Exposing North Shore Eats Scam Artist Greg Bates

 

 

Prior to the creation of TBDailyNews.com we published all of our content on Turtleboysports.com. Now that this is our primary domain I’m going to be migrating some of our bigger stories over to TBDN over time for the newbies. The 7 part Greg Bates story from 2018 was one of our finer works, as we exposed one of the most conniving, twisted, scam artists in the history of Turtleboy. We’ve put all 16,000 words from the series into one blog for you to consume at your leisure, or relive if you’ve been riding the turtle since then.

North Shore Eats Part 1: Meet Greg Bates – Unemployed Deadbeat Who Hides Child Support Money By Using Big Facebook Group To Extort Local Restaurants For Free Gift Cards And Cash

North Shore Eats is a Facebook group founded by Beverly resident Greg Bates, where people are supposed to share recommendations for places to eat all over the North Shore from Lynn to Newburyport.

Over the years they have grown to over 35,000 members, and thus the perception is that if you can post on the group page, you can increase your business revenue. Greg Bates is the head administrator of the page, and thus he controls content that people see, in a very similar manner to the way Zuckerberg’s algorithms control what you see on your feed.

The problem is that the group was created to be an open forum about food, which is why so many have joined. But many restaurants on the north shore feel pressured to join and go along with Greg’s rules since he alleges to have so much economic power over them. Here is the description for the page:

We’ve been watching this page for well over a month since it was brought to our attention. We’ve gathered so much information that this will have to be a mutli-blog series. If you have more information you’d like to share with us about this group and Greg Bates, please email [email protected].

From our investigation thus far it’s fair to say that there are a number of mistruths and outright lies in the NSE mission statement:

We are the original, largest North Shore foodie group that only represents the customer!

North Shore Eats does not represent the customer. It represents Greg Bates and those who pay him for the exposure.

We allow no ad dollars from restaurants.

They collect ad revenue from restaurants in the form of both cash and gift cards. He claims he does not force them to give him gift cards, but this is a lie we can disprove.

 This site is all about opinions of restaurants please feel free to share them. Good and bad.

Opinions are frequently banned, as are posters, if they say positive things about restaurants that are not paying Greg Bates. Others have been banned simply for unfriending him on Facebook. He does not allow bad opinions about restaurants who are paying him, and he does not allow good opinions about restaurants who are not paying him. Often he uses the relative power he seems to get off on by being the admin of such a large page in order to shame businesses who have the audacity of not paying him to advertise, and urge his followers not to do business there.

If your just here to trash a restaurant this is not the group for you. Keep your opinions about fellow members to yourself to remain a member. We do not have to agree…however your opinions about restaurants will help us make our own decisions. Play nice. Thank you.

By filtering out posts about restaurants who refuse to be extorted by his scams, he does not allow members to make their own decisions about restaurants.

To remain a member please do not… Be disrespectful (it is fine to disagree) , private message another member soliciting your business, use vulgarity or threats or any mistreatment of any kind, create drama.

As you will see, Greg Bates is the king of drama on this page. He’s just very sneaky, sly, and careful with his wording, so as to come across as a nice guy who wants to get along with everyone.

Attention Restaurants All restaurants are welcome on this page. I do ask that you don’t just share your post from your page. Please create a post just for us and introduce yourself as the owner or Mgr. Members love to be engaged by the owners and no one has more passion for their business than you!

Not all restaurants are welcomed on his page. Several are outright banned from even being mentioned, including former advertisers who gave him gift cards for months before canceling due to issues relating to Greg.

Also I am overwhelmed with gift card give away request and I just cant get to everyone so you may have to message me a few times and hopefully we can accommodate you at some point but remember your always welcome on the page!

The only restaurant owners welcome on his page are those who continue to pay him every month.

Restaurants supply us with gift cards because of the massive amount likes and shares our contest provide. We use these cards for contest, reviews and donations to support the community.

He uses the cards for himself, but does raffle off others. However, a lot of the money from the raffles is unaccounted for and never made it to the ARC foundation that he claims to be both an advocate for, and an employee of.

Greg Determining Gift Card Winners. I assign a # to every comment 1-xxx. I then use and on line random number generator. Once the # is generated I personally count each comment to the selected # and that is how the winner is chosen.

He doesn’t use this method to choose winners for the gift card raffles. On at least one occasion (that we know of) he created a fake user name and awarded himself the gift cards as the winner of the raffle. Other restaurant owners have complained that the gift cards they gave to him were never raffled off, and that he uses them for himself. Greg himself will be the first person to tell you that he goes out to eat twice a day due to all the free gift cards he extorts from local businesses:

Group Facebook pages are meant to be forums for discussion, which is what the group claims to be in it’s mission statement. Facebook does allow business pages (like us) for business organizations. However, Greg Bates never registered this as a business with the secretary of state and he does not report any of the income he makes off it to the IRS. He is essentially running an unregistered gypsy marketing company. He acts as a food critic, but has no background in it, nor does he have any business or restaurant background.

He hides behind the guise that he is donating all money raised to a local autism foundation. But there is no formal tax ID or non-profit for this, despite the large amount of money channeling through him. It’s essentially just him taking gift cards, and giving them away or selling them. His story that he doesn’t profit off the site or collect ad revenue is an easily disprovable lie.

He is also deeply in debt, is voluntarily unemployed in order to keep money away from creditors and his ex-wife, was sentenced to 30 days in jail for not paying child support, and his ex-wife alleges that he threatened suicide around the children forcing her to seek a restraining order. It seems as if the entire purpose of the page is a way for him to make money under the table so that it can’t be traced, and thus his ex-wife can’t get it from him.

Their divorce was an extremely messy one, and her allegations are very serious. Although his personal life should be irrelevant, it has carried over into his scam and seems to be a way for him to keep money from her. In the divorce filings he says that if she does not give him sex he will be forced to pay for it, which will affect the budget. His ex-wife alleges he has threatened her with violence and even rape, which is why she has a restraining order. She also claims that he once kissed his boys good bye and told them he was going to kill himself, then pretended to die. It’s insane if true.

He purports that any restaurant can post on his page, leading customers to believe that the deals being offered are from committed business owners who are invested in the community. And they are good businesses. But many of them feel that Greg uses his influence (from the 35,000 followers he has access to) to wield power and bully them into paying him every month to stay on the site. They’ve seen what happens to others who don’t play along, as we’ve heard from dozes of these business owners.

He claims that restaurant owners see a tremendous amount of business as a direct result of him coming to their restaurants and posting about it. But every restaurant owner we have spoken with claim that this does not happen. When they try to leave, he tells them they are no longer welcome on his page, and often bad mouths businesses that do not pay to play.

He tells advertising partners that he will come to their restaurant every month, so long as they provide him with a gift card for a family of four. He claims that he is unbiased, but has told advertisers that if they pay he will only say positive things about them. He does not tell his followers that, and thus they assume that he is being honest while masquerading as a legitimate food critic.

He has threatened rival Facebook group pages that review local restaurants, especially those who infringe on his monopoly. One of these group pages is in Merrimack Valley, and he threatened them with a lawsuit because he copyrighted the word “Eats.”

He claims that restaurants get tons of “likes” and exposure due to his requirement that people share and comment on posts about the restaurants. However, these are not authentic, amount to spam, and don’t lead to direct sales conversions.

