Grifter: Richard Anderson Sharp III
Amazing it took so long to come out.
The fellow driving is Richard Anderson Sharp, a convicted fraudster. The guy in back is Paul Massaro, who really should have vetted him before introducing him all over the place.
We’ll just have a little recitation of what’s known about him at this point.
Attention Conservation Notice:
No actual grifters were harmed in the making of this post. Yet. But making enemies of the Georgian Legion strikes me as … unwise.
Background:
Richard Anderson Sharp, DOB 21 June 1967, was an obvious fuckup all the way back in the mid-1980s. AWOL is short for Absent Without Leave, Confined means he was in the brig. He was an RTO - radio telephone operator, and did not manage to finish his enlistment before being dishonorably discharged.
During the 1990s he was a petty criminal, with half a dozen charges associated with fraudulent use of checks. He leveled up after the Iraqi invasion in 2003, as did so many stolen valor fraudsters. He promoted himself to Army Ranger and experienced oilman around 2010, then was finally caught and convicted.
As part of his allocution for his second fraud conviction on 4 June 2015, he was made to explain in detail the sort of things he did. The full allocution itself is here.
On Wednesday, Sharp admitted that he “provided false resumes, false claims of military service, false work histories, set up fake offices, and provided false financial reports,” all for the purpose of stealing from the investors. He also admitted to using various user names online—among them Rs990892, luke1972, theyarecriminals, Dale, rocketmanwinning, and Uh Oh—to spread lies about the company and its shareholders and deflect attention from his own guilt after his arrest. “I admit that I used blogs, forums, meetings with reporters, third parties, anonymous names, pseudonyms, and other names to post false and misleading information…,” Sharp added.
We’ve previously reviewed the attributes of Dark Triad psychopaths and Sharp fits the bill - zero concern about the harm he does to others, lies when the truth would better serve him, because he gets a thrill out of duping others, and he’s intense and controlling in person.
Ukraine:
Sharp made his way to Ukraine not long after Russia’s invasion and began associating with the Georgian Legion, changing his back story to suit whatever the caper of the moment was. It’s not clear how he snookered Paul Massaro, but that relationship gave him entree to things he would never otherwise have had.
Sharp created two fictitious companies in the course of his fraudulent activity in Ukraine. His nom de guerre was “Ed Murrow”, selected due to being impossible to Google search, and he used the alias Richard S. Elding in incorporation filings for a cybersecurity firm, Crotalus, and a physical security firm, Noctua.
I can not explain with any precision why this article about Kyle Parker, profiled in Senate Aide Investigated Over Unofficial Actions in Ukraine is relevant, but I have reason to believe that is it.
Georgian Legion:
Here we see the creation of a nonprofit in Texas by Richard Sharp. Ushangi Mamulashvili is better known as Mamuka, the head of the Georgian Leion, Nona is his wife sister, and a former Georgian MP. Today is the first time I’ve ever seen the name Timothy Gates.
There are two equally likely explanations here:
Sharp and perhaps Gates are running a scam and the Mamulashvilis had no idea.
The Mamulashvilis are on board with this.
And this is a conversation anti-fraud expert Donald Bowser had on 27 September 2023. The mention of Reshet is key - that’s Taras Reshetylo, the manager of the Georgian Legion’s internet presence. Bowser got him on the phone and explained in detail why they needed to immediately distance from Sharp.
Despite the warning from a well placed professional, roughly five days later Sharp was STILL inside Georgian Legion HQ. The legion is known for … expediency … and at the time we suspected Sharp would be given dangerous duties until the problem resolved itself.
Today Reshet stepped down from his role managing the legion’s public presence. This article in Ukraine Today provides some of the particulars: Manager of Georgian Legion’s Twitter Account Steps Down Amidst Fraud Accusations.
Update: I previously had hotlinked this, but I got a note from an associate and its’s a less than stellar source. I’m leaving the defanged link here in case anyone does need it later for some reason.
https://ukrainetoday.co[.]uk/manager-of-georgian-legions-twitter-account-steps-down-amidst-fraud-accusations/
Conclusion:
I do not know what to make of the accusations against the Georgian Legion. It sounds terrible, but many things do, until the details are known. Given Sharp’s history of smearing others I am going to wait until a proper journalist trudges through all this stuff and comes up with a definitive history.
Sharp has filed frivolous lawsuits in the past, including Sharp v. Ervin back in June. He is a clumsy litigant, and given my experiences that led to a precedent setting 1st Amendment case in Texas with my name on it, Rauhauser v. McGibney, I wouldn’t even need to hire an attorney to get my hooks into him. Perhaps he’ll consult federal informant James “Pissboy” McGibney for assistance … or maybe, as a career criminal, he’s allergic to paid snitches that reside in the same state he does?
There’s a deeper mystery here. I mean even if the Georgian Legion disbands and Sharp gets a federal stretch for fraud, there’s another layer of darkness I uncovered. It’s nothing that Sharp, Mamuka, Reshetylo or any of the others would understand. But it might be a deadly serious counter-intel problem here in the states.
I told no one about it at the time, because it was one of those things where I literally rubbed my eyes and looked again when I first saw it. But tonight I shared it with a journalist who specializes in the right area.
Then I ran my off site backups, tomorrow I’ll swap USB devices in my various magnetic key holder stashes, and I’m trying to work out if there’s a way for me to image a burner phone I own without spending a fortune in the process. I’m getting the feeling the world would be a nicer place if I put all the things into a nice neat directory tree, put that on a microSD card, stuck it in this phone, and then popped it into a padded envelope addressed to the Houston FBI field office. Maybe.
Protocol must be observed; here’s the sort of video I’m required to post when I need an assist from the Canine Intelligence Agency.
This is all over pro-Russian spaces since yesterday.