and post an update on Robert Menard’s latest scheme. Or scam, take your pick, with Menard there’s always a range. As far as I can tell his plan to start a business doing custom smoking of various foodstuff to order was an entirely legitimate attempt to make money. It failed because of Menard’s chronic inability to focus on anything longer than a few weeks and the inescapable barrier that he was planning to use an outdoor smoker in Montreal in the winter. Maybe his venture into making custom wooden bathroom implements was also intended as a legit venture. However his RoboBreath ventilator was clearly a scam;

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=12128

He linked to videos of an actual working device on his Face Book page. I hesitate to call it a ventilator, it looked like a marginal grade high school science project, but at least it was something, a tangible device, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he was at least somewhat sincere about actually doing something. But then he started posting breathtaking lies about an international team of scientists, doctors, and engineers dedicated to his project and working away 24/7 on his device and more fantasies about deep pocket investors eager to shower his project with cash if he could just get $100,000 seed money to get it off the ground with proof of concept testing. Sadly it turned out that there was no RoboBreath, it was all bullshit. He’d just copied a video of some pathetic, primitive device that he’d found on the internet and pretended that it was his invention. The real, and only, purpose of the scam was to get suckers to cough up the $100,000 on GoFundMe. He got exactly $22 which I assumed he’d put in himself to prime the pump.

After that debacle Menard seemed to go quiet except for two things. The first was a failed attempt to resurrect his Association of Canadian Consumer Purchasers (a scam where he tried to sell, for $250 cash, what he claimed were Freeman credit cards with a $2,500 credit balance). However he’d gone to the well too many times on that one, he must have been really desperate for funds. His second claim was his purported involvement in the trucker’s protest in Ottawa although I have my doubts he even attended it.

Then, recently, he suddenly locked up his Face Book page, invitees only, and I couldn’t get in to see what new brilliant ideas he was having. So I stopped paying attention. But when I checked yesterday he’d opened up his Face Book page again and proudly announced a new venture, debt forgiveness! Specifically student debt.

Robert Menard
May 24 at 1:41 PM •

We are now accepting applications for our student loan discharge program.

Please visit:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Y0XRvc ... VWuDKpVTOY

And where does this link take us?

Student Loan Discharge Application
We accept applications until the 15th of each month.

The fee for this application is $60.00 CAD. Once your payment has been processed, we will contact you for more information so we can proceed with the discharge of your student loan.

For any questions please contact us at studentloandischarge@protonmail.com

The money is to be made payable to something called Northstar Strategies. The only Northstar Strategies I could find on Google is this;

NorthStar Strategies is a full-service government & public affairs consultancy based in Trenton, New Jersey. Founded in 2016 by Joe Fiordaliso, NorthStar boasts a number of prominent practice areas, including: legislative lobbying, regulatory affairs, association management, events management, and community outreach. Members of the firm have decades worth of client success stories; they enjoy close working relationships with government officials, legislators, high level staff and key stakeholders in the public and private sectors in the Statehouse, throughout New Jersey and the region.

Which is involved in vital projects like these;

NorthStar Strategies
May 2 •
Our Chief Operating Officer, Jody Herkloz, was recognized by the Girl Scouts of the Jersey Shore for her Outstanding Achievement in Fundraising. We are so proud of Jody’s leadership in our community and her support of the Girl Scouts helping to build girls of courage, confidence and character.

NorthStar Strategies
April 7 •
NorthStar CEO Joe Fiordaliso recently participated as a panelist at the NJ Alliance for Action's "Federal Infrastructure Act - What It Means for New Jersey" event. He joined a panel of subject matter experts and industry leaders to discuss ways New Jersey can maximize the benefit of federal infrastructure dollars coming back to the State.

In his capacity as President of the The American Council of Engineering Companies of New Jersey - ACECNJ Fiordaliso called for an aggressive and coordinated effort to spend formula infrastructure dollars and compete for federal grants.

Fiordaliso also spotlighted workforce challenges and called for increased reliance on the expertise and experience of consulting engineering firms to expedite project delivery and maximize the impact of every federal dollar received.

