September 5, 2023
Read: Part 2: How to become a billionaire. 11 easy steps to immense wealth.
Normally, when someone suggests you have engineered a multi-billion-dollar fraud, and if you are innocent of the allegations, the response is either a retraction demand from a fancy law firm, or a factual rebuttal to the allegations. In Part 2 of this multipart series, on August 5, 2023 Kevin Paffrath reviewed evidence that suggested Ramaswamy family members “may” have engaged in fraud. Below is the transcript of Kevin’s video regarding the response Vivek’s staff issued the day after Kevin posted his initial video suggesting malfeasance. In Part 2.2, we exmaine Vivek’s belated September 1, 2023 direct response to Kevin. He is apparently becoming rattled by not only Kevin’s messaging, but efforts of others to call into question various aspects of his backstory.
PRO TIP: If your closet has skeletons, these will tumble out if you run for president.
The August 6 response to Kevin did not come from Vivek Ramaswamy, or his campaign spokesperson, but from a deputy campaign spokesperson. Which is concerning. If you were running for president, and someone made similar allegations — someone with almost two million subscribers — allegations which could end your candidacy and any hope of a future business career, and those allegations were false, would you not immediately respond with guns blazing? Would you not personally respond, rather than delegating this to an underling? Especially if that someone has almost 2 million YouTube subscribers. Were you too busy to respond? If you were innocent of the allegations, would it not make sense to immediately and forcefully get out ahead of them? Said differently, why did the candidate wait until September 1 to respond directly? Did he think the matter would magically disappear?
On the other hand, if the allegations were substantive, and you wanted to bury the issue, would it be best to pass off the task of responding to a minor employee to avoid the appearance of according significance to the allegations? Kevin’s response to the matter is below, allowing you to determine where the truth might lie.
SEC Rule 10b-5 is applicable to any person that commits securities fraud, i.e., the intentional misrepresentation of material information in connection with securities trading, including insider trading. There is a 5-year statute of limitations for violations of 10b-5.
TRANSCRIPT:
Holy smokes. Vivek Ramaswamy's team just responded to allegations that I made against him that he orchestrated a pump and dump scheme and robbed billions of dollars from people. And their response is completely shocking. Now I want to be very clear: I plan to make videos on other candidates as well. I started with Vivek because he did a [Twitter] Spaces with Elon Musk, which I covered. He said he was a biotech entrepreneur, which I researched. And when I started looking into some of the history, I was blown away, and not in a good way. So yesterday, I made a video where I discussed my findings. I discussed what I believe could be a fraudulent history for Vivek. Now look, it's very common in the pharmaceutical world to make wild claims for drugs that end up failing. But I believe what Vivek did took fraud to a whole new level. Now I want to be very clear: people make mistakes. I make mistakes all the time. But I think the difference between making a mistake and a character flaw is: are you knowingly doing something wrong and not caring, or did you just make a mistake and you shouldn't do that? And then you don't do it again. Those are differences, right? Or did you unknowingly do something that ended up being a mistake? Either way, you should try to distance yourself from bad things.
But if you knowingly did something to defraud people of billions of dollars, then I think that takes fraud to a whole new level. See, what I alleged in my video yesterday was that I believe Vivek took a failed drug, a completely failed drug, which had been proven to be a failure through at least four studies, some say up to 13 different clinical trials. But we'll just say four major studies conducted by the manufacturer of the drug, GlaxoSmithKline, to the point where that company gave up on the drug. Vivek then bought the rights to that drug, changed the name of the drug, apparently conducted no published studies or published research into the drug, instead simply renamed the drug, reinterpreted the results of one of the existing GSK studies, not a study they did themselves, but simply rigged the data using a completer analysis, which basically only takes results from patients who had either complete profiles or completed the trial — which totally skews the results to[ward] success. Because people who complete trials are generally the ones the drug works for, right? So complete rigging.
But it's not just that, because completer analyzes are used to get to Phase 3 trials. The nasty part is: that's all they did is use a completer analysis, or rigged analysis, to go to IPO with the drug, using his mom to publish results that were, in my opinion, rigged, that ended up propping up the market value of this drug on Wall Street to over $1.8 billion. Which made him, his mother, his brother, his friends, his hedge fund investors, everyone, very, very wealthy. Presumably, he made lots of money. Who knows, maybe they spent it all, or lost it all. But for a drug that, two years later, unsurprisingly failed, losing 99% of its value. See, Vivek is great at talking smooth, but I think that smooth talking potentially enabled him to orchestrate a multi-billion dollar fraud. But then hide behind — well, it was all disclosed in SEC documents.
So on one hand, people say: well what he did wasn't illegal. And my argument isn't whether what he did was technically legal or illegal. My argument is: if somebody has the character to say, let's take a complete failure and promote it knowingly promote a failure, that wiped out billions of dollars for people, then that makes me question your character. He knew that the way to get rich was Wall Street. And I think that's what's effed up, especially for somebody running for president.