He uses his association with ARC to get restaurants to donate gift cards for his raffle. He then sells raffle tickets for $10 each, and has raised over $15,000 for ARC. But a substantial amount of that money is unaccounted for it and he doesn’t have a valid explanation as to where it went.

Greg Bates first began to make people weary of his intentions, and first came to our attention, due to an incident he provoked in early May. He went to cash a check at TD Bank from an advertiser, which was made out to him. But publicly he claimed it was for the autistic foundation. Yet he was trying to cash the check, instead of depositing it into his account, which aroused suspicion. TD Bank charges a fee to cash checks since they are a business and he doesn’t have an account there. He lost his mind, made a huge scene, urged his followers to give bad reviews to TD Bank’s Facebook page, and claimed they were “extorting” him by charging him for the fee. His ex-wife alleges that he drinks every day, and he has since deleted that post.

As it turns out Greg Bates doesn’t have a bank account in order to avoid court ordered child support that would be taken from him. It’s the same reason he chooses not to work, even though he can work. Last summer he was sentenced to 30 days in jail for not paying child support, and he also was sued by a rental property LLC for nonpayment. For that reason all the cash in the business goes through his girlfriend, who has an autistic son who Greg exploits for personal gain.

His girlfriend’s name is Suzanne, and he often posts using his Facebook page when he wants to be rude and combative. When he uses his real name he tries to come across as reasonable and decent.

Despite claiming to be such a big advocate for the autistic, he doesn’t seem to know much about autism, and once referred to the autistic as “retards.”

He told the client who gave him the check (that TD Bank charged him a fee to cash) that a police officer from Peabody told him that he should ban her from the page because she cannot be trusted. When the officer found out he publicly posted that this was a lie, and now Greg Bates is claiming it was not him who sent the restaurant owner that message. We have proof that it is.

Everyone on the page worships him, he claims that he doesn’t ban restaurants from his page, and that only two have left voluntarily. A lie.

And for that reason he is able to continue running his scam. But the truth must get out, and we will expose all of the things he is doing this week.

Poor Jay Rose here is on our side, but he doubts we will follow through on this because he thinks we are lazy:

This one’s for you Jay.

 

 

North Shore Eats Part 2: Greg Bates Sentenced To Jail For Non-Payment Of Child Support, Alleged Threats Of Violence In Front Of Kids, Use Of Fake Profiles To Attack Critics And Brag About Greg’s Sex Game

Normally a man’s personal life is only his business. But the fact of the matter is that Greg Bates’ personal troubles speak to his character, his lack of lack of financial responsibility, and it gives him a motive to try to make money any way he can.

For instance, on March 1, 2017, Greg Bates was supposed to show up in court as a defendant against JK Realty Investments for non-payment of rent. Because he defaulted (which almost always means the defendant didn’t bother showing up) a judgement of $9,244.97 for unpaid rent was held against him.

Which is one reason why he has a lien against him.

Greg is divorced, which no one should hold against him. Lots of normal people get divorced, and it’s really no one’s business why. Except in this case it is, because the allegations made by his wife are startling. Let’s start with his divorce proposal, in which he states that, “sex is something important to me, if I don’t get it from her I will buy it and redo the weekly budget as needed”

That’s normal.

According to the official probate and family court documents, in which she was the plaintiff, she alleges some very serious stuff. For starters she won’t disclose where she lives because she says she fears him, and has an order of protection against him. She also claims that she moved out with her sons in secret, and because of his “threats of violence” she doesn’t want him to know where they live.

She described herself as a “single parent” when they were together, and says she was acting as the primary caretaker. She claims that Greg drinks too much at home, has taken unpaid days off from work, and has spent family savings without consulting her.

This matters to the story because it establishes a pattern of financial mismanagement.

She also alleges that Greg Bates has a temper, put video cameras in her car, placed one of the kid’s cell phones in the trunk of a friend’s car to track mother’s movement via the GPS, has disabled her credit cards, threatened to rape her, kept her in the marriage by threatening suicide in front of the children and kissing them good bye, and throws chairs and spits during arguments. She says his threats of suicide were what kept her around longer than she should have.

In fairness, no one is happy during a divorce and there are two sides to every story. But this is also the #MeToo era so we’d be pretty unwoke if we didn’t listen to a woman’s allegations.

However, this matters if it’s true. People who act like this are not of sound mind and body, and should not be in charge of raising massive amounts of money for charities while running a gypsy marketing company that damages local businesses on a whim.

She claims that he once called her, pretending to take his last breaths, came home like nothing happened, and later went to a psych hospital. She also says he drinks every day (which others we’ve spoken to have also alleged) and his kids are traumatized from the suicide threats which he has never apologized for. And in her own words, “Greg is not stable and I’m truly concerned for myself and the boys.”

She also alleges that he lessened his work hours on purpose in order to pay less for child support, and that he wants her to repay a debt to his parents that was already satisfied. Additionally she anticipates that his Teamster’s pension (he used to work for UPS before quitting before he could be fired) will not be evenly divided.

They were in debt:

He then filed a complaint against his wife to not pay child support because he claimed to have health issues forcing him to leave UPS, and that he was now EMPLOYED by ARC

But our sources with ties to his former work buddies tell us he quit in anticipation of being fired. No one, including Greg, has been able to confirm that he left UPS because of an “injury or disability.” And if his health is this fragile, why is he eating out so much? What kind of doctor would recommend that?

He also says he works at the Autistic foundation, which doesn’t seem to be true. Either way, his salary was lessened at the exact same time the divorce happened, which would’ve lowered the amount owed for child support. Yet he still didn’t pay it and was sentenced to 30 days in jail for owing $7,500 just last year:

Ironically he recently told a critic that he wishes their kids could have a “real parent”

“Perhaps I cold raise money for you(r) child to have a real parent.” – Guy who told the court he couldn’t pay child support and be a real parent because he couldn’t make enough money.

This is out of character for Greg on Facebook though. Normally he’s cool and composed when posting as Greg Bates. But the facts seem to indicate that he has more than one Facebook profile that he uses. And when he starts getting bothered like this, he often switches accounts to the fun pages!!

Likely pretending to be his girlfriend Suzanne, he often challenges his critics to meet up face to face in an implied challenge to fight them:

She tells critics that Greg (him) should kick their ass and that the critics are afraid of him, and she does it while bringing up her autistic son which has nothing to do with anything:

Once again, using autistic children as a shield is another pattern we will see with Greg Bates. I don’t know Suzanne Kosch, but this sure seems like an odd thing for a middle aged woman to be saying in defense of her boyfriend.

She also talks exactly like him, particularly when she brags about the size of the page, the power it wields, and the amount of trolls they’ve banished:

As we will see, these are things Greg says a lot.

“Suzanne” claims Greg is a good provider, even though he is seemingly unemployed, and admits in court documents that he hardly makes any money. It’s cool though because she says she’s rich:

“Suzanne” says that Greg is not paid to run the page (he is) and that it’s not his job (he doesn’t seem to have a job, and couldn’t give us one when we spoke to him):

And if there’s any doubt who’s really behind the Suzanne account, she claims Greg is “so good in bed, you have no idea“:

Fake news. There’s just no way any reasonable person can think she actually wrote that.