Doesn’t seem the kind of operation that would be involved in a Canadian student debt forgiveness scam with a nobody like Menard. But then again, I have to admit I didn’t do my due diligence by checking out all 2,040,000 Google results. Menard may be buried in there somewhere.

Menard included this picture with his announcement, I don’t know if it means anything or not;



The response to Rob’s new venture in altruism has been somewhat underwhelming.

Caroline Allard
Robert, what do I need to do to get my student loan discharged ?

Robert Menard
Caroline Allard simply follow the link and fill out the form.

Robert Menard
Caroline Allard if they are under the Canada Student Loan Act. Yes.

Then more outright bullshit, Menard’s good at that if nothing else;

Robert Menard
Joel MacDonald
I did the same process years ago in BC we discharged over 100 million dollars worth of student loans. The same remedy is still available. I am restarting it with a new team you are far better organized and structured then myself.

The usual story about a team diligently working away for the low, low, price of $60. But then, suddenly, competition offering the same services at an even lower low, low price. How low can you go? Free!

Garyhall Ian Francis Huddleston
Hi Joel, I can send you the information and process documents with instryctions free of charge. Not sure how much Robert Menard is charging as he wont say, but our services are free, always have been

But of course Rob offers much, much more for his nominal fee;

Robert Menard
Garyhall Ian Francis Huddleston the difference is we do it for them. You merely send them documents and tell them to do it themselves. You try to teach people how to fight. We actually fight for them.

I’m assuming that if Robert is going to pretend to be personally involved in going to bat for them against the powers-that-be there will be additional fees involved. The $60 is just the bait on the hook to get the suckers started.

Notwithstanding the obvious value of Rob's help for an entirely trivial sum he's curious as to what his competition is offering for $60 less;

Robert Menard
Garyhall Ian Francis Huddleston REWARD for anyone who PMs Garyhall Ian Francis Huddleston and shares with me the package he shares with you.

And that’s it to date. There seems to be very little, if any, interest in yet another Menard brainwave. I’m guessing that the absolute total failure of all of Menard’s past schemes is too well known amongst his followers.

[wserra]

his RoboBreath ventilator . . . he started posting breathtaking lies

Seems like that would defeat the purpose.

But when I checked yesterday he’d opened up his Face Book page again and proudly announced a new venture, debt forgiveness!

A tried-and-true scam (not to mention being the subject of a truly incredible number of robocalls). We've covered several such here.

Robert Menard [Snip nonsense.]

So it amounts to how Menard will gladly discharge your debt Tuesday for $60 today.

Menard included this picture with his announcement, I don’t know if it means anything or not;

It's a QR code that links to this page, which contains a link to the google doc you linked to above. And a ripped shred of a BC newspaper dated October 4, 2005.

Shell game, 3-card monte, scam. Low-rent one at that.

[eric]

The money is to be made payable to something called Northstar Strategies. The only Northstar Strategies I could find on Google is this;

NorthStar Strategies is a full-service government & public affairs consultancy based in Trenton, New Jersey. Founded in 2016 by Joe Fiordaliso, NorthStar boasts a number of prominent practice areas, including: legislative lobbying, regulatory affairs, association management, events management, and community outreach. Members of the firm have decades worth of client success stories; they enjoy close working relationships with government officials, legislators, high level staff and key stakeholders in the public and private sectors in the Statehouse, throughout New Jersey and the region.

Old scam. Ran into it when dealing with my old friend Ty Griffiths. Find a reputable company that on a quick google search sounds reliable and may or may not have a business profile kinda/ sorta like what you are doing. Borrow their name, sometimes with some slight modifications and you're off and running. Let me see, with my old foes it was Tourmaline Investments (a penny stock mining and land investment operation), Canadian Real Estate Association (non existent but sounds important), and Satosi Investment Funds.

[Burnaby49]

Burnaby49 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 06, 2022 3:05 amhis RoboBreath ventilator . . . he started posting breathtaking lies

Seems like that would defeat the purpose.

The connection between breathtaking and the RoboBreath didn’t cross my mind. It just seemed an appropriate word for Rob’s totally shameless, audacious lies.

