Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation visited a church to learn about an investment program, Bless 7 (part of TeachingU2Fish) that started in Florida and spread to Dallas-Fort Worth. Here’s the story readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Dave Lieber column first learned: 

FORT WORTH, TEXAS – The scene is a small church off East Rosedale Street in Fort Worth. It’s the regular Tuesday night meeting of Bless 7, a financial program that’s become a summer sensation in Fort Worth and Dallas.

More than 6,000 people have joined, organizers say.

Donald Wilson of Tampa, Fla., founder and CEO of TeachingU2Fish, which offers the Bless 7 program, prepares to speak to three dozen people.

“How you doing, everybody?” he asks with a twinkle in his eye. “How many of you need a financial blessing?” When only a few answer, Wilson tries to pump them up: “It’s time for y’all to wake up now, hear? If they ain’t told you about me, you better wake up now. Amen?”

“Amen!” audience members shout.

Word about Wilson is spreading through the African-American community. He promises that Bless 7, part of what he says is a for-profit ministry, will help pastors raise thousands of dollars a month for their churches.

Bless 7 also promises wealth and exposure for small businesses and nonprofits that join.

Wilson wears his hair in a short ponytail. He keeps a Bluetooth device in his right ear even when addressing an audience. He’s confident of his abilities to persuade.

“God told me when he designed this program, he designed it for the poor and the needy,” Wilson says.

It costs $25 to join the plan. Then members start recruiting others. When they bring in the first seven, they have completed their first mission. That’s where the name comes from. They get paid — or blessed — for each recruit.

But blessings so far have been sparse, some members have said. Audience members say they can’t get the program to work on their computer or haven’t been paid.- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

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Wilson says that the program started this year in Florida but that when he moved it to Texas in May, organizers used paper applications to register members. Now 6,000 members’ information is being converted to a computerized database.

“The IT people messed it up,” Wilson says. Members lost access to data on the people they had recruited. “So I shut it all down,” he says. “We’ve got two women putting 6,000 people back in there one by one.

“We’ll be resuming pay Friday. If it ain’t ready Friday, we won’t start Friday. … But I think we’ve made it through troubled times. Some places would have shut down. But people all around the world are coming in. Amen?”

“Amen,” some answer.

After his explanation for the delay, Wilson pivots into his pitch. Aside from money for bringing in people, the program promises members other tangible goods and services. Without those, a financial program that pays only for recruiting others is considered an illegal pyramid scheme in Texas.

Wilson says that’s not the case here.

A key part of the program is that members get paid when people use the program’s Web browser toolbar for Internet searches.

A toolbar is a lengthy horizontal strip atop a browser in which search terms are typed. The Bless 7 toolbar also has a donation button, a video button and announcements.

Every search that uses the toolbar brings a member 5 cents. That adds up to thousands of dollars, Wilson says.

Members also have access to an online “discount shopping mall” that offers cash back on purchases. Members get a commission when others use their store.

Other promised Bless 7 benefits: discounts on drug prescriptions, phone bills, travel and a home security system. Medical, dental, auto and life insurance is offered too.

Wilson also promises that as members move up levels in the organization, up to $5,000 a day in gold and silver coins can be delivered to their home. A shiny silver coin is passed around the room. “I would advise you to get a fireproof safe,” a Wilson lieutenant says.

Then there are deals on auto leasing and houses for high-level members. A member in good standing needs only a notarized letter from his or her church’s minister attesting that the member regularly donates to that church. Then the program promises to make auto-lease payments of up to $2,500 a month. After two years, the program “gives” the car to the member, organizers promise.

Members can get a home the same way. Bless 7 organizers say they will get foreclosed homes and give them to members who have a notarized letter from their pastor.

Little of that has happened yet because Wilson says he is still in the early stages of gathering people.

Wilson recently asked everyone to give an extra $7 to keep the program going. He raised $1,900 from that. But he says setbacks this year have cost him $180,000.

That doesn’t stop audience members from stepping to the back of the church to pay.