Then there’s the other fake profile – Chrissy Langdon. She always seems to have Greg’s back:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before Chrissy’s profile was banned from the group by Greg in an attempt to make it look like he was not her, she always used to bad mouth businesses who didn’t pay to play, like O’Neils of Salem, and said that they “hate the members of this group”

You will see later on that “Hate the members of this group” is one of Greg Bates favorite lines on Facebook, as he makes it seem like any business who doesn’t do business with him is taking a personal shot at the 35,000 people in his Facebook group.

Take a look at some of the groups and pages that “Chrissy Langdon” likes and follows:

As we will see later on, several of those businesses are promoted by Greg Bates. Especially Jami’s Kitchen.

Here’s the best part. Greg sells tickets for raffles a lot. Local businesses donate gift cards (which he pressures them to donate) and he charges $10 a ticket:

And the winner is…….

Chrissy Langdon!! What are the odds???

 

 

North Shore Eats Part 3: “We Don’t Charge Ad Dollars,” But We Will Turn Our Followers Against You If You Don’t Give Us Free Gift Cards Every Month

Last we spoke we were explaining how Greg Bates (the guy running the 36,000 member strong North Shore Eats Facebook group) was intentionally not working in order to avoid paying child support. He was sentenced to jail for 30 days last summer and it’s come to our attention that during that time the word on the street was that his Facebook was suspended, which was why he wasn’t posting on NSE:

But…..nah. Just a deadbeat.

His return was like when MacArthur stormed the beaches of Leyte Gulf:

But the bottom line is that Greg essentially was stealing money from his own family, particularly his children, by not paying child support. If you’re willing to steal from your own kids, who aren’t you willing to steal from?

Now, I just want to say that I have zero problem with Greg Bates monetizing his platform. This is America after all. He built that page up, people enjoy going to it, and if businesses see value in paying him money to be seen on his page then so be it. When we were first contacted about this story we passed on it specifically because of that reason.

But you also have an obligation to do the following:

• Let people know that the reviews you are giving are coming from people who paid you so they know that the reviews might not be 100% authentic
• Treat all business owners the same, meaning charging them all the same rate for equal exposure
• Use a business Facebook page instead of a community group
• Register your business with the secretary of state’s office, report your income, and pay your taxes
• Be professional and forthcoming

Greg Bates doesn’t do any of these things, which is why we’re exposing him.

For starters, he insists he doesn’t demand gift cards from restaurant owners:

And he does not charge restaurants for advertising:

And indeed some restaurant owners are coming to his defense on his page:

It’s noteworthy that Kevin Ricci was at one point an administrator on that page. And if he says he’s not being forced to pay for exposure, that’s cool too. Just don’t charge others. Or let people know who’s paying and who’s not.

But yet countless businesses have messaged us telling us that he made it very clear that he requires  two cards PER MONTH, one that he will raffle and one for his personal use…..for a family of four. 

He also promises a positive review in exchange for the cards:

“The more I am there the more you will see.”

And he tells business owners that he’s gonna keep coming back because it will be so good for them.

“I require two gift cards a month.”

But wait Greg, I thought you didn’t make restaurants give you gift cards?

Now, Greg has told us that the person he was speaking to was a caterer, not a restaurant owner, therefore he’s not a liar. In reality he’s just hiding behind semantics, and if he wants to we can produce multiple restaurant owners who were told the same thing.

It’s his way of getting free food. After all, how else can an unemployed deadbeat dad afford to eat out twice a day:

His followers are led to believe that he’s some sort of legitimate food critic giving them honest and fair evaluations of local restaurants. He’s basically doing what Anthony Bourdain did for a living, except he stays along Route 1 and he has zero background as a chef, food critic, or business owner. In reality he’s just getting free meals and cash out of it, and saying good things about those who pay him. The entire premise of his page is that people can discuss food in the north shore. But the conversation is completely controlled by who is hooking him up with the most food. And yes, gift cards would be considered payment.

If his page were as he claimed it is, he would be trying different restaurants, paying for it himself, and letting people know what he thinks. But as some people have noticed, he seems to go to the same places a lot, and hits them up multiple times:

As you can see from his replies, he’s a very busy and wanted man. And he constantly brags about the reach of his page. He forces his advertisers to share and comment on content on his page, thus it gets more reach. Which is fine. But that’s essentially a form of spamming, and the people you’re reaching aren’t coming to you  because they’re interested in what you’re sharing. There’s a big difference.

Here he is messaging a critic (he has TONS of critics), bragging to them about how he’s going out to eat again and 20-25 restaurants a day reach out to him:

With the two gift cards he claims that he keeps one for himself, and one goes towards his “raffles,” which raise money for the ARC. We’ll delve more into the Autism thing in a later blog, but the whole premise of having lotteries like this is actually illegal:

“Only qualified non-profit organizations that have obtained a permit and act in accordance with M.G.L. c. 271, s. 7A and, if applicable, 940 CMR 12.00 can conduct raffles. An individual cannot hold a raffle even if a portion of the proceeds will be donated to a qualified nonprofit organization.”

He either charges $10 a ticket, or makes them share/comment on his page, and claims that the winners are randomly picked. This violates Facebook’s terms and conditions, but considering our history with Facebook’s bullshit we won’t fault him for that. But as we saw yesterday, people like Chrissy Langdon (him) have a tendency to win:

And others have messaged us and told us that they won these “raffles” but never received their gift cards. Like this guy, who won a gift card to Salty Franks in Gloucester:

And another…..

Although I would like to remain anonymous, I “won” a $75 (I think, it may have been $50 but it was months ago) gift card to Tonno in Wakefield. He messaged me for my address, which I gave Greg. I still have received nothing. I tried to give him/them the benefit of the doubt because the restaurant is still under construction.  

Here’s some more stories that restaurant owners have told us…….

At one point Greg had posted that he was going to be placing interns for Salem State into restaurant social media positions.  Someone messaged him, interested in getting an intern. Greg tried to convert them to a paid customer until he learned they don’t market locally.  At that point he offered to let them post for free as long as they threw him a few lobsters.

No big deal. He puts something out offering these imaginary interns he has at his disposal (despite not being anything remotely close to being considered a legal entity) to local businesses to run their social media page. But really he just ends up mooching some free lobsters out of them. Because…why pay for your own food? You’re the guy who runs a Facebook page. It should be raining lobsters on you.

The 4 Winds in Lynn got hit up for the gift cards:

He’s very self important and considers himself some sort of food critic celebrity. Thus he can’t seem to fathom why some restaurants aren’t bending over backwards to invite him to events:

A new restaurant was opening in Salem (Ledger).  It was a much anticipated opening and had massive buzz in the industry.  I was trying to get it posted and to get him invited to the soft opening, i thought it would be great for the business but the owner can’t stand him and they didn’t invite him.  Here’s his pity party.

“I don’t charge restaurants.” LOL.

Poor Greggy. Looks like his Facebook page just isn’t as impressive to others as he believes it should be. Because Ledger didn’t pay to join his network he never posted about the restaurant opening at all:

The day before the opening he posted about a 3% kitchen administration fee that is charged.  He basically riled everyone up against the place without stepping foot in it.  All because his little feelings were hurt because they didn’t want him at any of the 3 soft openings.  He then opening the flood gates again in October but made frequent comments and jabs here and there about the fee, prices etc.  He’s a vindictive prick.

