I recently moved to Colorado Springs where I and my girlfriend are in the process of putting together a vegan cafe. The people that run VegFest said I should contact you and tell you our story. My girlfriend has created a indiegogo campaign to see if the community would support our plans but we haven't had much luck so far.Further in that correspondence, Gorrell says:
I am a chef by trade and have worked at some of the best Vegan restaurants in New York and in LA. I will be bringing quality foods at a reasonable price. We have already purchased a building and put in a state of art kitchen.To our knowledge, Gorrell hasn't produced any evidence of being a chef or working at said vegan establishments. But more importantly, the building-purchase claim would seem to defy the Indiegogo campaign. And in further correspondence with Vegan Life Colorado’s administrators (of whom Fields is one) on June 28, Gorrell again mentions having "purchased an old 1902 building that we are converting into a vegan cafe/juice bar." It also says:
Just so you know, we are a non-profit. We have been asked to partner with Larry Stebbins of Pikes Peak Urban Gardens and are working out the details.The Indiegogo page does not say anything about Roots being formed as a nonprofit, and the trade name "Roots Farm to Table" remains available to be registered with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office. Also, I've been an advisory board member of Pikes Peak Urban Gardens since its formation, and I spoke to Stebbins, who confirms that he did not ask Roots to “partner” with PPUG.
I consider myself pretty famous in the raw food vegan world as I have over 70 million folowers and have been interviewed by over 20 magazinines in the last year.A basic web search doesn't unearth 20 recent magazine articles — although there are this one and this one — nor can it verify a sum total of 70 million followers for Gorrell across any platforms. (For perspective, Barack Obama has 43 million followers on Facebook. U2 has 17 million.)
The campaign is more or less to pull people together, raise awareness and share our plans.So, not really about having to buy the building, which lines up with something Gorrell said to me during our interview: "Mainly we are creating this Indiegogo account to pull the community together so they know what we're doing. We don't necessarily need the cash to tell you the truth."
Shane did mention to me that he would have been more than willing to give you all the documentation you requested but when he was moving right before the bike ride his enclosed trailer was stolen in Arizona, which can be proved. Also, he also told me last week that his truck had been stolen, he said he did file a police report in conjunction with it.I reached the Colorado Springs Police Department yesterday morning in regard to the truck theft. A spokesperson says: “A report was not taken as his vehicle was repossessed by the credit union."
There’s a company that wants to buy BuyerSaver. I might sell it. If I can't find a CFO within the next couple weeks I'll be selling BuyerSaver to a company that already has kind of the same model in place, it's called Smartypig. … They want to adapt the model into their model they already have. On one of their shares [on my Twitter page] they wrote that my model will actually change the way we do banking.I cannot locate this on Gorrell’s @BuyerSaver Tweet history. Smartypig representative Michael Ferrari responded to my query about Gorrell's claim by saying, “We have never expressed any interest in buying that company. And with 100% certainty we would never buy that company.”
I’m not going to question anything else. I’m going to see it for what it is. And that’s the type of person that I am. I don’t look at everybody’s background to say, ‘Oh well he may not be telling me exactly correct information about Hollywood Video per se, or whatever the case. I trust that he’s done that because I’m not going to go do background research on him to find that out. What I’m going to do is look at what I need to see. And I need to see that he’s vegan. I need to see that he’s juicing. I need to see that he's doing exactly what he's talking about he's done.She said she's seen Gorrell working not as a business partner, but instead as perhaps some sort of employee, hosting raw food talks and classes. But as of Monday, challenged by this reporting, she said Gorrell “has totally stepped away from everything."
My Next step is to rerun the campaign in a different manner in order to get the funds needed. The reason that I had $40,000 on there is because my goal was to purchase the building. That was the goal. When I found out that [Bettendorf] wasn't going to hold it for me — I’d asked her if she'd hold it for me for at least the length of the campaign, she said no — I had to come up with a backup plan. My backup plans were to just do a juice bar and just rent. Just lease the building. There's numerous places in Manitou or downtown or Old Colorado Springs or anywhere like that. That's my backup plan is to do that. To rerun the campaign, change it to where it coincides with what I'm looking for and trying to do.It's worth noting that for anyone concerned about the veracity of a crowdfunding initiative, Indiegogo does host a Trust & Safety page. Also, Colorado Department of State PIO Tim Griesmer offers the following:
In terms of our practices, we do offer the following advice on internet and social media solicitation on our website. This is geared toward charitable organizations but is translatable in many cases to business entities. In many ways, online crowdfunding efforts are uncharted territory, and we try to provide Coloradans with tips to make wise decisions. Likewise, we manage the following website, which allows a user to verify a nonprofit or charity that is soliciting funds.
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