Dylan Reeve and David Farrier photographed at Reeve’s Auckland home, June 17, 2017.
Dylan Reeve and David Farrier photographed at Reeve’s Auckland home, June 17, 2017.

SocietyJune 19, 2017

Life after the Tickle King’s death

Contributing writers
Dylan Reeve and David Farrier photographed at Reeve’s Auckland home, June 17, 2017.
Dylan Reeve and David Farrier photographed at Reeve’s Auckland home, June 17, 2017.

Why, if David D’Amato is dead, does Jane O’Brien Media and the world of Competitive Endurance Tickling live on? The filmmakers behind Tickled address the conspiracy theories, and reveal a new side to the story – and lawsuits – that simply won’t go away.

A Spinoff Exclusive.

A precursor: This article contains spoilers for both Tickled and The Tickle King.

To quickly bring you up to date in a very spoilery way, Tickled follows our journey as we dove headfirst into the world of Competitive Endurance Tickling.

We found that this world of tickling, and the associated online abuse, stretched back over 20 years and lead back to a key figure: Long Island’s David D’Amato.

The end of Tickled shows us confronting D’Amato on the street in New York. Following that incident, he appeared to go underground again.

Read more on the Tickled phenomenon, including exclusive content from Tickled co-directors David Farrier and Dylan Reeve, here.

In our follow-up, The Tickle King, D’Amato started filing lawsuits against both us and his stepmother Dotty, who appeared in the film. The climax of The Tickle King shows D’Amato turning up to a screening of Tickled in Los Angeles to confront us, where he gave his version of the story. At the end of The Tickle King a new tickling video surfaces, indicating that maybe this isn’t all over yet.

Then, with Tickled and The Tickle King both widely released, in March this year something else happened.

David D’Amato died.

Which brings us to today, and a new story about Jane O’Brien Media and Competitive Endurance Tickling.

We’re writing this first of all to address the elephant in the room – one that refuses to go away. “At this point, do you wholeheartedly believe that David D’Amato is actually dead?”

“i hate to be insensitive, but could D’amato have faked his death to take heat off him and his actions?”

“I’m not sure if I believe it.  When are services? Who has the body?”

“I’m not buying this death narrative.”

Look, we get it.

Donald Trump is President of the United States. Conspiracy-peddling InfoWars has been given White House press credentials. The world is apparently full of fake news. It’s not a stretch to think that a man who’d spent over 20 years finding elaborate ways to get young men to tickle each other on camera had found a loophole that allowed him to continue, post-Tickled.

Fake his death, and rise to tickle another day.

The tweets above are all responses to the statement that Dylan Reeve and I wrote on March 18, 2017, in response to the news that David D’Amato had passed away:

To put that conspiracy theory to bed – D’Amato has indeed died.

As well as the funeral notice published in the local paper on March 18, we have a copy of his death certificate:

D’Amato died due to atherosclereotic and hypertensive cardiavascular disease. He had a heart attack. Other contributing factors were diabetes and obesity.

We debated whether to publish this information, but the question comes through daily on our social media, so it seems like it’s time to make it public. Essentially, we think we should let David D’Amato rest in peace.

But now it’s time to address the other elephant in the room: If David D’Amato is dead… how does Jane O’Brien Media still live on in 2017?

There’s a Facebook page:

And there’s a new website, TickleTopia:

Source: TickleTopia

It’s time to meet Louis Peluso, the man behind the new Jane O’Brien Media page on Facebook, and the new website. And no, we are not going to link to them directly.

Just know that Peluso runs the page, and he also reviewed the page himself: 5 stars.

We first heard about Peluso towards the end of making Tickled. As far as we could tell, he was another middle-man, much like producer Kevin Clarke. And, like Clarke, Peluso seemed to be receiving payments from David D’Amato to help make the Jane O’Brien Media video shoots happen.

Here, for example, is a payment to Peluso of $75,000:

Like Clarke, Peluso also has a history in producing gay pornography, in his case under the name Dexx Jones (NSFW).

We tried to contact Peluso while making the film – we were curious about his professional relationship with D’Amato – but he never got back to us. We emailed him and messaged him on Facebook.

Case in point:

But once Tickled was released in theatres, we did hear from Peluso. Well, sort of. He gave a comment to ABC’s Nightline when they covered Tickled’s release:

In the story, Nightline talked to Kevin Clarke and according to the report, Clarke “put us in touch with his boss, a guy named Louis Peluso, who also insisted that D’Amato has no connection whatsoever with Jane O’Brien Media”.

Louis Peluso. Source: Nightline

Despite Peluso’s public denial, it was clear to us that D’Amato was behind Jane O’Brien Media. Beyond that, we really didn’t have much more to say on the matter, so we let it go.

