UPDATE — In December 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) formally charged Lawrence Meyers with fraud and illegal touting in connection with work he performed in 2015 and 2016. Read more here: Our Troll is Charged with Fraud

As a fan-owned company raising money online, Legion M spends a lot of time answering questions. If you peruse our social media and funding platform you’ll see thousands of questions with responses — often directly from the executives of the company. We believe that potential shareholders have the right to ask us ANYTHING, and are committed to answering as many of these questions as we can.

While most questions — even the “hard ones” asked by skeptics — are posed in earnest, we’ve also encountered our share of online trolls (this is the internet, after all). Our policy is to treat trolls with respect, no matter how belligerent they act. We trust that those reading our exchanges will recognize a troll when they see one. That said, after more than 5 years responding to tens of thousands of comments, there’s one individual we feel has stepped over the line into harassment. We’ve written this blog post to provide background for anyone witnessing our exchanges with this person. 

BACKGROUND

As of this writing (June 2021) Lawrence Meyers has been harassing Legion M for 2.5 years. Since our first encounter in December of 2018, he’s made hundreds of posts, emails, and questions — often using fake names. He comments on press articles, heckles us on livestreams, and posts disparaging comments across the internet. In 2019 he sent a 148-page document to Wefunder (our funding portal) in an effort to get us delisted. Wefunder reviewed his claims (as they are required to do by law) and dismissed them for lack of merit.

About this time, we started to question Mr. Meyers’ motives. To be clear, we have no problem with those asking difficult questions, and respect those with contrarian opinions. But some of the tactics Mr. Meyers was using — making false claims, utilizing multiple fake accounts to give the appearance of more than one person talking, relentlessly posting across all our online channels — started to feel less like an honest skeptic sharing their views and more like a coordinated campaign to harm our business. He’s not an investor in the company and has no stake in what we’re doing. Why would somebody with nothing to gain spend so much time attacking us?

We were fortunate to have a Legion M investor with experience performing internet research who was willing to take the case. After endless hours of combing the internet, they found evidence that gave us reason to question Mr. Meyers’ motives:

1. We found that we weren't alone, uncovering accusations from others (1, 2, 3, 4) claiming Mr. Meyers was a "black hat” communications professional.

2. We found a business called "Asymmetrical Media Strategies" formerly owned and operated by Mr. Meyers with a website that advertised "stealth media campaigns" utilizing the "looser journalistic standards" of new media to “attack without client exposure” and “introduce multiple layers of risk to your opponents, requiring them to expend resources to defend themselves.” The website has been taken down, but a copy can be found in the Internet Archive.

3. We found a series of over 20 articles written in 2015 by Mr. Meyers aggressively attacking rideshare companies (Uber, Lyft) and defending the value of taxi medallions (and the companies that finance them) during a period in which the taxi industry was being decimated by ridesharing. Read more here. 

4. We found articles written by Mr. Meyers promoting a stock (ForceField Energy) based on his research, analysis, and personal discussions with the Executive Chairman. A few months later, that same Executive Chairman was arrested on charges of orchestrating schemes to inflate the stock price of the company (including concealing kickbacks to stock promoters for touting the stock), causing the stock to collapse and investors to lose $131 million. Read more here. 

5. We found a series of statements where Mr. Meyers predicted the failure of Netflix ("Netflix is really nothing more than a long con at this point" - Breitbart.com, 2013), Tesla (“Tesla stock is not a good long-term investment” - Investorplace.com, 2014), Facebook ("What problem does Facebook solve? None." - TheStreet.com, 2015) and Uber ("Uber will indeed Implode" - SeekingAlpha.com, 2015).

Our conclusion from all this research was that Mr. Meyers was more than a potential investor asking questions — he was a PR operative with a track record of promoting and/or attacking other companies. And while his “Asymmetric Media Strategies” company appears to have gone out of business years ago, a screenshot of his LinkedIn page from May 2021 appears to indicate that Mr. Meyers is still active in the space (note: we’ve added highlighting to emphasize the terms we believe most relevant to this discussion).

To be clear, we have no idea if Lawrence Meyers is being paid to attack Legion M. But we also don’t understand why somebody with nothing at stake would devote so much time and resort to such deceitful tactics. Our volunteer researcher collected all Mr. Meyers’ posts/emails/reports from the past 2.5 years, and found that he had written more than 38,000 words about Legion M — that’s nearly half the number of words in "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." Why would someone with nothing at stake write half a novel’s worth of attacks on Legion M? If he just wants to ask honest questions, why would he use fake accounts to make it appear more than one person was talking at a time? What is his potential upside?

Given Mr. Meyers’ background with “aggressive Alinsky-inspired tactics that will introduce multiple layers of risk to your opponents, requiring them to expend resources to defend themselves” (a direct quote from his Asymmetrical Media Strategies website) we came to the conclusion that whether he was being paid or not, he seemed to be engaged in a campaign to consume our time and disrupt our business. So we sent him a Cease And Desist notice, which you can read below.

