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Originally Posted by Ten5x
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Oddly, I'm actually closer to the general sentiments of this post when it comes to this issue. "Team Doug" is a little strong, as is "not mad at him for being duped/conned." Doug's spidey senses should be stronger than that of his viewers, warnings and disclaimers notwithstanding. So while I won't victim-shame some of the people who got hurt by CoinFlex, I will Doug-shame to some degree because he should be held to a higher standard here.
Also agree that it makes little sense that Doug went into the arrangement knowing Coinflex was an outright scam (and by "scam," I mean something with ill intentions, not just a bad business). It's possible, but I consider it unlikely. As stated, his brand is too valuable for that. Some of you will disagree, and I respect that, but in this case, I'm with Ten5x on this one.
Also agree that I'll give him a few points for stepping down right away. We've seen people involved with (e.g.) Lock Poker who didn't do this, rather they doubled down in their support of the company. Best as I can tell, Doug did not do this, and I can respect it.
No idea about the 100-to-1 offer (where was this?), but if it existed, it actually means little to me as a defense for Doug. Depending on when such an offer took place, members of general public would not have access to the details Doug would/should have had from his due diligence as an ambassador.
Speaking of due diligence, I still also don't know what this means here. However, things could have looked legit at the start – assets, liquidity, liabilities – and a business can still fail. In fact, the term "due diligence" itself is always tricky. It's always a funny concept put in place as a CYA measure. Depending on what it entails, it is bound to have some flaws, loopholes, false negatives and false positives, and it's almost impossible to be infallible. Due diligence ultimately has the word "reasonable" in front of it, sometimes explicitly so, and as such, some things will slip through its net.
Here's a real-world example. Each of my current and previous employers has experienced the backlash and fallout for having an awful employee: one turned out to be a hebephile, the other got busted for peddling child pornography on a shady-ass social media app. (I never met the first person, but I did know the second, and I was absolutely dumbfounded to learn about his dirty secret.) The first is undergoing a lengthy trial, the second got arrested about a month ago.
So did the employers do their "due diligence?"
In both cases, the employers conducted the Live Scan background check (DOJ/FBI), made phone calls to references, and verified the candidates' employment/education history. As a former employee of one place and a current employee of the other, I know what this process entails. From a legal standpoint, that's due diligence.
Does it work? Overall, I'm sure it does. The process almost certainly weeds out a tremendous amount of potentially bad hires (and excludes a few potentially good ones but them's the breaks).
Did it work with the hires of these two guys? Obviously, no. Both people were honest with their employment history, both must have received glowing reviews from the people they chose to list as references, neither had a criminal history, neither appeared on a sex offender watch list, and neither had a record of being a possible domestic terrorist. That's everything the process could yield. The employers can rightfully say "we did our due diligence," and those monsters still managed to get hired.
And sure, someone will inevitably say, "you didn't do enough, you should have hacked their computers, subpoena'd the mobile and internet carriers to get their email and text histories, and hired a PI to follow their every move... then you would have found out!" And while that's true, that ranges from somewhat impractical to downright unconstitutional.
So what's my point of telling this, you may ask. I'll bring it back to this episode. Not knowing what Polk's due diligence entailed, I reserve the possibility that he did all of the research he could have been reasonably expected to do, and yet the business still failed miserably before turning to some shady practices.
Finally, I notice there are plenty of calls for an apology (or a "genuine" apology or a "sincere" apology). I actually don't care either way on this one. I've spent my entire professional life in as a PIO. Whether or not someone made a suitable apology always lies in the eyes of the listener or reader. Sure, I'll generally advise to say the actual words "I'm sorry" than not say it (from a PR standpoint, that is), but there is simply no way to say it that will convince some people of contrition. So for those asking for an apology, you'll never get what you want.