But after D’Amato’s death, Louis appeared to become a little more open online. Fast forward to May, when he posted his review:

“Rest in peace, David,” says Peluso, the dude who told Nightline that David D’Amato had no connection whatsoever with Jane O’Brien Media. And, if there were any confusion about who Louis was referring to, he clarified it later in the comments:

Right now, Peluso appears to be in possession of all of D’Amato’s tickling footage and seems to be positioning himself as the head of Jane O’Brien Media.

A video on Louis’ Facebook page shows a computer screen in Peluso’s house, filled with tickling files.

Someone, presumably Peluso, says “There is so much tickle footage here it is fucking crazy. We have counted so far 47,000 videos.” He’s practically bragging.

And now he’s selling them. Videos featuring guys who, in many cases, may have never realised they’d be online, let alone being sold.

And yeah – Peluso is showing off how much he has:

On top of this, Peluso is now totally clear about who was behind the making of the videos. Gone is any claim that D’Amato had nothing to do with it (Here’s the link to the following conversations – but be aware that Jane O’Brien Media has geoblocked New Zealand on Facebook, so New Zealand readers won’t be able to access it.)

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

So while D’Amato has gone, another person has risen up to take his place in charge of Jane O’Brien Media.

The footage of young men – some of whom thought they were competing in a sport called Competitive Endurance Tickling, or simply making private audition tapes – is still being distributed widely online. This time, for cash.

As far as we can tell, these young men are not being subjected to online abuse and their full names aren’t being associated with the new material. That’s really, really good.

But their videos are being sold online as fetish material, something many of those men may never have imagined, intended, or wanted.

In May, prompted by his flurry of Facebook activity, we tried Peluso again. He answered.

Peluso followed up with more messages, including one which claimed I had “zero credibility”.

It’s still a struggle to understand why he so angry at us, specifically. Maybe it’s because D’Amato paid him quite well. And isn’t doing so anymore, for obvious reasons.

He ended with this, before blocking us:

We haven’t been telling anyone they are cowering in fear, if you were wondering. And we didn’t really see much point in reaching out to his lawyer Larry, so left it there.

But his talk of lawyers did remind us of something. What about that lawsuit D’Amato had filed against his stepmother Dorothy? You know the one – seeking $40,000,000 in damages for “defamatory” statements he alleged she made in Tickled?

And what about the legal threats D’Amato made in that theatre in Los Angeles last year, or the lawsuits he filed against us and later voluntarily dismissed from the courts?

Source: The Tickle King

A dead man can’t sue, right?

Well, in New York, he sort of can.

It turns out that the executor of a will can continue a defamation suit, even if the person allegedly defamed is no longer alive. A quick look at D’Amato’s will shows that the lawsuits and their potential winnings are claimed to be an asset of his estate:

On top of that – the executor can even do some more suing, at least according to him:

More Reading

So, there you go. We joked at the start of this whole thing that it was a bit like stepping into a tickling wormhole. What we failed to grasp at the time is that wormholes aren’t exactly short. In fact, they can go on for billions of light years.

Dylan Reeve and David Farrier photographed at Reeve’s Auckland home, June 17, 2017.

Read more of The Spinoff’s coverage of the Tickled phenomenon here.

 

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SocietyJune 17, 2017

How the NZ Financial Service Providers Register is wrecking our reputation around the world

Guest writer
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You’ve heard about how foreign trusts are exploiting legal loopholes to park money in New Zealand and avoid paying tax. But there’s another NZ financial body causing ripples around the world, for all the wrong reasons, as Gareth Vaughan explains.

This story was first published on interest.co.nz

Here are two numbers for you: 83 and 340.

The first, 83, is the number of countries and territories from which the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has received enquiries about New Zealand financial service providers.

The second, 340, is the number of misconduct reports the FMA has received from overseas about companies registered on NZ’s Financial Service Providers Register (FSPR). Thanks to the Panama Papers you’ll have heard plenty about the embarrassment NZ foreign trusts have caused this country. But you won’t have heard much about problems with our FSPR.

The FSPR is a bit like a Yellow Pages for the financial services sector. Anyone providing a financial service such as insurers, banks, fund managers and financial advisers, must be registered on the FSPR, which is operated by the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment’s Companies Office. The FSPR records the name, address and financial dispute resolution service membership of the provider, along with the services it’s registered to provide and any licences it may have.

Trouble is the FSPR is open to exploitation by overseas based rogues and crooks. That’s because a company can register on the FSPR if it has a place of business in NZ, regardless of where in the world its financial services are targeted or provided. This means entities can, and do, set up superficial operations in NZ through virtual offices, or by leasing an office and perhaps employing a person to provide back-office services. These firms register to provide financial services that don’t require licensing in NZ, such as foreign exchange, or forex, services. There’s no pre-vetting by a NZ regulator, and they don’t offer financial services within NZ. These entities can, however, use their NZ registration overseas to give a false impression that they are regulated in NZ and trade off this country’s good name.

