EPIC THREAD: The Story of John Ross

David Fermani

David Fermani

Forza Auto Salon
Straight from the sealed vault of the Moderator archives:



This master thread has been in development for quite some time even though all the real fun occurred several years ago behind the iron curtain where the Moderators lurk. It all started way, way back in the early days of Autopia where there was this mysterious member by the name of John Ross. It was ultimately discovered that John had multiple screen names set up with totally separate personalities. Yes I said personalities. He pretended to be a wealthy car dealer in England who prided himself for owning a high end luxury car dealership that sold such vehicles as Rolls Royce & Bentley. The whole freaky thing turned out to be a major spoof that ultimately got unraveled by our dedicated team of moderators.



Never before has the general viewing members of this forum been given access to the private world of the moderators. This exclusive is an action packed suspense that gives you just a small taste of what our administration has been able to accomplish throughout the years. This will certainly make you think twice about what lengths these special groups of people go to just to protect the sanctity of our forum.



Sit back, stay a while and try your best to digest this EPIC story!!!





Click on each thread in the order they are listed below:



1 http://www.autopia.org/forum/epic-threads/139365-1-interesting-problem.html



2 http://www.autopia.org/forum/epic-threads/139366-2-dear-mr-ross.html



3 http://www.autopia.org/forum/epic-threads/139368-3-wow-s-ross.html



4 http://www.autopia.org/forum/epic-threads/139370-4-shes-ross-hell.html



5 http://www.autopia.org/forum/epic-threads/139371-5-why-me-make-bad-man-stop.html





I would like give a special thinks to Jngrbrdman (Anthony) for his suppport with putting this whole thing together.
 
This John Ross character was before my time here but you mentioned the name and I *do* recall reading about him in mod forum archive back when I modded. "Piece of work" only begins to describe him!



He was the orignal multiple personality trouble making member that the mods had to deal with. 5+ years ago, this was quite a noticeable problem and I recall how all of us were chasing down IP addresses, discussing it chats, cleaning up threads, placing members on time out, and ultimately banning them only to have them re-appear under new names. That situation had to be the single most frustrating part of being a mod but indeed, I'm glad you decided to share the John Ross story. Epic for sure!
 
Awesome!! :bow :bow Thanks for dredging these threads back up again!! Those were great times in the mod crew... Hunting down the fraud John Ross was just too much fun! He reared his head on at least one other forum during this time too, but he got shut down very quickly. ;) That was just epic investigation work from the Autopia moderator staff at the time. Thanks for bringing these to light so I could read them again!! This is just too awesome..!
 
Bill D said:
He was the orignal multiple personality trouble making member that the mods had to deal with. 5+ years ago,
Click to expand...

Actually, if you look at the dates we are going on nearly 10 years in June. This happened before my son was born and he just turned 8 in November. Holy cow... Remember when 10 years seemed like such a long time? It seems like yesterday now...
 
Right. John Ross was the "grand daddy" of the multiple account nuisance member problem. We had our fair share of others, when I was a mod, but none quite to the extents of that guy/girl/it/whoever/whatever :nervous:
 
Yup, it's not uncommon for a guy to have more than one account on sites like these. It's just really odd to have those accounts praising each other and emailing people like they are actually real. lol This guy was seriously disturbed. I wonder whatever happened to him in real life...
 
Wow, I never dug that far back in the archives to read these. Was wondering why the name John Ross came up from time to time.



Note: If anyone emails me to tell me that they have not been with their mate for 11 days and all they could talk about after was me, they will be insta-banned. :soscared:
 
My background is in psych. If you folks know the book/movie "Sybil", it's a more or less in-a-nutshell accurate portrayal of multiple personality disorder, or more clinically called, dissociative personality disorder. This John Ross was kinda Autopia's equivalent to that



But he also could've just been some very creative jokester with waaayyy too much time on his hands, or it also isn't impossible he was worse. :nervous:
 
Fascinating reading on several levels. Firstly, I had not really considered the 'back room' chat between moderators and so it is a great insight. Secondly, it was nice and nostalgic to see so many familiar names e.g. Lynn et al. And finally, I still remember many of the fake user names, which is strange as I can barely remember this morning.



I initially started to think, I hope they don't talk about me behind the scenes but then I remembered Oscar Wilde's "The only thing worse than being talked about...."
 
Thanks again to both Anthony & Bill. You guys are my Mod heros! :hail:



Jngrbrdman said:
Yup, it's not uncommon for a guy to have more than one account on sites like these. ...
Click to expand...



:funnypost:tape::shifty:



Jngrbrdman said:
I wonder whatever happened to him in real life...
Click to expand...



Me too. I just hope he/she/it never catches wind of this thread :fear: If so, I'll need to reinstitute your Mod privelidges with a quickness. :bump2:



Funny thing is that DavidB wiped out this person's entire history. The only way you can find his posts is when someone quoted him.
 
Damn, you guys are really jogging my memory on this one! I had all but forgotten about John Ross; after reading through these threads, the situation was even crazier than I ever realized since I never saw any of this "behind the scenes" stuff... wow.
 
Mr Ross must have been confused about their company name: I cannot find J.V.ROSS Bentley Motor Cars UK LTD on the Companies House register. This is where all UK Ltd firms must register
 
Oh man... I thought I had purged all of them but check out what I just found in my PM archives from 6-2-2002:



I am very greatful to you for showing the decency of responding to several of my threads, along with my wifes in the past & present time. You are amongst one of the nicest, most helpful and undoubtably the funniest person we know of here, and that in my book puts you on my list of most respectable people here on Autopia. The friendship you have displayed to us both since we had the pleasure of knowing you is without doubt priceless. If there is ever anything that we can do for you to return the favour please feel free to ask.



Yours Faithfully,



Mr John V Ross
Click to expand...



Unfortunately this is the only message I still have but he and his wife "Stephanie" did PM me on a regular basis before all of the mess uncovered here went down -- in hindsight it looks like he (or one of his multiple personalities) was jockeying for allies for when the situation blew up in his face. Interesting indeed.





Anyone else smell a bunny boiling on the stove? :nono:
 
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA this read was far better than the movie on tv right now, and a great insight for the general public to see what goes on behind the sceens.
 
David Fermani- Hey, I remember all that stuff! And yeah, I was one of the guys who initially fell for his [crap] :o



Sigh...the way some people spend their time :rolleyes:
 
:der: WOW! Just... WOW!



I had the "Sybil" thought as I read that, too. More likely he was using Autopia to build credibility to defraud local investors. If he was just having fun he would have just gone away. Probably got so upset because his lies were compromising his ability to establish his stature in the industry.



Great movie plot: A con gets busted by moderators of a website he used to set up the con and loses everything. I see it like "Fight Club" where you have no idea the 20 people are really all the same person until it all unravells.
 
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