As another Bless 7 speaker, Elgin V. Pringle 3d, says, “You wake up, put on your bathrobe, pick up the check and lay back down.”

His father, Elgin Pringle Jr., the Fort Worth manager for the program, says, “It’s going to be the next national phenomenon.”

Amen?

Amen.

# # #

Dave Lieber shows Americans how to fight back against corporate deceptions in his wonderful book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong. Are you tired of losing time, money and aggravation to all the assaults on our wallets? Learn how to fight back with ease — and win. Get the book here.

Read The Watchdog Nation manifesto here!

Visit Watchdog Nation Headquarters

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Twitter @DaveLieber

Bad Dad?

In his new book, the Star-T watchdog recounts a personal episode that led to global notoriety. Here’s a review that appeared in July 2011 in Fort Worth Weekly.

By BETTY BRINK

Bad dad? Naaah. Frustrated dad? Angry dad? “I’m gonna teach this smart-mouth kid a lesson” dad? Oh, yes. Anyone who’s ever raised a child has been there. But “bad” Dave Lieber is not. By all accounts, Lieber is a really good dad. Goes to the games, listens, helps with homework, volunteers at the school, and spent his son’s first 18 months of life as a stay-at-home dad while mom went to work.

So how did the Watchdog columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, former metropolitan columnist for that paper, and one-time reporter for big-city East Coast dailies — who aimed to bring “New York-style journalism” to Texas — become public enemy No. 1 three years ago in Watauga?

Simple: by successfully bringing New York-style journalism to, if not the entire Lone Star State, then at least to the little suburb of about 22,000 souls just north of Fort Worth. Lieber’s early columns, published in the paper’s northeast edition, exposed corruption, ineptness, censorship, and embarrassing sexual scandals involving town leaders — including police chiefs, mayors, city council members, city managers, cops on the beat, and a powerful local preacher. No one was exempt from Lieber’s sharp eye and even sharper pen. Early on, one city manager called him in after a particularly embarrassing column and thundered at him, “Don’t you dare write another word about Watauga, Texas, without talking to me first! You hear that, son?” Lieber heard, but he didn’t heed.

Then in the summer of 2008, Lieber found himself in a Kafkaesque world, charged with two felony counts of criminal negligence for “abandoning and endangering a child and abandoning a child with intent.” He damn near lost his job, his sanity, and his good name as the story spread from the police blotter in Watauga to the internet.

The child was his and wife Karen’s 11-year-old son, Austin James Lieber.

Hero or “bad dad,” this tale of Lieber’s travels through the criminal justice system as defined by the Watauga police department is a fascinating read, full of drama, humor, and pathos. But more than that, it is chilling. It shows just how the power of an inept and vindictive police department can turn one family’s life into a nightmare and scare the hell out of the accused, who had more than one moment of panic that he might lose his kids.

Lieber writes with a light touch, but the story he tells is heavy indeed.

Good grief, did he toss the boy in front of moving traffic? Lock him in a hot car for hours? Leave him at home alone to go out partying? Nope, nope, and nope. What Lieber did was nothing more than what untold numbers of parents have done over the years, including this writer: Tell a smart-alec kid to behave or walk home. Home was six blocks away in a quiet middle-class neighborhood.

Here’s the short version of the story: Lieber and Austin are having breakfast at a McDonald’s in Watauga not far from their home. Austin finishes and starts pressing dad to take him home. He wants to call his friends to come over and play. Dad is lingering over a just-poured cup of coffee and reading the paper. He tells son to sit down and be quiet. Son keeps up the nagging, getting louder. Dad loses temper, tells son he’s leaving and that the boy is going to have to walk home. Dad storms out. Boy runs after dad, yelling at him. Dad drives off, leaving son behind in the parking lot. “Shocked” observers call police. Dad cools off after a couple of blocks, comes back to pick up son. Too late. The cops are already there. The first cop says, “You’re Dave Lieber, aren’t you?”

