Well, this is a creepy blast from the past. Guys been doing it forever, apparently.
Interesting to read the antics of Casey Kasper (AKA Kasey Kasper). Onone hand Casey just wanted to get his script sold and made into a film. On the other hand, Casey terrorized Idyllwild before Murietta. Very interesting indeed. If folks want to reminisce, I am happy to share all this including Russian “funding” plans (scary)
Ashlee Simpson was an A-lister???
For about a month, until she lip synced on SNL.
Did you ever expose him to your town? What happened? Inquiring minds need to know.
I’m hoping someone’s wised up by now. And I’m assuming no movie has materialized.
One reason I’m counting on some karma at work here… We have a similar weasel that preys on college students, getting film and art students to shoot or sketch storyboards/characters. But then he’s unable to pay them until the studio coughs up the big bucks that are “right around the corner” (of course).
(Long time lurker, very occasional poster here)
Good grief, how many of these con artists are touring the country with the same shtick? Mr Kasper sounds like a poor imitation of Carissa Carpenter, a locally infamous “entrepreneur” who had pretty much convinced the mayor and city manager of Dixon CA that she was about to turn their little (some would say “hick”) town into Hollywood North. If only they would provide her with concessions and investment capital, of course.
It turned out that she is a serial huckster who had tried the same spiel on small towns on both coasts and several points in between. She was able to siphon funds away from many individuals who were unwise enough to cross her orbit, including her dentist. Fittingly, she seems to understand drama well: her trials were marked by serial lawyer replacements, fainting spells, and several assertions that she was at death’s door.
Things started to go south for her when the Sacramento Bee wrote an embarrassing expose detailing how gullible the Dixon city fathers had been. She’s now in jail.
If you need some entertainment in your life and have a few hours, I recommend reading the SacBee’s series on this case (here’s a sample: https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article214596995.html). Bil Paul has also written a book about her exploits (The Train Never Stops In Dixon, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00V5TUL90/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) which I haven’t read.
Man, every time I do a search on Cafe Society it seems someone’s updated this thread with another sighting.
Yes, we did, Beck. Front page - bottom half - with a jump to ‘Local News’ and an editorial entitled, “The tragedy of Casey Kasper” that I wrote personally.
It really got rolling when one Friday I got a pissed off call from the head of the Chamber of Commerce. She read me the riot act and and demanded I stop harassing Kasper. I arranged a meeting and brought the local government reporter - I’m proud of him, he’s done very well for himself and won ‘journalist of the year for West Virginia’ awhile back - along with me.
Seems the angry call came when Kasper yelled at the head of the Chamber about me. I asked my guy and he said he’d talked to Kasper at the City Council meeting the night before and mentioned at the end that we’d run the story after we fact-checked it. That’s apparently what got Kasper so irritated at us.
I then told the Chamber head, trying to be sympathetic, that we’d been looking at him for a few weeks and nothing he said had checked out. Nothing. We couldn’t provide his existence in the film industry. We couldn’t prove his credentials or his background. We couldn’t even prove his name. We’d found a few he’d mentioned over the time he’d been in town - including finding that he’d been pulled over for speeding and his license had a different name - but nothing definitive like a birth certificate or passport records.
It was like the blood drained out of her face. She went from bitching at us about having to come in on her day off - she had her granddaughter (maybe?) with her - to talking about what she was going to do about it.
Anyway, we ran the story and the editorial and it was at least a five-days wonder. He threatened to sue us, of course. He didn’t. He also told everyone he was going to leave town and that the people of Marietta were ungrateful and didn’t deserve the jobs he was going to bring. He didn’t leave town, of course. As I mentioned upthread, last I saw him was at a Ryan’s buffet in town with that little girl he’d impregnated and her mom. I know the mom was getting angry at him then as he’d been having her pay his expense while staying at her home and banging her 20-years-younger daughter.
Anyway, I suppose this is my legacy here in Cafe Society. I await with a certain trepidation the next time this thread surfaces.