Big PR Week for the Harry Dunn Case

The family spokesman was over here again this past week, busy as a one-man band doing media hits and lobbying the high and mighty from Capitol Hill to the UN. At least, that’s what he was doing if you take his press releases at face value. He sends them out via medium.com, where he writes them in the third person, and I see that they are often quoted in re-typed by various UK news outlets.

The big week included farce as he attended a press conference held by Lisa Bloom, the made-for-tabloid lawyer who is representing six women pursuing civil claims against the estate of the late Jeffery Epstein, trying to get a publicity bump by ‘joining forces’ to call for a swap/prisoner-exchange of the American driver for Prince Andrew, who has refused to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement about his friendship with Epstein.

That’s tabloid bait, but hardly a serious proposal.

The week went downhill for our traveling drummer when first the State Department and then the United Nations Secretary-General both declined his request for meetings.

Now, I don’t think he truly expected that State Department lawyers would meet with him or the Dunn family to explain the internal deliberations behind the denial of the extradition request, or to open that decision up for debate. Why in the world would they?

But I do think he really was surprised to find out the United Nations does not make international law.

Vienna is a UN convention. I accordingly approached the Secretary General of the United Nations to ask for a meeting to discuss such a review [a review of the entire Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations] and to seek his guidance on the way forward. Having initially received a warm response from his office, I eventually met today with David Hutchinson, Principal Legal Officer in the Office of Legal Counsel. Prior to the meeting, I received a terse email from him stating that my invitation was misplaced and that the Secretary General had no lawful competence to get involved. It was a matter for Member States to address.

He must be very confused about international law if he thought the UN makes it and can unmake it. In fact, international law is made by multilateral treaties. All the UN does is record such treaties, like this one.

Too bad. They'll be no group hug with the Secretary-General, who would then magically abolish diplomatic immunity.

Now that the UN has declined to play along, what higher authority can he take his pitch to next? I suggest he try the United Federation of Planets. Oh, I know that’s not real, except in the imagination of Star Trek fans. But then, his whole pitch is based on fantasy in the first place because on this planet the family members of the Administrative and Technical staffs of diplomatic missions are immune from the criminal jurisdiction of their host countries.

I suppose it’s all harmless grifting until somebody gets hurt. The British tabloids released photos and published home and family details about the American driver this week, which I notice they tend to do when the Dunn family spokesman visits the U.S. Given the sustained high level of hatred towards the driver that the tabloids have stoked among the British public and some U.S. parties – browse the comments on British news articles about the case and you’ll often see fantasies of murder – I hope someone is filing for restraining orders against the tabloids’ local stringers/stalkers and taking precautions against the nutters out there.

So, now it’s back home again, where I guess he must have a day job he needs to attend to. Or does he? I see he identifies himself on social media as the COO and CLO of something called Squid Networks LTD. And what’s that? A failed, and now dissolved, attempt to raise funds for a bitcoin-based gaming product that didn’t exist.

Here's an independent review for anyone thinking of investing in Squid Networks' Initial Coin Offering:

The company behind Reef – claiming to be known as Squid Networks – has an extremely weak incorporation. The majority of their team have nothing but schooling and menial work behind them and have no industry or technical experience. Their company was founded for the sole purpose of raising money for this project. They also have no financial staff listed.

We are very concerned when examining ICOs which have no supervision of funds, and no exit scam proofing.

The Reef project is a risky investment. It has not been audited and no ICO Fund Supervision Scheme has been set up.

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Squid Networks created their company with the sole purpose of launching an ICO to raise funds for their project. On their website (which is unresponsive) they claim they’ve been in business since 2017, but the company was only registered on the 15th March 2018.

The registered address of this company is hundreds of miles from the locations of any staff, as per LinkedIn profiles. They have written in their Google business statement that the company was “created to make Reef”.

Their “partners” are small gaming organisations with no assets or real liability. They incorporated the company with just 3 GBP.

-- Snip --

The team has extremely weak foundations and is comprised almost entirely of staff that haven’t ever held technical roles, and who have finished high school education within the last year or two.

-- Snip --

This is a clear fundraising scheme with no working product.

Wow. With all that going for it, Squid Networks still went out of business? That's hard to believe. British investors must be so hard-nosed that they expect a product to exist before they sink millions into it.

The bitcoins didn’t roll in for that pitch. He’s done much better pitching the Dunn case, whose GoFundMe account does not, so far as I am aware, accept bitcoin.

As this latest burst of noise subsides, the action on the Harry Dunn cases moves back to the UK government, where they will have to decide whether or not to attempt a trial in absentia.