Before long, the whole world knows about it. It may be the most publicized non-event in journalism history. Lieber got calls for interviews from all over the globe; his 10-minute angry outburst became the subject of newspaper articles, talk radio discussions, cable news network child-rearing experts’ opinions, and blogs, all weighing in on Lieber’s parenting skills. Was he a bad dad or a good dad? Is government interfering too much in parenting? Should prosecutors get involved in minor altercations between a parent and his/her kid?

Most parents were with Lieber, including Lenore Skenazy, founder of the Free-Range Kids Movement, a group dedicated to allowing children to play by themselves without constant adult supervision. (She gained notoriety for letting her 9-year-old son ride the New York subway alone and was called “the worst mom in the world” by bloggers.)

As Lieber reveals in this book that is part confessional, part accusatory tirade, and part “Is this a nightmare and when will I wake up?,” his exposés played no small role in his travails. Before he became the daily paper’s aggressive Watchdog columnist, Lieber wrote about the dark side of Watauga politics. These columns are cleverly woven in and out of Bad Dad and remind this reviewer that, had Dave Lieber’s name been Joe Brown, the cops almost certainly would have told him to take his kid home and discipline him outside the public arena. Case closed.

But Lieber had written too many “bad cop” stories. So instead, the incident was referred to the Tarrant County District Attorney’s office for prosecution, and soon enough Lieber was visited by two CPS caseworkers. Next came the call from the police chief — the fifth chief in the 15 years that Lieber had been living in the area — telling him of the felonies and suggesting he get a lawyer. He did. After turning himself in, being fingerprinted, having a mug shot taken, and being suspended from his job, Lieber waited for the next shoe to fall. It never did. Three weeks after Lieber stomped out of McDonald’s, the DA dropped the charges, saying that the facts didn’t rise to the level of a felony.

Lieber, a reporter and columnist for 30 years and a dad for about half that long, takes responsibility for his actions. In fact, in one of his columns he wrote that he was a “bad parent for punishing his kid in such a manner,” claiming that he could have exposed the boy to “grave danger.” That brought howls of protest from a couple of local writers, including Fort Worth Weekly’s Dan McGraw, who wholeheartedly supported Lieber’s decision to let his kid walk home as punishment. However, after Lieber’s mea culpa, McGraw wrote that if Lieber was going to be charged with anything, it was “abandoning his balls.” D Magazine’s editor Tim Rogers wrote, “What? No!! Don’t bend to the pressure, man. You’re a hero to fathers everywhere.”

# # #

Read the original review that appeared July 27, 2011 at Fort Worth Weekly’s website here. Get your autographed first edition copy of Bad Dad bookhere. Read Chapter One here. Watch the book video trailer here.

WatchdogNation.com gets dozens of letters and e-mails each week, but one that really tugged at us was the case of the 16 Texas middle schoolers and their teacher who lost $2,000 to a fictitious publishing company in Indiana. The students wrote a book called Locker Letters. Their original book signing at a Barnes & Noble store in the spring was held — but it may have been the first book signing in history where the books weren’t even printed. When a police detective visited the publishing company owner at the listed company offices, he found a disheveled man in a bathrobe coming to the door of a rickety home in a trailer park. To catch up, you can read here the previous Dave Lieber column, which first appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The team that produces WatchdogNation.com — the book and our upcoming CD audio book — immediately pitched in to help. Locker Letters arrived at a Borders book store in Colleyville,Texas on Sept. 11, 2010. The students from North Oaks Middle School in Haltom City, Texas in the Birdville school district hosted a wonderful book signing. And you can support these student authors and buy Locker Letters here.

Watch the WatchdogNation.com video Scammers: Don’t Be Messing With Kids here.  Congratulations to the kids! You’re authors now! And Carolyn Hedgecock, the teacher who got fooled, has a new autographed copy of Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong. The inscription? “You need to read this! Stay safe, Dave Lieber.”