But when I checked yesterday he’d opened up his Face Book page again and proudly announced a new venture, debt forgiveness!

A tried-and-true scam (not to mention being the subject of a truly incredible number of robocalls). We've covered several such here.
Robert Menard [Snip nonsense.]

We don’t get debt forgiveness robocalls here in British Columbia, at least I don’t. Ours tend to be credit card scams where a stern female voice informs whomever picks up the phone that their credit card has been used for unauthorized purchases, often Amazon, and to phone some number immediately or lose your card. For a while we were getting at least a half-dozen of those a day.

So it amounts to how Menard will gladly discharge your debt Tuesday for $60 today.

Just the price of hamburgers updated from 1932.

Menard included this picture with his announcement, I don’t know if it means anything or not;

It's a QR code that links to this page, which contains a link to the google doc you linked to above. And a ripped shred of a BC newspaper dated October 4, 2005

Shell game, 3-card monte, scam. Low-rent one at that.

Shows you how computer savvy I am. While I don’t have a cellphone I recognize the square QR codes, I’m constantly faced with them, but the circular one is new to me.

I interact with QR codes in the obvious place for me, pubs. Many no longer have printed beer lists but instead have QR codes glued to the tabletops. However most still have a list on a board over the bar.

As far as low-rent goes, what do you expect from Menard? He’s been totally discredited, his glory days of huge elaborate schemes and grandiose dreams are over. He’s barely trying nowadays, this is just a minimum effort repeat of a scam of his from decades ago. All he has left is bottom trolling for idiots to provide him with beer money. He put a significant effort into the RoboBreath scam and all it got him was $22. I’m guessing that’s $22 more than he’ll get this time around.

[The Observer]

So it amounts to how Menard will gladly discharge your debt Tuesday for $60 today.

Which only goes to show that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to scammers. Advance-fee funding sounds like one of those terms that you might think came from a sophomore finance class in university, but it is really just the first rule in the school of con artists. Get the money from the mark first by promising something to be done or provided in the future. The only thing different is what kind of lipstick the scammer is putting on the pig (apologies to eric for alluding to porcine princesses) to get the marks hooked. The second rule of scammers is to find people who are vulnerable and/or greedy who will be glad to shell out a few bucks for that pig.

[Burnaby49]

Neglected to mention. This was his opening statement. Note the plural;

We are now accepting applications for our student loan discharge program.

There is no we or our, just Menard. He loves to pretend he's at the helm of a vast enterprise in every scam he promotes. He reached his peak with the Canadian Common Corps of Peace Officers (CCPO), his pretend Freeman police force. He spun dreams of CCPO regional offices across Canada, CCPO training schools set up in every province, an army his followers all swearing each other in as police officers. His flights of fantasy even took wing to a belief that he and his idiot followers could start their own common law court system. As I understand it the ultimate goal was the evasion of their problems in the non-fantasy world. A judge giving you hassles about child support payments? Send some CCPO officers to arrest him and try him for treason in a court packed with your sovereign buddies. However Rob and his buddies could never figure out how to bridge the chasm between their sovereign fantasy-land and the real world.

Rob announced his retreaded, refurbished, old debt forgiveness scheme on May 24th, almost two weeks ago. All the comments I posted seem to have been made in the first few days. Nothing since then, no more comments from prospects, nothing additional from Menard. His scams tend to have a very short shelf-life but this might set a new record.

[Albert Haddock]

Hang on, “student loans”?

In this country that would mean people who have gone to a university. Have educational standards slipped that far?

[Burnaby49]

I agree that he's not exactly fishing in a target-rich environment but he has to find the gullible fools where he can. While running this through his Face Book page really limits the pool of potential suckers it's also free. Since he's probably dead broke it's the only place he can afford to advertise his pathetic little scheme. There's no chance of any real money in it but there's no cost to try except the value of his time which is probably nil. In other words an entirely typical Menard scheme. While his RoboBreath scam was far more elaborate it was the same in that it also cost him nothing. It only involved stealing somebody's You Tube videos and weaving fantasies to go with them.

[The Observer]

Hang on, “student loans”?

