By Chris Lang
Yesterday, REDD-Monitor sent some questions to Kurt Kaiser, a partner of a company called Compass Carbon. Kaiser responded with a threat of legal action against REDD-Monitor, but didn’t answer any of REDD-Monitor’s questions.
Here’s the backstory to this increasingly bizarre series of posts. Last week, REDD-Monitor wrote about a company called World Wide Carbon. On 1 December 2020, the company’s President, Mark Loewen, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. World Wide Carbon claimed to sell investments related to carbon credits. A Department of Justice press release explained that, “Loewen and his co-conspirators misled investors regarding WWC’s use of investor funds, return on investment, and risks of the carbon offset credit investment.”
At the end of the post, I mentioned that the website of a company called Compass Carbon, LLC was almost identical to World Wide Carbon’s website. The company was registered in Wyoming one day after Loewen pleaded guilty.
REDD-Monitor received a response to the post from Kurt Kaiser, Partner at Compass Carbon. Kaiser seemed to think that my post implied “that Compass Carbon, LLC is somehow currently connected with Mark Loewen”. He added, “Let me state in no uncertain terms that this is not the case.”
Kaiser’s reaction is odd, not least because REDD-Monitor’s original post stated that, “The website is almost identical to World Wide Carbon’s website – a key difference being that Mark Loewen is not listed as a team member.”
Kaiser’s response to REDD-Monitor is available here, along with his threat of legal action, and some questions from REDD-Monitor for Kaiser:
Before publishing yesterday’s post, I contacted another of the “team members” listed on Compass Carbon’s website: Todd Jones, a member of the Georgia House of Representatives. Jones told me that neither World Wide Carbon nor Compass Carbon had his permission to use his name. “I will ask them to remove my name,” he said.
Indeed, his name has now been removed from Compass Carbon’s website.
Following yesterday’s post on REDD-Monitor, Kaiser responded once again:
From: Kurt Kaiser
Date: 22 December 2020
Subject: Mark Loewen
To: Chris LangChris,
Unfortunately, instead of responding directly to my e-mails you have now chosen to respond via your website, digging yourself into a much deeper hole!
To reiterate, neither myself, or any other members of Compass Carbon, were ever implicated, or even contacted, by the Department of Justice in relation to the investigation into Mark Loewen’s activities that led to his December 8th guilty plea. All of Mark Loewen’s illegal activities occurred prior to us working with Worldwide Carbon. We had no involvement or knowledge whatsoever in any Mark Loewen’s activities that resulted in his conviction.
As you mentioned, Compass Carbon, LLC is a Wyoming registered entity with a registered agent. Prior to publishing these articles, you made no effort whatsoever to contact us through our agent or through the info@compasscarbon.com e-mail address that is on our website.
Under no uncertain terms, we have contacted a very prominent London solicitor (there was a typo in the previous name) and we have a very strong defamation case against you. If your articles (the original Mark Loewen article and today’s article) are not fully retracted and an apology issued by 5 PM EST today, we will be forced to engage the solicitors and proceed with legal action against you. The solicitor will initially send you a Pre-Action Protocol Letter which will state that we will be seeking compensatory damages, special damages and aggravated damages for your gross negligence in naming Compass Carbon, LLC and now the entire Compass Carbon, LLC team individually in your two articles.
We have made every attempt to remedy this quickly and amicably. Be advised that if we move forward and engage solicitors we will not stop with legal action until we receive damages. Once again I am advising you that time is of the essence. Please consider yourself forewarned.
Kurt Kaiser
The first post includes just three sentences about Compass Carbon. If any inaccuracies were to be pointed out to me in any of these three sentences, I would be happy to correct them. Kaiser has so far not pointed out any inaccuracies. The second post consists of emails from Kaiser and my questions to Kaiser (so far unanswered). Again, if any inaccuracies were to be pointed out to me, I would be happy to correct them.
Many companies in the carbon arena who sell to retail often hate it when people start asking pesky questions and often lash out.
But why lash out?
Why not hit Chris with rebuttal after rebuttal and DIRECTLY answer his sensible questions if the company and its products are legit?
That’s what you’d expect isn’t it rather than threatening defamation via a UK lawyer.
Verifiable facts over legal threats always wins the day but so far this firm seems to have chosen the legal route. That in itself creates more questions than answers…