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The tale of a con

August 15, 2005

Tired and dusty the cowboy rides his noble horse across the desert. From the arid plains of Arizona, through the deserts of the southwest and into the Rocky Mountains. Miles of wide open range greet the solitary traveler in Big Sky country. And all for a good cause... helping feed children who might otherwise go hungry. A noble cause indeed.... if only the cowboy had been so noble.

The tale of Richard Fipps' con goes back several years. In the late 1980's Fipps was convicted of armed burglary, a conviction he appealed on the basis that Fipps didn't carry the rifle with him while committing the burglary. Florida's appeals court found the facts fit the crime of armed burglary and that the minimum sentence would stand.

While in prison Fipps changed his name to Richard Handy, a moniker he'd keep for several years before changing it back to Fipps several years later. In the meantime Fipps didn't stay out of trouble with the law. Another conviction came in 1993, this time for stealing horses.

The would-be horseback con

August 12, 2005

The Long Rider's Guild has a story about Richard Fipps. Fipps came to the attention of Nevada authorities earlier this year when his supposed charitable ride was exposed as a hoax. We'd written about it here and began talking with the Guild to put together all the information we could. In the end it is a very sad tale of a felon spinning a story of an old-west cowboy working to help kids when in reality it was a horse and car stealing armed burglar in court on domestic violence charges when he was supposedly riding the wide open range.

Monday we'll have more about how the sloppy journalism of newspapers who failed in every aspect of fact checking helped this con man to ply his trade anew with more victims taken in.

Google news in ATOM and RSS

August 9, 2005

Dave Winer takes a look at Google News support for Atom and RSS feeds of their categories and reaches a different conclusion than I do. I've greedily subscribed to the Google News feeds and dropped several others. The problem is that with popular stories where the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post and everybody else covers the same story it ends up in my aggregator many times.

There are places where I'd like to see the individual feeds from different sources and compare them. But as a part of my stable of information consumption having Google concatenate several stories about a topic into a single post is a huge help. This is not to say I'll give up reading the feeds from some of these other great publications all together. Rather, in my scan of the up-to-the-minute happenings around the world and what matters most in my corner of it the Google News Feeds are a huge help. More editors!

Cowboy faker

August 4, 2005

The amazing tales of Richard Fipps continue to unfold. In the coming week we'll have a lot more to say about the so-called cowboy who faked a charitable ride this summer and took advantage of several people's good will in the process.

Please feel free to comment if you have information about Fipps or Richard Handy. If you would prefer your comment not be posted indicate that in the body of the comment and if you wouldn't mind talking to a member of the team investigating these tales and documenting the truth.

One fraud or two?

August 3, 2005

That Richard Fipps made up the tale of his ride from Mexico to Canada earlier this year has been well established. Along with neighbor's accounts of Fipps at his Las Vegas home during the supposed trip the Las Vegas Sun reported last week that the owner of the stable where Fipps' horses are stabled stated they hadn't been gone for more than a long weekend during the ride.

Three years ago Fipps also claimed to have made an epic trip. Much of the documentation of that trip has disappeared from the web but The Cullman Times has an article from the following summer with extensive quotes from Fipps.

When he reached Colorado, Fipps had decided to rest a couple of days and enter a rodeo. He ended up winning the rodeo and staying for a week.

He helped a local rancher push cattle. He helped a patrol officer herd escaped cattle off a road.

When he neared Grand Junction, Colo., Fipps experienced the only scary part of the trip.

"I had packed for four days and told my rig to go on ahead of me, I'd meet it in Grand Junction," he said, planning to ride across some mountains.

Riding for the Children trail diary

August 2, 2005

This is the compiled trail diary from July 16, 2002 to July 26, 2002 for Riding for the Children as published on www.ridingforthechildren.com

Trail Diary - July 26, 2002 - Vernal, Utah - The Ride Ends!

Riding for the Children's Richard Fipps and other riders rode into Vernal, Utah to complete his 1,900 mile ride to bring awareness to the problem of hungry children in America, today, about noon amidst a flurry of reporters, cameras and cheering well-wishers.

Every restaurant offered food, there were endless celebrations planned, radio interviews and from Richard, relief that the ride was finally through and the satisfaction that he had filled food banks in many, many towns across the country and that there were children who were being fed a hot meal.

He wishes to thank everyone who contributed in any way to making this ride a huge success and a special thanks to all his sponsors.

He is already talking about making another ride so if you regretted not saddling up and riding with him you will need to keep checking with us as we plan a date and a route.

Trail Diary - July 25, 2002 - Jenson, Utah

Raised lots of food in Rangely yesterday and donated back to the Rangely Food Pantry. Rode into Jenson, Utah today, crossing the Utah line. Crossed the Green River (very dry and just a stream due to the drought) and followed it for a ways. Rode to the welcome center at Jenson and stopped there for cold drinks.

Richard Fipps long ride?

August 1, 2005

The Las Vegas Sun has an article from July 27th about the thousands of dollars local businesses put into sponsoring Richard Fipps "trip". The supposed ride from Mexico to Canada appears it may not have happened. According to the Sun article the owner of the ranch where Fipps kept his horses during that time reports he said other riders made the trip. That, however, conflicts with the account posted on his weblog via cell phone calls to the hosting provider.

Misjudgments Led to Latest Shuttle Woes

July 30, 2005

The New York Times has an article on NASA's "normalization of deviance". For more than twenty years NASA has accepted the failure of the safety features of the Space Shuttle. It's akin to driving a car with seat belts that have been cut in two for twenty years. Having not had an accident one lulls oneself into the belief it's not a safety problem. What the New York Times misses, though, is that this is the same problem that caused the Challenger incident two decades ago.

Cowboys Helping Kids???

July 16, 2005

We ran a story a couple of days ago pointing to the KNPR report on Cowboys Helping Kids the reported trail ride across (South to North) America to support kids and domestic violence victims. Since then the project's $5,000 donated website has been taken offline and later replaced with a sponsor page listing the sponsors of the project.

Attached to this post are a few images of what the website looked like when it existed at www.cowboyshelpingkids.com.

Cowboy or crook?

July 13, 2005

KNPR has a report suggesting there may be something fishy up with Richard Fipps' Cowboys Helping Kids. The report cites a neighbor who reports that Fipps was at home in North Las Vegas on June 28 when the website chronicling his trip says he was in Montana. The site above doesn't ring true to me but I'm hard pressed to find exact problems. All of the entries do seem vague and very general. There is a lot of emphasis placed on reaching Ely and then no mention of being in the town. It's odd.

"It's a sad thing that one person can try to do something good for someone and somebody has to be negative about the intentions," Fipps says on the site explaining the early end to his trip. But the sentence comes from nowhere, out of the blue. Though it did come a few days after Fipps was contacted by a reporter inquiring about the story.

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