In this country that would mean people who have gone to a university. Have educational standards slipped that far?

But it doesn't mean that these same people learned anything about life. There are a great number of "students" who took out large student loans thinking that getting their degrees in such rewarding fields like tropical horticulture or interpretive dance meant that they would be able to pay the loans back. That didn't happen and now these people are finding out that carrying a huge debt is a problem. I would say it was the pool of students that slipped, not the standards.

I agree that he's not exactly fishing in a target-rich environment but he has to find the gullible fools where he can.

Well, its a pretty rich target if he focuses on horticulturists and interpretive dancers. And if the pressure gets turned up on the less than successful graduates to repay, quite a few of them may think that $60 is worth a shot at getting a $150,000 education loan cancelled. Desperation sometimes can bring out the stupidity in a person.

[Burnaby49]

I agree that he's not exactly fishing in a target-rich environment but he has to find the gullible fools where he can.

Well, its a pretty rich target if he focuses on horticulturists and interpretive dancers. And if the pressure gets turned up on the less than successful graduates to repay, quite a few of them may think that $60 is worth a shot at getting a $150,000 education loan cancelled. Desperation sometimes can bring out the stupidity in a person.

I'd agree but that's not my point. There may well be potential marks out there but Menard's problem is that he doesn't have the resources to find them. As far as I can see his reach pretty much extends to his Face Book followers. Past that he'd have to make more of an effort than typing out a few Face Book postings and he'd have to spend money he probably doesn't have with very uncertain prospects of recovery. He's been a minimum effort bottom-trawler for years and that seems to be about his limits. In any case, past that, he'd have to go more public and the last thing he wants is official attention. However I admit there are problems restricting himself to his 706 followers;

1 - They already know about his scams and his failures. He's been discredited too many times already.
2 - They don't seem to be a particularly educated lot. Student debt is probably not a significant issue.
3 - Like the followers of all sovereign gurus this is a parasitic something-for-nothing crowd who don't like paying for things.

Additionally student debt isn't the huge issue in Canada that it is in the states. I don't have facts and figures but it doesn't make the news as a significant issue. In any case, as that newspaper clipping that Wes referred to shows, Canadian students get significant government assistance.

[morrand]

Received in my junk email box a couple of days ago:

Bonjour,
Je me présente Monsieur Robert MENARD, je vous contacte suite à un don
de 4.509.089 Euros que je veux vous offrir, car mes jours sont
comptés. Pour plus de renseignements, je vous prie de bien vouloir me
contacter à mon adresse émail personnel : robertmenard27@hotmail.com
Que le Seigneur Dieu créateur du ciel et de la terre exauce vos prières, Amen!!!
Robert MENARD
-----------------------------------------------------------
Hello,
I introduce myself Mr. Robert MENARD, I am contacting you following a
donation of 4,509,089 Euros that I want to offer you, because my days
are numbered. For more information, please contact me at my personal
email address: robertmenard27@hotmail.com
May the Lord God creator of heaven and earth hear your prayers, Amen !!!
Robert MENARD

--
Que Dieu bénisse

Now, I am sure this is not our very own Robert Menard, but just a pretender. Fairly sure, anyway. But it is funny that whoever is running this version of this old con would latch onto his name, of all people, to use with it.

[Burnaby49]

I'd think that claiming to be a beautiful Nigerian princess left billions by her late, and very corrupt, royal father would confer more legitimacy than claiming to be Robert Menard.

[Burnaby49]

I posted this on June 06;

Rob announced his retreaded, refurbished, old debt forgiveness scheme on May 24th, almost two weeks ago. All the comments I posted seem to have been made in the first few days. Nothing since then, no more comments from prospects, nothing additional from Menard. His scams tend to have a very short shelf-life but this might set a new record.

So we're now almost two months past his announcement of the student debt forgiveness scheme and, as far as I can see, its gone nowhere. Still the same number of comments and replies to the announcement that there were back in early June and the announcement is the sole Face Book posting Menard had made on the issue. In other words a typical Menard scheme, dead on arrival but requiring only an expenditure of his time and, if nothing else, he seems to have plenty of that.