The FMA was formed in 2011 and regulates NZ’s capital markets and the financial services sector. It does not, however, regulate companies simply because they are registered on the FSPR.

The numbers 83 and 340 come from answers to questions interest.co.nz asked the FMA.

In terms of the 83 countries and territories where enquiries have come from, the FMA says there could be more.

“Contact details are not always provided and we do not require them. Where we could identify the location of a source, we have done, hence the list of countries below may be incomplete,” an FMA spokesman said.

“Between 2011 and the end of 2016, we received an estimated 360 general enquiries and 340 misconduct reports from overseas about a subject registered on the FSPR.”

In response to a question asking how many of the enquiries related to unlawful activity by a NZ financial service provider, the FMA spokesman said the regulator does not know.

“It is not possible for us to say whether activity was lawful or unlawful. We do not regulate companies on the FSPR. Since 2014, the FMA has the power to direct the [Companies] Registrar [Mandy McDonald until recently and now Ross van der Schyff] to deregister companies and has done so where they fail to provide a financial service to New Zealanders or where we feel their only objective is to give the impression that they are regulated in New Zealand.”

Here’s the list of countries and territories provided by the FMA of where enquiries have come from.

And in the map below the dots represent where the 83 countries and territories are located.

How did it come to this?

The FSPR came out of a 2006 government review of financial products and providers that recommended the introduction of a comprehensive register of financial service providers. Among other things, this was designed to help satisfy NZ’s international obligations under the recommendations of global anti-money laundering overseer the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). These required the licencing or registration of all financial institutions to ensure effective monitoring of anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing obligations.

Since December 2010 anyone providing a financial service has been required to be registered on the FSPR. There are about 12,000 financial service providers, both companies and individuals, registered on the FSPR. Of these, the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (MBIE) estimates a couple of thousand are registered only for services that don’t require licensing.

As MBIE has put it, “Registration on the FSPR allows [some] firms to misrepresent to overseas customers that they are licensed or actively regulated in New Zealand, and enables them to enjoy a lesser degree of scrutiny overseas than might otherwise be the case. The public often interprets ‘registration’ on the FSPR to mean that an entity is actively regulated in New Zealand.”

‘Drivers licences for people who can go and drive anywhere in the world, apart from NZ’

Dozens of overseas operating companies have deliberately misled customers into believing they’re fully fledged “licensed” and “regulated” NZ financial service providers, with a significant NZ presence, when this isn’t the case. And overseas regulators have been confused by these NZ “registered” entities operating in their jurisdictions.

The inability, or unwillingness, of NZ authorities to do anything about the overseas actions of some of these NZ registered entities has damaged NZ’s reputation. As David Mapley, a Swiss-based Brit who found himself caught up in nefarious activity by NZ financial service provider London Capital NZ Ltd, put it; “You [NZ] are giving drivers licences to people who can go and drive anywhere in the world apart from New Zealand and cause whatever carnage and crashes, but it’s not your remit, you don’t care.”

In 2015 MBIE acknowledged misuse of the FSPR “creates a risk to both New Zealand’s reputation as a well-regulated jurisdiction and to the reputation of legitimate New Zealand financial service providers.” MBIE has also pointed out other similar jurisdictions don’t have the type of problem NZ has, or at least not to the same extent, because typically they licence all types of financial service providers.

In Australia, for example, all entities that provide financial services are required to obtain an Australian Financial Service Licence. But MBIE argues NZ doesn’t license all financial service providers because licensing can impose significant costs, create a barrier to entry and reduce competition.

The clean-up plan

Against this backdrop, the Government’s third attempt to clean up the FSPR following an MBIE review, is underway.

The FSPR review came as part of a broader review of the Financial Advisers Act 2008 and the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Act 2008. The Government aims to introduce the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill, incorporating proposed changes, to Parliament before the September 23 election. Summarised here, the proposed FSPR changes include greater anti-money laundering disclosure and increased oversight of nominee directors. Ultimately, MBIE says, the plan is that companies will only be able to register on the FSPR if they are in the business of providing financial services and actually promote those services to people in NZ.

(However, my view is that the Government should simply abolish the FSPR because NZ doesn’t even need it).

Meanwhile back at the FMA, the spokesman said the FMA has received “a noticeable increase in enquiries and misconduct reports” from overseas since it was granted powers to direct the removal of companies from the FSPR in 2014.

“In 2014, there was an estimated 150 misconduct reports or enquiries coming from overseas where the subject was on the FSPR. In 2015, that rose to an estimated 260. In 2016, that fell back to an estimated 210,” the FMA spokesman said.

Overall the FMA says since July 2014 it has considered 198 FSPR registrations. Of these, 110 were existing registrations and 88 were new registrations. The regulator has directed the Companies Registrar to deregister 68 companies, with another 21 companies voluntarily deregistering.

The FMA has also issued 30 directions preventing registration on the FSPR, and another 38 applications were either voluntarily withdrawn or allowed to expire.

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