Here’s what another owner told us:

He tipped a bartender named redacted at a place called Jacobs Corner in Beverly with a gift card from Sidelines. 

Just what a bartender wants for a tip – a gift card to a restaurant he may or may not like to eat at.

At the top of the page he pins some of the “member” restaurants, and their specials. This is prime real estate to Greg because it’s what everyone sees first. The 3rd restaurant down is Jami’s Kitchen.

A couple people reached out about his relationship with them. Here’s what one of them told us:

He’s been in bed with this shitty restaurant called Jami’s Kitchen.  Constantly posting, my friend worked here and said they were paying more than 75$ per week which is what her old restaurant Stonewood Tavern paid at one point.  He’d go to Stonewood every night to collect. Anyway, Jami’s sucks, but he promotes them a lot because they pay. 

When people post about Jami’s the comments are often negative. One of their employees went ballistic on NSE attacking the members.  Her name is Kelsey.

Well….that’s one way to conduct business I suppose.

Then there’s Burger Master, an unofficial group of people who come together over their love of burgers, and Greg’s precursor to North Shore Eats. Greg tries strong arming the restaurants into joining his burger master network and makes it seem as if they are for charity (notice the comments):

But he’s making money off of it. Here’s another email we got from someone who used to affiliate with Burger Master:

My interaction goes back to the Burgermaster days.  Never bought into his gift card scams and ignored him on a few charity events because I could smell bullshit.  I’m not involved with the restaurants anymore but they are alive and thriving without Greg so I have deleted their names.  We always were involved in local charities hosting events and donating regularly, we just chose not to participate in his.

You can’t ignore the burger master!

So it looks like he never got his gift cards and was forced to (gasp) pay for his own food. Naturally he messaged the owner some more to go into great detail about his traumatizing ordeal with a bad burger:

I own Lexie’s burger joints in Southern NH and we have one in Newburyport as well. We were talked about often on the NSE page and then Greg reached out to me personally and we had some conversations about our business and spreading the word and how much people loved Lexie’s. Then he started asking for donations, which was fine with me, but when I explained our company wide policy on donations and how we only donate to youth sports teams or programs where our restaurants are located his whole tune changed. Here is our exchange through messenger below. 

Oh look, he’s done the whole, “I’m calling my lawyer” routine before. And like the business owner says, he’s clearly only allowing people to post on his page who give him free gift cards.

He also pulls tricks with liquor stores:

He does a couple of things. He’ll post on the North Shore Eats page and say “Tell me what local brewery you think should be at XXXX restaurant”.  A bunch of people reply saying “X, Y and Z”.  He then reaches out to X, Y and Z breweries and says “Hey, i’m helping XXXX redo their menu and I want to get your local beer in there. I can make it happen for a placement fee and a small commission on sales”.  What he is asking for is actually illegal for two reasons, A) paying for placement is illegal in massachusetts  B) in order to solicit orders for a brewery you need to be an actual employee with a Mass ABCC Salesman Permit

We’re not sharing the screenshot of this message from Greg since it could reveal who sent it to us, and if our sources ask to remain anonymous we actually respect that. But Greg clearly is violating this law too, or at least trying to.

Here’s another anonymous restauranteur telling a similar story:

But wait, Greg said he doesn’t accept ad dollars. Weird.

Check out what he did to Mile Marker 1 in Gloucester:

Mile Marker 1 didn’t wanna pay to play. Naturally he acted like this was an insult to the 35,000 people in his group, but in reality he was just pissed they had the audacity to not give him free gift cards.

“I will make an official announcement they are not interested in the members of this group and get the word our for us to avoid them. I completely respect their position.”

Nah, Greg, you don’t respect their position. Because you ban them from posting on their page so people have to sneak around while referencing them:

He did notice this one and slyly asked, “Is that 100% fresh lobster?”

According to some he actually had a meeting with Mile Marker 1 that he blew off:

Oops!!

Cygnet is another restaurant that opened up in Beverly. Naturally Greg tried to strong arm them into free gift cards but failed. Once again he whored out his group, “hope they have interest in our 20,000 members,” and let Cygnet know that they’d be getting a positive review if they played ball:

“Not a lot of changes need to be made to make this a very positive review”

This quickly turned into public posts about how rude Cygnet was for ignoring the fresh prince of gift cards:

He was “amazed” this fancy new restaurant had the nerve to not reach out to some random glutton chunk with a Facebook group, and he let it be known whenever someone said something positive about them…..

He made it crystal clear that because of this perceived “disrespect” from the owner he was banning them or anyone else promoting Cygnet from posting on the page:

“I will make an announcement they are not interested in the members of this group and get the word out for us to avoid them.”

And that’s about half the restaurants we heard from. We’ll have more for you tomorrow. You haven’t seen some of the best ones yet – Hoppy’s, G Parties, Champions, Ryan Side-Cafe, Salerno, and many more……

 

North Shore Eats Part 4: Greg Bates Lies About Dead Mother, Attacks Business For Cutting Him Off From Egg Rolls, Continues Pay To Play Scam, Ironically Accuses Man Of Being Bad Father

Last we checked in on Greg Bates we had caught him red-handed lying about taking money from businesses in order for him to endorse them on his page. He also lied about requiring gift cards from NSE partners, as he demanded that many of them provide two per month. Of course lying seems to be Master Bates’ specialty. Last year he couldn’t be troubled to respond to an advertiser and he said it was because his mother died:

Except his mother never died, which he admitted this week:

He’s also told people that he is “retired,” could easily pay for his food if he wanted to, and is losing out on thousands of dollars by not charging cash to advertise:

Just understand that this man is a pathological liar.

Now let’s talk about what he’s been doing to some other local restaurants who didn’t play ball his way….

Hoppy’s Barbecue, Peabody

Just like many others, Hoppy’s was solicited to be an advertiser on NSE, with his standard demands of two free gift cards per month:

Hoppy’s agreed to his gift cards demands and was initially a big supporter of the page:

They gave him his monthly card for personal use, and the other one went to his illegal “raffle.” In exchange Greg agreed to promote them under the guise that he was a fair and balanced food critic, not someone doing the bidding of an advertiser.

A guy who won a Hoppy’s gift card named Larry Burns (who is now banned from NSE for talking about his experience with Master Bates) went down to use it, but the product he wished to purchase was out of stock on that day. The guy agreed to come back at a later date, and it was no big deal. But Greg Bates made it into one, and told Larry Burns that Hoppy’s would no longer have the pleasure of being mentioned on his page:

“This site has a massive effect on many restaurants.”

Be more full of yourself. You can’t. Also, it’s not a website, it’s a Facebook page. At any point it can be mass reported for pornography (DON’T DO IT TURTLE RIDERS) and taken down by Facebook. Trust me, we know too well how that works.

“There are no ad dollars.”

Be a bigger liar. You can’t.

But trouble arose when Barbara Hopping, the owner of Hoppy’s, saw that Greg was coming down to Hoppy’s yet again for free food:

“I know I have a huge impact on the amount of customers coming through.”

God he’s insufferable.