CEASE AND DESIST

NOTE: The cease and desist notice was actually sent to “Daniel Greenburg” which is one of the fake names Mr. Meyers has used to contact us.

From: Legion M Founders <paulandjeff@legionm.com>
Date: Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 1:57 AM
Subject: [Legion M Founders] -Unanswered Questions and Accounting Concerns
To: <dgreenburg@xxxxxxxxx.com>

Hi Lawrence-

If it's OK with you we'd like to end the whole "Daniel" charade as we know very well who we are talking to. We also know you are behind over a dozen (and growing) other fake accounts you've used to ask questions, make threats, and levy accusations at Legion M over the last 10 months. This is why so many of your questions get deleted or go unanswered.

We’re also well aware of your background as a "troll for hire" at Asymmetrical Media Strategies, and your work using the “looser journalistic standards” (your words, not mine) of new media to promote (ForceField?!?) and anonymously “attack without client exposure” to “introduce multiple layers of risk to your opponents, requiring them to expend resources to defend themselves” (again, your words). Thanks to the hard work of a retired Legion M investor/volunteer/researcher with a lot of free time on their hands, we’ve compiled a substantial body of evidence – mostly written in your own words – that shows precisely how you operate.

When this thread started, I was happy to answer your questions. That’s because we believe anyone considering investing their hard-earned money in Legion M has the right to ask us anything. We answer THOUSANDS of questions each year -- often directly from Paul or myself. You know this better than anyone, as we've answered more than 100 of your questions from numerous aliases and fake accounts over the past 10 months.

Yes, there are answers to your accounting questions. No, none of them include financial fraud (which, if it were true, would need to have been carried out by not just us, but also our accounting firm, our auditors, and our securities lawyers). Some of your "concerns" are based on ignorance (or willful misunderstanding) of how GAAP accounting works. Many are due to mistaken assumptions you've made. Six months ago I might have taken the time to correct your mistakes and explain the principles to you, but at this point you've hit your limit on Q&A.

That's because there’s a MASSIVE difference between an honest skeptic and a troll attempting to waste our time and disrupt our business. Given the amount of time and energy you've invested and the way you've gone about it, all evidence points to the likelihood you are getting paid for (or have some other stake in) disrupting our business. Either way, we consider this a direct attack on not only the Legion M founders and team, but every single one of our 20,000+ investors.

As such, we’ve reported your activities to the relevant authorities and are formally putting you on notice to cease and desist your disruptive activities. We are also hereby placing you on notice to preserve any and all forms of documentation of any kind or nature whatsoever, including without limitation electronic, mobile or paper evidence regarding your activities relating to Legion M in any way. We are reserving the right to take any and all legal action against you, and anyone paying you, should your defamatory harassment campaign continue.

I think you’ll find that your attempts to impede us only strengthen our resolve and that of our investors. While you’ve made it clear you don’t believe in Legion M because “that’s not how Hollywood works,” history is littered with those who spend their time defending “the way it is” instead of asking “what if?” Frankly, we’re a bit honored to be added to the long list of companies (including Netflix, Amazon, Uber, Tesla, Facebook), you’ve predicted will fall.

If you believe that we have somehow misinterpreted the situation, you are welcome to try and convince us that your actions are in earnest. However, at this point it seems unlikely, and it would require significant evidence to overcome what we have already uncovered.

WHAT COMES NEXT

The cease and desist worked for a while, as more than a year elapsed before we received the next attack from Mr. Meyers. However in early 2021 he ramped up again, this time posting 14 times in approximately 6 weeks under “Larry M” while making additional posts under other fake names.

This time our response has been twofold:

1. We've responded point-by-point to all of Larry M’s questions and accusations. We want to show everyone that Legion M has nothing to hide. If you are interested, you can read those exchanges here.  

2. We are “outing” Mr. Meyers by publicly sharing the information we've found in this blog post. We want to provide context and transparency for those witnessing our exchanges online.

3. We published a blog post entitled "Selected Quotes from Lawrence Meyers" which consists of quotations (and links to source material) from Mr. Meyers, including his predictions of failure for Netflix, Tesla and Uber, as well as his articles promoting ForceField Energy and the taxi medallion financing industry.

As to what comes next, your guess is as good as ours. Our hope is that Mr. Meyers will see the error of his ways and spend the rest of his days working to better mankind. He’s a talented writer, and could have a lot to offer the world if he directed his energies toward creating something of value instead of attempting to tear things down.

In the meantime, we intend to do whatever necessary to protect the interests of nearly 30,000 shareholders of Legion M. Starting with publishing this post.

If you have comments on this post or information about Lawrence Meyers you believe is relevant to this discussion, please send an email to team@legionm.com.