Recent news about LDJ Capital and David Drake. What is actually happening?
I've recently came across that post on medium, and it triggered me to start this topic.
https://medium.com/@douglaslyons/ldj-capital-all-that-glitters-is-not-gold-ccbfc21ffd71
I do not want to take any emotions or allegations from there ,but I rather want to discuss facts and find the truth.
Long story short:
Douglas Lyons did some digging in public domain and found out, that none of LDG Capital's offices (listed at the LDJ Capital website) has any noticeable presence of LDG and has are all in co-workings or residential areas. Which is more than strange and simply inadequate for a company, which claims to work with 1.5 trillion dollars worth of capital sources.
He learned, that some team members of LDJ look fake and even sometimes simply are very likely "ghosts" or fake accounts.
Initially one startup, and later on several 10s more told Douglas, that LDJ Capital and David Drake in particular set up meetings with them at their expense and brought random people (someone from the street for $50/hour, as it is claimed there) just to charge ICOs for their time. Most of such meeting had no result other than somewhat $30k of startup funds spent. There are more ICO advisors in the LinkedIn discussion coming out and telling the same stories about allegedly con actions or attempts for such actions of LDJ team in regard of their ICOs. Link to that thread: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6397806831632154624/
He also found out, that personal assets of David Drake (the Chairman of LDJ) are very modest at best, and the lavish lifestyle, which he claims to have, is more likely a glitter, rather than a product or confirmation of the high status.
There are also a suggestion, that David Drake is onboarding with each and every ICO, which is willing to pay him anything in tokens, and that he is promoting himself, as the #1 top adviser at the ICOBench. Which he technically is, since he has a lot of mostly low quality project, which he couldn't really advise even being the smartest person on the earth: just counting projects listed at ICOBench, there 75 running. Taking David spends no time on anything other than ICO advisory, it would left him with 32 minutes per project per 1 normal week of working, which is not enough even to properly read and analyse an average White Paper of 45 pages (my rough estimation). What kind of Advisor is that?!
I want to find a logical explanation for what is happening and determine, if it is actually a fraud, or a super aggressive hustling and a rapidly growing business with all the corresponding deficiencies and flaws (I want to leave it a chance, since LDJ going down would hurt a lot of relatively innocent ICOs and the industry as a whole in a short span of time [yet it will clear it and make stronger, if LDJ actually is a fraud]). What do you think?
I want tot ask everyone to stick to a professional manner of speaking and try to be reasonable and to do justice to the company in question. This is actually a very serious matter and we have to be careful discussing it.
Also, I want to discuss consequences of both scenarios. Since, as a community, our goal is to build a stronger and more valuable ecosystem, we all may benefit from discussion of a strategy on how to hold this particular issue and issues of the close kind in the future.
This is a report from from an interesting post on BitcoinTalk.
Hello. First thing I would like to say is...... Wow!
Now that is out of the way, an introduction. My name is Chris Butler, President of URAllowance, LLC. If all this is true then shame on me for signing with someone when my due diligence is based solely on popularity and common consensus. I am going to bring this matter directly to David's and his team's attention. Immediately. I am not so sure of the credibility of either side. Yet. The reason is, I recognize, very clearly, a few of the issues mentioned in this article and from the ones on The Way Back Machine. I also know from recent personal experience that alot of the claims made against Drake's team are over exagerrated. There is enough here to make me worry though. Regardless of the fact that I don't have any free time, I will have to open my own investigation into this matter. Thank you for posting. I will post here with my educated opinion and hopefully some new facts to go along with it.
So far, I have discovered nothing other than he doesn't spend a lot of time with every single ICO he advises. He's made it into a business. He has put money and resources into this business. He's doing alright if you ask me. There are just too many pieces of indisputable evidence supporting the fact that he is not running a dog and pony show. LDJ is real. His appearances in the mainstream media and his celebrity connections on video are not fabricated. This whole thing sounds like a simple case of "Hateritus". Curable with a few doses of "actrite". What is everyone expecting from him? To take over the show and singlehandedly bring success to every project? Imagine wearing the same shoes for a day. Imagine a bunch of whiny, over expecting CEOs that think they have you at their beck and call. Then when shit goes south on them and their project fails, they do what many humans in the same position do. They place blame. Of course, they will blame the person that they thought was their ticket to easy street and instant success. I have brought this directly to his attention and I was not met with a defensive response, just an explanation and then on to the next order of business. Remember that there are several sides to every story. Sometimes the loudest ones, have the least value to add to it. I can't say that I'm overly enthusiastic about this advisory but he has done more than a few others we almost brought into the project. Also, we made it clear from the very beginning that we are hiring contributing board members only. We are not paying for pretty faces and ICO success scores. Thank you for the topic. At the very least this allowed me to reasses the way I assess situations.
Hello. Please ask David for the copies of the contracts for all of his managing directors and advisors. Please also ask David for the audited returns and confirm assets under managenent for his LDJ crypto fund. Please have him confirm that he manages $200million plus. Please ask David for documentation showing who the general partners are for his fund. And lastly, please ask David Drake where he sits each day as he manages a fund that is roughly 1% of the entire crypto universe. Be very affraid of the results my friend. I would love to be wrong about David however unfortunately i am not.
Interesting points. I am not blind or foolish. I will bring these questions up and let you know the results. I am not against being proven wrong. I know little of his business outside of what I've done with him. I am not easily taken advantage of. Maybe that is why I am not seeing the same person you all describe.
It took me over a year to realize...that i and many others were being taken advantage of through blatant misrepresentations that were being made by David Drake.
Were you able to bring these questions up to Drake? Would love to hear his response.
Same here.
Any feeback. Did you get a response @chrisbutler?
🤗
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He scammed us. A guy on our team introduced me to david drake. At the time I really trusted the team member and had no reason to doubt the introduction. He sent us a contract, saying he would introduce us to investors and yadda yadda. Long story short he charged us a ton of eth, then after he got the first payment, we never saw him again. LDJ is a complete scam. We were one of his first. meh.
LDJ is a complete scam. I know because I used to advise David Drake and stopped when I realized he is a fraud. Not one team member/managing director listed on ldjcapital.com is contractually obligated to LDJ Captial. David Drake does not have an office but rather only an office address. David Drake claims to manage a $250million crypto fund however he is just a service provider. He claims to have a family office network in excess of $1.5trillion yet David Drake has not done any formal transactions with these family offices. David Drake is all lies. He does know people however his past and present are littered with lies and misrepresentations.
http://web.archive.org/web/20180507170001/https://medium.com/@douglaslyons/ldj-capital-all-that-glitters-is-not-gold-ccbfc21ffd71
Douglas Lyons nailed it in this article about David Drake and LDJ Capital. LDJ has no offices. Funny how all office addresses were removed from the LDJ website except for 800 3rd Ave, a building his friend owns. David employs a virtual team in the Philippines that he has never met. There is no fund, office , directors, just a bunch of people he knows and represents as his own employees. Davids game is to charge retainers for services he has no track record of success. #secinvestigatehim