Barbara committed the ultimate sin – she publicly stated that NSE wasn’t bringing in the business he claimed it would. She said that gift card winners sometimes did not come in, and although it led to more likes of their Facebook page, those were useless unless it converted directly to sales:

Greg wasn’t happy about this, and he was even more upset that he got cut off from the free egg rolls. So he messaged her son Tyler to let him know how crazy his Mom was being for not seeing his greatness, and told him that Hoppy’s was officially banned from his page for the disrespect they showed him:

“I noticed you stopped selling out when I stopped stopping by.”

Oh get over yourself criscopoon.

As Tyler pointed out, Greg was once again caught in a lie. He said he doesn’t charge to post on his page, but the second you stop paying him you get banned. Others who simply use the forum to discuss their favorite food places had their posts deleted if they mentioned Hoppy’s. Yet he’s still pretending that his page is a place where people can get together and discuss their favorite food establishments. The truth of the matter is they can only discuss places that are lining his pockets with unreported cash income.

But it wasn’t enough to just not let Hoppy’s post on the page, he had to try to sabotage their business on the way out. Of course he wouldn’t do that using his Greg Bates account, because that would come across as cruel, vindictive, and hypocritical since he’d previously said how great Hoppy’s is. So he did what he always does when he wants to talk shit – signed into the Chrissy Langdon account and went to town:

Yup, this psychopath has conversations with his alter ego on NSE. “Chrissy” shit talks Hoppy’s and promotes Rusty Can. Then good cop Greg swoops in, tells everyone that Chrissy (not a real person) is well known for being a BBQ snob, and starts promoting Hoppy’s biggest competitor.

What’s that called when you threaten to do something that could negatively impact someone else, unless they give you what you want? Oh yea – blackmail.

Poor Barbara tried to clarify the misinformation Greg was spreading, and once again Greg played the good cop:

In anticipation of this blog being written Tyler had been posting this information on the North Shore Eats Exposed Facebook page. Greg saw this and preemptively messaged Tyler, letting him know how poorly poor Master Bates was treated by Hoppy’s for being cut off from free egg rolls:

As you can see, Greg was making Tyler believe that the gift card winners felt disrespected from their experience with Hoppy’s. So Tyler messaged the winner (Larry Burns) so that Greg would no longer be the middle man instigating problems between them:

Oh look, the guy didn’t have a negative experience after all. Greg didn’t cut off and bad mouth Hoppy’s because of their customer service. He did so because he was butthurt about being cut off from the egg rolls.

Finally to cap off this saga he messaged a guy named Andrew and gave him a piece of his mind for supporting Hoppy’s. Andrew wasn’t having any of that jive and called him out on his bullshit:

Here’s the best part – Greg got personal and insinuated that Andrew was a shitty father:

I shit you not. The guy who was sentenced to 30 days in jail for not paying child support, put his two sons through a traumatic event by telling them he was going to kill himself, and intentionally does not have reported income because he thinks he’s harming his wife but really he’s harming them – that guy is judging the parenting skills of others. Can’t make this stuff up.

Hoppy’s is no longer open for a variety of reasons. You can’t blame it all on Greg because that would be admitting that he actually matters. Plus, if you can’t survive without Master Bates promoting you then your business just wasn’t meant to last. But I’m quite positive that he had at least something to do with it, and that if he used his forum the way he says he uses it, Hoppy’s might be in business today.

 

The Corner Butcher of Beverly 

We received an email from someone associated with The Corner Butcher, and here’s a summary of what they told us:

• Business owner is approached by Master Bates and asked to share posts on NSE about his business.
• Greg starts aggressively asking for donations for his “fundraisers.” (not the Autism one, because he wasn’t involved with them yet).
• Business owner tells him they can’t go over charitable donations amount because they have a budget, but donates when they can. Just not every single time.
• Master Bates gives them the “but I am getting you so much new business….” routine.
• Business owner tells him that he’s not getting new business from Greg, and that this sort of shakedown is inappropriate and makes him feel uncomfortable.
• Greg asks business owner to write weekly blog for NSE about his business, and only share it on NSE. Business owner agreed, did it twice, then stopped because it was a waste of time.
• Greg asks him to enter business into his “Top 10 Burger Card” deal.

• Business owner says no, but Greg pushes and pushes so business owner relents and gives in, hoping Greg will go away.
• Greg asks business owner to sell the cards, but CASH ONLY, because Greg is trying to avoid the IRS and his wife who needs to buy shit for his kids.
• Business owner cuts ties with Greg in August 2017.
• Greg gives bullshit negative review to other business, which turns off this business owner, prompting him to unfriend Greg on Facebook.
• After realizing he’s unfriended Master Bates loses his mind and messages the business owner, chastising them for unfriending him.
• Master Bates tells business owner he’s the reason for their success, and that they are ungrateful.
• Master Bates tells him that any positive reviews from his 35,000 followers on NSE of the business will be erased by him.

• Master Bates kicks this business owner out and blocks him, but today claims that Hoppy’s is the only business he’s ever done this to.

• But instead of just banning the business, Master Bates begins badmouthing them to his followers, claiming he was “disrespectful” to the 35,000 followers for no longer wanting to do business with Greg (keep in mind, the 35,000 have no idea he charges these businesses, so they don’t understand why anyone would turn down free promotion). He makes it seem as if the business owner is taking a personal shot at the 35,000 followers, when in reality they just don’t like Greg. Nevertheless, it works, and it hurts small businesses.

But remember, it’s all a big lie that he shakes people down for gift cards.

Finally he directs people to go to Eva’s Organic Butcher Shop of Middleton as a double “fuck you” to Corner Butcher, since they are a competitor, and tells people it’s because Corner Butcher “disrespected” the members of the group (him) by not wanting to advertise on the page.

 

 

Champion’s Pub of Peabody

Greg was upset with Champions because they refused to give him free gift cards. But instead of outright banning them he came up with a different way to try to make them look bad. He began to bash them because of their alleged association with a man who dared to call out his pay for play scam. The man does not work for Champions in any capacity, but Greg clearly tries to imply that people associated with Champions make light of autism by tagging Champions and asking if they condone his behavior.

He then blocked the owner’s daughter from the group for questioning him about this and unfriended her. When she asked him about it he made up a lie about a Facebook glitch (she unfriended him, which he claimed automatically got her removed from NSE, an easily disprovable lie) being the reason she was kicked out of the group.

When she messaged him about this and told him this was a lie, he messaged her back and told her to stop harassing him.

 

 

Ryal Side-Cafe of Beverly

He told Chrissy Langdon (AKA Greg Bates) that he won’t post about the Ryal Side-Cafe anymore, who coincidentally refused to pay him. Claimed he was not a pay to play Facebook admin, and promoted their competitor instead:

Once again, he’s making it sound as if his reviews are authentic. People on the page trust that he is because that’s what he tells them he is. But in reality he’s just getting revenge against a business that won’t give him free shit.

But that’s enough. Just like many others he had to bad mouth them on the way out, calling the owner rude:

 

Cafe Salerno of Beverly

He banned Cafe Salerno from being mentioned in the group after they refused to give him gift cards:

Then he passive-aggressively tried to show respect to Salerno, but clearly was trying to come across as the bigger person in hopes that people will react negatively towards Salerno:

Because he’s a diabolical douchecanoe.

He began to remove any mention of Salerno, and claimed Salerno was the one who INSISTED they not be on his page in order to make them look like assholes, because as far as his 35,000 followers, he does not charge these businesses to appear on his page:

WHAT. A. LIAR!!