She need not feel that bad. Self-publishing scams are common these days.  You can learn how to protect yourself from all kinds of evil with the book that promises to save you money, time and aggravation. Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong won two national book awards for social change. Learn more here. Thanks to Jerry D. Simmons of WritersReaders.com for his assistance. Thanks to our book designer, Janet Long, for her book design. Thanks to our copy editor, Anita Robeson, for her work on the project. Thanks to our printing house, Friesens and rep Coral Gates, for their great work.  And a special shoutout to Tamara Roberts whose new company,

Royal Shield Publishing, issued the book as its first imprint. Roberts studied with WatchdogNation.com founder Dave Lieber at a writing workshop. She learned how to create your own book publishing company. Do it yourself! That’s the best way to avoid getting hurt by others. And these days, it’s easy for committed authors to pursue their dreams. After many requests, Dave Lieber created a how-to-self publishing manual that many authors have used to create their own self-publishing companies and live their writer’s dream. Learn more about Dave’s Guide to Self-Publishing here. Locker Letters is the latest book to come out of this Dave Lieber system. Way to go, kids.

# # # Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

Let’s look at some of the cultural stars of the summer of 2010:

> The Jet Blue flight attendant who wouldn’t bandage his head cut and couldn’t wait a few more minutes to visit the airport bar.

> The 19-year-old man, a future movie subject no doubt, who ransacked homes, stole airplanes and eluded police.

> The big national bank ordered last week to pay California customers $203 million in restitution claims because a judge found it had manipulated transactions to boost the overdraft fees it could charge its own customers.

> The iconic techno company that knowingly lied for years about the strength of its signal bars on iPhones.

Every summer has its own personality. The hot summer of 2010 will be remembered for a growing despair among the people, as the economy turned downward, once again.

Amid this, we gasp at the successes (through his life’s failures) of the Barefoot Bandit, aka Colton Harris-Moore. We marvel at the chutzpah of Steven Slater, the airline attendant who now says he wants his old job back.

We give Steve Jobs and Apple a pass on the phone screen that lied to its customers for every day of usage. Well, he put up a slide that acknowledged, “We’re not perfect.”

And we accept the Wells Fargo court finding as business as usual in America, even though, U.S. District Judge William Alsup wrote, “The bank’s dominant , indeed sole, motive was to maximize the number of overdrafts and squeeze as much as possible” out of overdrawn customers. This story did not receive the attention it deserved (hence this quick post).

In your mind, how you would rank these poor acts of citizenship during the summer of 2010 in terms of their maximum damage to the American culture? And to you?

For me, the least upsetting is the Barefoot Bandit. My house wasn’t involved, and he didn’t steal my airplane (cause I don’t have one). He’s an amusing distraction. Look for the movie out next fall. Perfect, since he seems like a character out of the 1930s anyway.

#3 in harm is Apple. Any company that takes over the music industry and is about to take over the publishing industry is actually worthy of being a villain in a James Bond movie. Too big for its own good. But I don’t care. I’ve got a Blackberry.

Runner-up for most heinous is the Jet Blue dude. He’s in charge of the safety and well being of those passengers. They come first — or at least they’re supposed to. The only good he did was expose the lax security for those leaving JFK Airport. As one spokesman said, we’re good at watching who enters the airport; we’re not so good at watching them leave.

The winner? For me, founder of Watchdog Nation, it’s a no brainer: Wells Fargo.

You hurt your own customers.  You processed their biggest payments first, which increased your income from overdraft charges. Meanwhile, penalties for smaller charges piled up on customers, causing tremendous harm for them, and now, finally, great shame for you.

The Barefoot Bandit and the others have nothing on you.  They are a distraction. You took money that a judge says doesn’t belong to you. From your own customers!

# # #

Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

One of my current projects is to train a new generation of young writers and photographers to be the very best storytellers of the future. I’ve been working as a volunteer for four years with the students at Westlake Academy on their monthly newspaper, The Black Cow.

This story appeared in the September issue of Editor & Publisher magazine, the highly-respected journal and online site that serves as the bible of the newspaper industry.