And look, everybody makes mistakes. I've made mistakes as well. I'll quickly fill you in since you might not know anything about me. And then I want to get to their response because, like I said, their response is really shocking. So look, last year I screwed up, at least a couple times, probably a lot more, and I try my best to be 100% transparent on this channel. I got a reckless driving charge last year, and you know what: I deserved it. I wish I could go back and change it, but I can't. All I can do is do better going forward. And that's exactly what I do. I will never get a reckless driving charge again because I have committed to not making that mistake again. I messed up, but I don't think that makes me a flawed person. It just makes me a person. It makes me a human who made a mistake, and now if I keep repeating that same mistake that would be bad. Now, I think there's a lot more, obviously, to you know, the world in terms of people making mistakes. But I think we should be very transparent. I went from working at Jamba Juice to being a top-selling real estate broker. I try my best to work really hard. I became a licensed lender, a licensed contractor. I became a millionaire investing in real estate before I ever became a YouTuber. I did become a YouTuber. I think I had great success between 2018 and today, and I hope that success continues, knock on wood. I'm going to keep trying to work really hard. And now I'm a licensed financial advisor, and I'm a manager of an actively managed ETF. I believe I'm the first YouTuber to do so now. Again, that doesn't come with downsides.
And remember, I want to get to Vivek's response here in a moment. But I did also get tied up in unknowingly promoting, well, what ended up being a scam, which I also feel bad about. People say this: oh, you're the guy who promoted FTX. I get it. I was one of basically all of the financial YouTubers and outlets, the NFL, referees wearing FTX hats, Taylor Swift being days away from signing a contract with FTX. Some people made a rumor, the attorneys in this case made a rumor that oh, she knew it was a scam, didn't want to invest. Later comes out no she had no idea it was a scam. Nobody knew FTX was a scam and a lot of people unfortunately got hurt. And I feel terrible about that, as well.
Because Sam Bankman-Fried ended up being a complete fraud. Today everybody knows he was a complete fraud and we hope he gets served justice. I was paid $125,000 for promoting FTX. So far, I'm down about $25,000 in legal fees, though it looks like we've got a settlement in the works, knock on wood. And hopefully that's all over. So in my opinion this is all over, pending a judicial sign-off. But look, those are mistakes that happen. But I didn't knowingly promote FTX, knowing it was a fraud. Nobody knew that. The NFL wouldn't put their name on FTX if they knew it was a fraud, and that's the difference between, in my opinion, what I'm concerned about with Vivek and a mistake that happened to me last year. If you unknowingly promote something that is bad, you make a mistake. You promise to do better. Either you stop promoting things or you do a lot more due diligence, and you move on. And you do the best to help people make whole what they lost. For example, I committed to take whatever additional money I have left after the whole legal nonsense and work on helping people receive restitution for essentially their damages. Obviously, I can't do that until the cases are over, so I know what is actually left. But then we can create some kind of charity or whatever, as I've promised to do. And so that's exactly what I'm going to do. So again, though, there's a really big difference here, and I think it's worth comparing to the difference, it’s simple. If you have no idea that something is a fraud, then you make a mistake, and you can be excused for that. It's still a stain on your reputation. People still comment about it. We know that, but mistakes happen.
The difference here is if Vivek knew his drug was a failure, which obviously he knew given that all the studies before were a failure, and conducted no new studies and simply remarketed it as a success to get rich on Wall Street, then really Vivek acted like the Sam Bankman-Fried and I was more like the investor in Vivek's drug, not knowing that what was being promoted was a scam. That's a really big difference, and for somebody running for president, we ought to know if that is somebody's character. That they are willing to knowingly promote a scam and a fraud. Again, key word being knowingly. That's the sad part. But the worst part, and I can't believe it. Vivek's Response gets even worse, is how they responded to me. Look, I want to be clear. Maybe there's more information that's publicly available that I haven't found that could lead us to change the interpretation that I have. I don't profess to have all of the facts. I'm putting out all the information that I have which led me to draw the conclusion that Vivek knowingly promoted a fraud and that is a character flaw. In my opinion, that is a character flaw, And he's been unapologetic about being a failed biotech entrepreneur regarding the Axovant drug. That concerns me.
Okay, so I invited Vivek to clear his name. I invited him to either: I'll visit him in person, we could YouTube stream this, we could Twitter Spaces stream this, whatever. I invited Vivek. I still do, to clear his name. Again, like I said, I'll even visit in person, just like I did with Boxabl. See, what I do for a living is I study things. The more I study, the more I feel like I understand the world around us. Whether it's the Fed, or politics, or whatever. In 2021 I ran for governor in California, despite being 29 when I ran. I came in second place in the recall election against the governor. I tried to save California, which is a very broken place politically, so beautiful otherwise. And I was one of the first to make big arguments like, hey, we need more spending on mental health. We need more funding on policing. We should not defund the police. We should be funding the police. We should be focusing on our homeless population and actually solving the root of the problem — the mental health issues that our country faces. But less about me.
Let's focus on their response, and I hate to say, their response is pretty scary. So their response is from their Deputy Communications Director. Their response is pretty disgusting. You ready for this? This is the response from a presidential candidate. . . . [this transcript omits discussion of irrelevant and diversionary attacks on Kevin, the ad hominem attacks he references below.]