But it had the desired end result – his followers begin shaking their heads, wondering why a local business wouldn’t want to engage with them on this “ad free” forum.

Multiple people have also told us that he threatened to sue the guy who runs the Merrimack Valley Eats page, because Master Bates owns the word “Eats.” These same people told us this:

We reached out to Stuft and Magnolia 525 but did not confirm. But based on the dozens of others who have shown us how he operates, it’s entirely believable.

While writing this blog the Patch has published two stories on our story. Hey Lauren Cunningham, is the Patch a “hate page” too?

Or is everyone who reports the truth a hate page? Hard to figure out.

Still think we’re just making shit up Craig?

Is that enough proof for you Emily?

Just understand people, that our reputation means EVERYTHING to us. If you think we’re gonna make shit up without doing our homework and gathering irrefutable evidence, then you don’t know Turtleboy. Real news is our middle name.

Stay tuned for the best parts yet to come – the INSANE saga with G Parties, the TD Bank incident, an investigation into missing money for the Autism charity, and a one on one interview with Master Bates himself (lol).

 

 

 

North Shore Eats Part 5: Master Bates Interviews With Turtleboy, Steals $300 From Restaurant, Leaves $4 Tip, Sends Mob After Bank, Tells Advertiser Peabody Cop Says She’s A Crook, Gets Called Out By Cop, Says It Was A Fake Greg Bates Account

Before we get into part 5, let me just share with you all a story that someone has come forward with after reading all these other allegations. This has basically turned into Bill Cosby except with gift cards instead of blue pills – all these victims are inspired to come forward:

We confirmed the story. It’s legit. We know where it happened but upon request we won’t divulge. But it happened. And based on all of the things we’ve seen and heard from Greg Bates and his past, it’s entirely believable. It’s also the scummiest thing we’ve read about him to date. This mother fucker extorted $300 worth of gift cards from a new business. He did it deviously and he lied to them about the first card getting stolen. He didn’t even go there for the food to review it, he did it to get drunk. Because he’s probably an alcoholic too, based on what many people (including his ex-wife) have attested to from first hand experience.

Seriously, I’m still mad about this post. A list of the terrible, unforgivable things he did:

• Used the gift cards before the grand opening as they requested
• Used gift cards that were not intended for him
• Conspired to lie to and rip off a local business he pretends to care about promoting
• Came in right before closing with no regard for the staff, and stayed 2 hours after closing
• Belittled his waiter for being effeminate
• Demanded double the value of gift cards because the restaurant is more expensive
• Told them that one of the gift cards was for the autism raffle, but he ended up using it on booze
• Tipped the bartender $4 on a $300 tab

What a bag of flaccid penises this troglodyte is.

“Greg is so good in bed.” 

Puke.

The first time we were ever tipped off about Greg Bates was in early May when Master Bates caused a huge scene on North Shore Eats and used his followers as a weapon to go after TD Bank:

So, just to review:

• Advertiser gives Greg check for the Autism non-profit, written from her TD Bank account
• Greg doesn’t have account at TD Bank but tries cashing it there anyway
• Greg freaks out and calls a standard bank fee “extortion” because evidently he’s confusing TD Bank with a check cashing bodega
• Greg devises non-sensical, failed attempt at an analogy, in which he for some reason tipped his paperboy $10
• Greg urges 35,000 people who have never done business with TD Bank to flood their Facebook page with fraudulent one star reviews
• Greg urges people to flood the phone lines of a legitimate business while they’re conducting normal, routine business with real customers

Yup. This was when a lot of people in that group realized something was not right about Master Bates. First of all, why doesn’t he just deposit the check into his business account? Oh right, he doesn’t have a business account, because he’s just some guy with a Facebook page. And if the check is for ARC, why doesn’t he just send it to them? Why is the middle man cashing a check made out to a charity? How is he even able to cash a check that’s made out to a charity he is not officially affiliated with?

Once again Greg was hiding behind the one thing that he always hides behind when he wants people to think he’s a good guy – Autism. He figures if he keeps mentioning that he’s working to help an Autism foundation no one will suspect him of being a professional con-artist. And it’s worked pretty well. He’s lost a lot of people from his page, but he still has a loyal army of nudniks who refuse to believe that a boy on a turtle is a source of real news. As he states in this post, “my biggest accomplishment is this group has given me the ability to raise thousands for Autism.”

It’s what gets people to keep giving him money and gift cards.

A lot of his lemmings began doing his bidding:

With Master Bates leading the charge:

But leaving bad reviews wasn’t enough for Greg. When people tried to offset his bullshit reviews with a 5 star review, Master Bates started speaking for the group in condemning them:

God I hate this guy. And can someone PLEASE teach him your/you’re? He does it every single freaking time!!

“The post I did today affirms we are all against it.”

No Greg. Most people actually thought you sounded ridiculous for bitching and whining about a standard bank fee for a situation they would never find themselves in. But thanks for appointing yourself the voice the people.

“Looks like we have had our limit with you bankers.”

Does he not know the difference between a banker and someone who works at a bank? Of course he doesn’t. Because he’s a fucking moron, and somehow tens of thousands of dollars flow through his hands and no one started questioning it until now.

Turns out Cody wasn’t the only one who felt this way:

“I’m not one to lay down.”

Oh yea Greg, you’re a regular Ghandi. Notice Erinn’s name is in gray, meaning he kicked her out of the group, likely because she pointed out how stupid he sounded. It’s easy for everyone to have your back when you expel anyone who questions you.

Someone pointed out that it’s inappropriate to use a food review group to organize a mob to attack a business that has nothing to do with food review:

“I I wrote a check to you from my bank I would not expect you to be a member of my bank.”

If I wrote a check to someone I would expect they would deposit that check into their bank account. Because that’s what normal people who aren’t crackmuppets do with checks. Ya know who cashes checks? People who don’t want paper trails. Because if Greg was making money then his ex-wife would get a piece of it and spend it on his kids.

Speaking of, look what he put up on right after he knew we were onto him about the child support:

This tird mongerer puts a picture of a kid who he is intentionally not giving money to the rearing of. He uses his kid as a pawn on his page to try to look like a real Dad. Notice he doesn’t post a picture of him and his son doing something that the boy is interested in. He posts something that is specifically related to Greg’s interests – scamming. This is the value this selfish piece of shit sees in his child. My heart aches for his kids.

Back to the TD Bank incident, check out Master Bates’ response when someone asked him why he was cashing the check to ARC instead of depositing it:

“I’m just wondering if you have raised thousands and thousands too.”

God he’s sick. This is what he does people. People call him out on his scams and the first thing he says is, “I’m a better person than you are because I care about Autistic kids and you don’t.” Has he raised money for the foundation? Yup. But as you will see in Part 6, a good amount of that money is unaccounted for.

Notice that Jen offers to pay the fee if Greg gives her the nonprofit’s information. Of course Greg deflects, doesn’t give her that information, and instead act like he’s the little guy standing up to big banks like he’s the second coming of Granny Warren.

And check out the response to this guy, who was onto his scam much earlier than we were, including the Chrissy Langdon angle:

“I blocked Chrissy Langdon cuz she was a lil too over the top.”

