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Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
© 2021 Thoughts On The Dead
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
© 2021 Thoughts On The Dead
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Wasn’t rakow ripping off scientologists or something?
28/12/2001
First I should start out by explaining the reasons for this unusual crosspost.
Recently a huge Ponzi scam surfaced involving Scientologist Reed Slatkin and a
number of associates, including one Mr. Ron Rakow. Quick research turned up
that he had a former connection with the Grateful Dead before becoming a
Scientologist and getting involved with Reed Slatkin’s scam. The background to
this huge scam is on a website called http://www.slatkinfraud.com and the
official bankruptcy trustee’s site is http://www.slatkin-investors.com
Ron Rakow used to be a “manager” of the Grateful Dead, meaning he used to hang
around with them and steal their money.
Ron Rakow’s role in these matters is explained briefly at
http://www.slatkinfraud.com/rakow.shtml
Encapsulated, the story is that after leaving the Grateful Dead, Rakow went on
to become a convicted felon for a bizarre mail fraud with a guy named Chris
Mancuso involving lactic cultures. This fraud is explained in more detail in an
Esquire article reproduced here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=%3C9n6hna%24j6m%40netaxs.com%3E
Recently Google put up older Usenet archives, so I decided to do a little more
digging on our friend Mr. Rakow. Anyone who knows anything more about this guy
can feel free to chime in. I’m especially interested in what sort of ‘cloud’ he
left under, or whether the ‘cloud’ was just that he was a swindling jerk in
general, rather than any particular incident. I notice that around the period
of his departure, there was massive bootlegging of the “Wake of the Forest”
album and that one post in this section seems to indicate that somehow, the
original “mothers” or stampers were found in his basement by some individual.
However this is uncorroborated, but it would certainly explain a few things.
I should note that Rakow appears to have taken advantage of the Scientology
scene in the same manner he took advantage of the Grateful Dead scene. Despite
the fact that he took some “advanced” Scientology courses, there is no real
indication that he ever took it very seriously, using it instead as a source for
dupes in his incessant series of bizarre scams and swindles.
The link between Mr Rakow and the Wakeboard of the Fools album boots has long been a topic of humid gossip among the ugly roomer set.
I cut and pasted that off Google