These are things known as ad hominem fallacies. It's basically bad logic, and you would expect better from somebody's campaign who says they went to Harvard and Yale, which I don't dispute that they did. But I mean, like come on, expect better. You might not be familiar with logic. I think we're all familiar with logic. But I mean like studied logic. So an ad hominem attack, let's analyze this. So this is how an argument is structured. An argument is usually structured in a simple way. You start with a claim, and the claim is you knowingly marketed a fraud drug. That's the claim Kevin is making. My evidence is that previous failures, via four clinical trials. And you only had six months to launch. And the fact that you didn't change anything, or publish any other research, to me indicates evidence that you knowingly marketed a fraud drug you knew was going to fail, and you did that to make billions of dollars. And therefore, I make the conclusion . . . you may be unfit for office because that may be part of your character.
It's not just making a mistake. It's your character could be flawed. That's really scary, right. Not because you're going to launch another fraud bio drug — although you could argue that Riovant that makes 20, you know, $8 million in a year and burns over $1.1 billion could be a fraud of, you know, for investors. But yeah, I guess that's a topic for a different video. But anyway, the correct way to respond to this is usually claim: no Vivek is not a fraud. [And] Here's the evidence. The evidence is we did more research and we changed this or that, or whatever. And we just made an entrepreneurial attempt and therefore, while we failed, we are not a fraud because we just legitimately tried. That's the correct response model. That's such an easy way to bury this.
But their response is: claim we are not fraud, you're a fraud. The evidence you promoted FTX. their conclusion: we are not a fraud because the person saying it promoted FTX unknowingly. Okay, that is a fallacy. This is called . . ., it's an argument, but it's called bad argumentation. Bad argumentation is when you don't actually address what the argument is. So if my argument is you're a fraud, and your argument is: no you're a fraud, then what you've done is you've conducted an ad hominem fallacy. This is a way of saying: rather than addressing the original problem, you were simply saying attacks of the person speaking these things about you, and you're spending not a lick of time responding to the actual claims being made. That's actually worse.
So take a look at some of these responses here, on Twitter, to the person.
“You guys got exposed.”
“Your response is childish.”
“How about responding to the comment about Vivek, instead of attacking Kevin's character. He's not the one running for office. I liked Vivek at Patrick Bet David's, but it makes sense now why he wouldn't respond to whom he’d hire.”
Here's somebody who writes:
Classic ad hominem against me, Kevin. Easier to attack the messenger than answer the allegations. delivered but this attack leaves suspicions that there are not good responses to the allegations delivered. Easier to attack the messenger than find legitimate responses.
Sounds angrily defensive and deflective. Interesting calm strategy from a comms strategist. Vivek should respond about this elaborate pump and dump scheme he did. The SEC gov would love to hear about it.
All three out of four of your bullet points are literally the same dope ad hominem argument, bro. Answer the allegations directly and remember a non-answer like the one you gave is an answer you got exposed as being exposed as being owned by big Pharma anyway.
Okay, so this is wild. I was not expecting this kind of response. I was legitimately thinking . . . Hey, look if I were the Vivek team I think the way to do it is: let's if this is the one thing people are mad about. Sure, maybe there are other things. Let's go all the way back and let's go ahead and grab the files of 2015. It wasn't that long ago. Show us all the work you did in the six months leading up to the work of your job. And you know what? Maybe there's something you just haven't told the world. Like theoretically, you could even make something up. At least give some people a reason to believe you're not a fraud, but this response doesn't even give people that potential hope. And it's even more concerning, so again, we don't know with certainty. We're just saying.
Look, this is what we can see publicly: it smells like a fraud. Vivek, would you care to tell us why we are wrong and then we can address that and we can move on? That's all we're looking for man, but attacking me for mistakes, one that I screwed up on and another that I unknowingly was involved in a scam, which I feel horrible about, still the FTX disaster is not a way to defend yourself. I don't know. Kind of scary anyway.
If you like the kind of breakdowns that I do, consider subscribing to the channel. Share the video. Check out the programs on building your wealth link down below and we'll see in the next one, goodbye. [END TRANSCRIPT]
COMMENTARY:
Ramaswamy responded indirectly, using a surrogate to appear to keep being quoted directly, with a classic ad hominem attack against Kevin, rather than directly refuting the allegations against him. A reasonable person might therefore conclude Kevin is on to something because if Ramaswamy had a legitimate defense he would have stated it. And not wait three weeks to respond with yet another diversionary nonanswer.
In Part 2.2, we explore Vivek’s nonanswer.
To be continued . . .
LEARN MORE:
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 1: Red flags
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 2: Have you ever wanted to be a billionaire? 11 easy steps to immense wealth.
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 2.1: Vivek responds to Kevin's allegations.
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 2.2: 2015 Happy Talk vs. 2023 Sad Talk
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 3: Levin & Hannity August interviews
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 4: Vivek vs. Irwin; Respecting the least among us. A classy guy.
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up — Part 5: The Murdoch connection; friends in high places
Will the Real Vivek Please Stand Up— Part 6: Numbers which don't add up