There it is folks. That’s him making it loud and clear that he’s Chrissy Langdon. Chrissy coincidentally supported Greg 100% of the time. There’s nothing Greg loves more than being told what a great guy he is, so why would he ban her? Oh yea, because people were onto him and he wanted to throw them off the scent. He thought kicking her out would make people think that they were different people. He just couldn’t come up with a better lie than “she was a lil too over the top.”

Of course he mixed in the usual lies about not requiring gift cards too. Oh, and bonus points for this line:

“I feel bad for your kids and your poor wife.” – Guy who was sentenced to jail for nonpayment of child support and once kissed his kids goodbye, telling them he was going to commit suicide.

Now let’s talk about the woman who wrote him the check. Gina Goodwin is the owner of a small home based catering organization called G Parties. She was featured in the Patch today. She was extorted for gift cards a while back with the usual sales pitch:

She agreed since everyone else was doing it, and she assumed he was a decent guy.

But she first realized something was screwed up when this nudnik ordered $240 worth of food from her on Christmas Eve, had no intention of paying her, and then didn’t show up anyway:

“Glad to see business is good, it’s about to get even better.”

Translation – “You’re gonna slave away on Christmas Eve to I can eat free food and maybe post about it on my Facebook page. Consider yourself blessed. I’m just that important.”

But notice who he tells her to make out the check to – Suzanna Kosch, his girlfriend. This was the first time we saw him actually demanding cash from advertisers instead of gift cards. And he tells her to stress Autism in her posts on NSE, because hiding behind Autism is what he does best. But yet the check is made out to his girlfriend? Why?

Oh right, because he’s hiding money from his wife and the IRS so he doesn’t have to pay child support or taxes. I forgot.

He goes on to say, “I would still like you to donate to Autism as well.” So he’s charging this woman $150 cash, PLUS more money for his “Autism” fundraisers.

Gina went along with it because she, like many others, was scared of the power he wielded with the mob on his page. She’d seen what he had done to businesses like Hoppy’s, and she didn’t wanna be next. This fears would later be realized when he began to bad mouth her to everyone, including Turtlboy in an exclusive interview.

He was not happy with Gina for writing him a check from her TD Bank account either, and told her she needed to “find a better bank.” But look what else he tells her:

“I am going to say I was trying to cash a check you gave me for the autism fundraiser. I want this on the news.”

And that is EXACTLY what he did:

Except the check wasn’t for the autism fundraiser. He told her to make the check out to him. He conspired to LIE to his followers about raising money for Autism in a post in which he urged a mob to attack a business for a standard fee that he had to pay in order to avoid paying child support or taxes.

Human. Garbage.

But wait, it gets better. Gina, like many others, realized he was insane and defriended him on Facebook. And just like the others who did this, she got an angry message from Master Bates:

First it’s the “I’m so sad you defriended me, but I’m a stand up guy and I wish you will anyway” routine.

And of course he passive-aggressively puts her down too. HE thinks she’s great, but he can’t figure out why everyone else hates her. Including a Peabody Police Officer:

“Officer Harkins insists you’re a crook, and I should remove you from the page and never recommend you”

Yea, this cop wants you gone, but I like you so I think you should stay. See? I’m a GREAT guy!! Fuck 12!!

But here’s the problem – 1) the check didn’t bounce, and 2) SERGEANT Harkins never said that:

Oh. My. God. This was amazing. Didn’t think that was gonna happen, did ya Greg? He figured she’d cry herself to sleep because she got kicked out of his page. Instead she shared it, Harkins ends up seeing it, and Master Bates gets put on blast as the lying, conning maggot he is.

Of course Greg played dumb and said he had a meeting scheduled with the Sgt to figure out the confusion:

But of course this was a lie, because all he knows how to do is lie.

Anyway, Greg actually reached out to us when he heard we were onto him, trying to clear this all up. But he ended up looking much, much worse (drink every time he fucks up your/you’re):

Considered for your family’s safety? You have no family, and you didn’t care about their safety when you were threatening violence around them.

Well Greg, gift cards are a form of payment.

And he’s hiding behind the “I don’t charge restaurants” thing, because G Parties is catering. It’s really just semantics and another con job.

Next we asked him about the cop:

Yup. He’s claiming a fake Greg Bates account messaged Gina and made up a lie that this random Peabody cop was talking shit about her. Obviously this was a lie, but we wanted to catch him in it. And since Master Bates is too stupid to realize that Gina can retrieve past conversations, we had her videotape herself scrolling through the convo, showing the part about Harkins, and then clicking on the link to “Greg Bates” to see where it brought her:

And wouldn’t ya know it – it went straight to his account. Irrefutable proof that it was indeed his account that sent the lie about Sgt. Harkins.

But we held off on showing him that until we could catch him in some more lies:

Oh good, the “autism” check is actually made out to him. And he does have a bank account, he just didn’t wanna deposit it into his bank account because then his kids and Uncle Sam might get some of it.

Notice he keeps talking about how Gina isn’t Safeserve certified. This was the revenge Gina was worried about. Her “business” is more like a hobby. She does some birthday parties here and there but she’s got a full time job. She’s just testing the waters to see if this is something that she could make a living doing. Sure, it’s a little problematic, but this isn’t about Gina. Gina’s not scamming people. Gina’s trying to use her talents to sell food to a couple people here and there to make a couple extra bucks. I don’t give a shit what Gina does, but he kept trying to deflect because he knew we had him.

He kept bragging to us about all the money he’s raised for ARC, like we gave a shit:

Wait….what?? He won’t put money for a charity into his account where there is a paper trail, but he will cash it at someone else’s bank? Oh yea, that clears things up Greg. Keep talking please….

“I donate a lot of my own money to them as well.” Bull. Shit. You have no money.

Now it was time to bring up the video:

This ignorant son of a bitch is STILL saying that it wasn’t his account that sent it. Except the video shows otherwise:

What more do his defenders need to see?? He’s a pathological LIAR!!! Anyone standing up for him should be mocked. Anyone who does business with him is part of the problem. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you if you still give this guy free shit? How obtuse and willfully ignorant do you have to be?

We also asked him about his employment status and child support. He blamed it on fake profiles too:

We don’t even need to revisit all the lies you just read there. You get the point by now.

But as bad as all this shit is, stealing from a charity would be even worse. Stay tuned for Part 6 tomorrow.

 

 

North Shore Eats Part 6: Greg Bates Claims To Raise Over $100,000 For Arc Autism Foundation While Using The “R” Word, Arc Told Us He’s Only Given $13,000

Greg Bates is able to gain so much good will in the community because his North Shore Eats page claims that its primary goal is to raise money for the Northeast Arc, a non-profit that does a lot of great work with special needs and autistic children. We’d like to turn this negative into a positive, so if you’d like to donate DIRECTLY to them (and not by buying a fraudulent raffle ticket) then click here. 

But the fact of the matter is that he knows his lemming followers won’t care if this random dude is eating for free everywhere with gift cards, so long as he’s donating so much money to a good cause. Although neither of his kids are autistic, he says that his girlfriend’s son is, and he uses him as a prop on his page to show what a great guy he is:

Look at all those likes and shares and comments. All people telling Greg how great he is for taking up this noble cause.