I’m proud of this next generation of watchdogs and how they are receiving national publicity! Way to go, kids!   — Dave Lieber

Shoptalk: Stoking the Passion

By Sam Chamberlain

Published: September 01, 2009

The easiest way to measure the success of The Black Cow, Westlake Academy’s student newspaper in Texas, is probably by the numbers. The Black Cow launched in August 2005. At the 2006 Texas Interscholastic League Press Conference (ILPC), the paper won five awards. The following year, it won 27; the year after that, 47; and this past April, it took a whopping 55 awards.

Impressive stuff. But according to the paper’s adviser, longtime Fort Worth Star-Telegram metro columnist Dave Lieber, the awards don’t even begin to measure the passion the students have for their work. And now there’s a new book, The Best of the Black Cow, a collection of writing from the paper’s first three years selected by Lieber.

“I feel reborn when I work with these kids,” says Lieber, who also provides an introduction for the book. “I go to my normal job, and all I hear is talk about layoffs and job cuts. I come here, and I feel fantastic about the work they do.”

The work is even more impressive considering that the Black Cow is entirely self-sufficient, surviving primarily on advertising ($7,500 buys a full-page advertisement in all eight of its yearly issues) and subscriptions. Furthermore, because of the paper’s status as a K-12 free public charter school (40% of the students are Westlake residents, the rest are selected by lottery), some of the senior editors have been working on the paper since its founding four years ago.

One of those students is Nick Ford, an 11th grader at Westlake who started at the paper as a 7th-grade photographer, and has worked his way up to executive editor. He’s primarily in charge of laying out the 40-page edition. “I was a photographer my first year, and the person in charge of layout was going to a different school so he showed me how to put the paper together,” says Ford. “It usually takes a whole week, working two to three hours a day to put it together.”

“He has tremendous instincts,” Lieber says of Ford. “I like to watch him work with the layout, and graphics and figuring out what goes where.”

Sarah Titus is another long-timer, who started at the Black Cow as a book reviewer in the 6th grade. “I was always a big reader, and when I saw the school had come out with a newspaper, I thought, ‘This is cool,’ so I went to Mr. Lieber and suggested a book review.” Titus graduated from that review to a monthly opinion column, “Sarah Says.” After becoming managing editor for news and photo last year, Titus was named editor-in-chief for the coming school year.

Among her plans as the Black Cow’s top editor are a mentoring program for younger students (some kids as young as the third grade are involved in the paper) and a series of team-building exercises to strengthen enthusiasm. “We’re pretty motivated already,” she says, “but I think these programs will help us get even better.”

Titus’ writing is among those featured in The Best of the Black Cow. (For info on ordering, e-mail westlakepaper@ hotmail.com). One of her featured pieces is a tribute to classmate Taylor Moon, who died suddenly in February 2008 of a rare strain of flu.

“Taylor had already mastered all the skills needed in the game of life,” Titus wrote at the time. “But God allowed him to stay longer, teaching others his traits and characteristics, giving him time for his qualities to rub off on us.” The piece won a first-place award for personal column at that year’s ILPC.

“I was amazed,” says Lieber about putting the book together. “I read work that made my eyes well up and I read stuff that would make me laugh hysterically. I mean, these kids aren’t even old enough to drive legally, and they’re producing this great writing that touches all these emotions and comes from the heart. Just about the only thing they can’t do is make a deadline.”

The book, which runs 223 pages, bears the unmistakable red cover and design familiar to readers of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. According to Lieber, the resemblance is not coincidental. “These kids are the Holden Caulfields of the 21st century,” he says. “They’re rebellious, sharp, keen, witty, haven’t quite figured it out, but they’re successful. I thought it would strike a chord.” The book even opens with a quote from Holden. It also includes the original flyer announcing the newspaper and calling for staffers, and the name-the-paper contest form.

It closes with a song lyric by ’80s popsters Timbuk 3: “I’m doing all right/Getting good grades/The future’s so bright/I gotta wear shades.”

“I looked at the editors when I first started and they seemed to have so much on their plate,” says Titus. “But then I realized that if it’s something you really enjoy doing, you’ll find the time to do it. And with the writers we have, who are so inspired by what they do, I think the Black Cow can go far.”

Samuel Chamberlain has been an E&P intern the past two summers.