Except Master Bates seems to know very little about autism, since he’s been a UPS driver his whole life, and his entire background with it involves his recent relationship with an autistic kid’s Mom.

We also teased in Part 1 that he’s used the r word before. He adamantly denied this on NSE, pointing out that because his girlfriend’s son allegedly drew his logo (for free of course) he couldn’t have possibly used the r word:

Except…..

Oops!!

Now, what he will try to say is that the fake account he was speaking to was the one who used the r word, and that he was quoting him. Except we searched high and low and it appears as if the Virginia Mary account never actually said that. He also could’ve put “I raise money for retards” in quotations if he was quoting someone else. So either Greg is using that word freely in Internet fights, or he’s falsely quoting someone else. Either way, the use of the word “retards” is 100% directly coming from him, not someone else.

Is this the end of the world? No. Lots of people have used that word before. But once again it shows that he is a pathological liar.

And Greg is very vocal about the “thousands and thousands of dollars” he has raised for this group. Here’s a message he sent to someone who had a question about why it was taking so long for him to get gift cards out to people who won his raffle contests, bragging about the amount raised from his fundraisers:

He says he does 3 fundraisers a year.

He says the page is “just a hobby for him,” which we’ve clearly established in parts 3, 4, and 5 that it’s not.

He says he’s raised over $100,000 in 2017, and expects to raise over $200,000 in 2018.

He says he’s “not paid for by the restaurant industry,” even though he’s completely paid for by the restaurant industry, as well as several other local businesses.

But just remember – 3 fundraisers a year, and over $100,000 raised for ARC last year.

Shell Shocker spoke with ARC on the phone today, asking for an exact amount that Greg Bates has donated to ARC. They said that the total amount he has given them since 2016 (2.5 years) is $13,000!!

And just last week he had only given them 2 person checks:

But yet just last year he said he raised $100K!! So either he’s lying his face off about the money he’s raised, or he’s stealing an insane amount of money that generous people believed was going to ARC.

Let’s take a look at some of his public claims on NSE about money he has raised so we can do the math together. He had a Meat Up on March 26:

But never publicly acknowledged how much money was raised for ARC at this event.

Here he is bragging about raising $13K from a “Meat Up” fundraiser in September:

Now, what he does at these “Meat ups” is he sells raffle tickets online and claims that money automatically goes to ARC. He also charges $10 a head to get in the door, and once inside he sells a crazy amount of raffle tickets on site. This is in addition to the money that can be documented online, and it’s a lot of cash that goes through his hands.

Greg promoted the crap out of his November fundraiser at the Stonewood Tavern in Peabody:

And by the time the fundraiser was completed he had sold 1,408 tickets at $10 each, for $14,080:

That’s just the amount that can be traced digitally. But what about the cash from raffles inside, donations, and the cover charge? Here’s what someone told us happened at the November Meat Up:

I was told by an employee the lines were crazy and there was literally cash everywhere. So if it’s 100 people and they only spend 20$ each on top of the admission…… My friend who worked there bought 100 bucks alone. Resist also donated a portion of sales. Is that number reflected in the amount he says he raised?

No, that number is not reflected in the $14,080 he raised from online ticket sales. That’s a completely different entity. The money at the Meat Ups was cash only. And we are assuming it all goes through Greg, because who else would it go through? Chrissy Langdon?

According to him he raised $11,975 at the Meat Up, and had another satellite event that raised $400. We know that this is not the online ticket sales, since those tickets were $10 each, and 11,975 is not a multiple of 10.

A week later the number had climbed to $12,650:

That’s in addition to the $14,080 from the online fundraiser, bringing November 4th’s Meat Up to $26,730.

Now remember that ARC said he gave them a grand total of $13,000 from 2016-2018. Weird. So just right there from one event we have $13,730 missing.

Keep in mind, that in Part 5 he had an advertiser make out checks directly to him, but publicly told people she had made the checks out to ARC:

So he has a past history of pocketing cash that he claims is going to Arc.

He then began promoting another fundraiser for April, in which he bragged about how much money he raised in the November fundraiser, and estimated he could raise $20,000 this time around. Once again he solicited gift cards from businesses for a raffle that people could purchase $10 tickets online for:

“Suzanne” even told the haters to come on down

He got the band to play for free, and Breakaway hosted it for free:

So he had no costs. About 60-80 people showed up, which our sources tells us Breakaway was not happy about since he promised 300.

And he had vowed many, many times to raise $20,000 for this event:

Guess how much he publicly said he raised?

Yup. $1,600 big ones. Almost $20,000. Almost.

Even with 60-80 people he should’ve raised much more money than that. After all, there was cash flowing through there with more raffles once again. Oh, and the stuff being raffled off was all donated by other people, so once again it cost him nothing:

But yet he only had $1,600 to show for it? Hmmm….

Oh, and he also charged a cover charge of $10 a head, on top of the raffles.

One person asked if they could use their Breakaway gift card, but Greg let her know that it was a cash only situation:

Because Greg doesn’t like money trails, as he likely pockets most of the cash. If not then his kids get it, and Greg certainly doesn’t want that. Just like he did with Gina’s check that he told his group was made out to ARC. But of course it wasn’t:

But yet he tells people that he “never touches the money” because it’s all online:

Except he tells people they have to pay him in cash. This is very confusing Greg.

But even this small amount of $1,600 was not sent to ARC as of a week or so ago. When critics started pointing this out he began to post money he sent ARC from the online Rallyup page:

But that only says $9,813. You raised over $14,000 from online ticket sales alone. It also also says the check will arrive on December 15, for a fundraiser that took place on November 4. And it doesn’t say who is getting the check or who it’s made out to. For all we know it could be made out to Greg Bates, since he has a documented history of having checks made out to him while telling people it’s going to ARC.

We asked him about this and here’s what he told us:

Stonewood sent him a check form the percentage of sales on liquor too? Add that on to the missing money too.

And why would we call ARC to see if he had sent more checks after this when he could just show us himself? It’s almost as if there was no other check after this.

Once again he stuck to the “I don’t touch the money” routine:

Huh? Why is it sent in two checks for one fundraiser? Nothing about this makes any sense at all.

Once again, when the questioning got tough he hid behind his girlfriend’s autistic son:

Notice he’s not saying that he was charged any sort of fees, so the missing money is not explainable.

Then he told us that the checks added up to $11,975, which he couldn’t document either:

$11,975 is the exact amount he said he raised in the online raffle:

But…what about the rest? And what about the April fundraiser? Where’d that money go?

Awaiting instructions on what to do with cash donated? But Greg, you literally just said you don’t touch any of the cash. And why would you need to await instructions for months? You raise money on Monday and you donate it on Tuesday. It’s really not complicated. You claim to have this intimate relationship with ARC, yet you can’t call them up? You’ve donated all this money to them over the years (you claim) and you don’t know where to find them to donate it to? Sure thing Greg.

He showed us this as proof that he “awaits instructions”

But why does it take her to contact him to get him to pay? And what does that say on the bottom, four days after the initial message? “OK I will also need…..”

Need what? More time? More gift cards. He always “needs” something.

He kept telling us to call ARC:

Which we did. And the amount he says he donated is far less than the amount he’s actually donated. As is the amount of cash we know has flown through him at the Meat Ups.

And once again when the questioning was tough he tried to convince us that the real story was G Parties catering business:

Oh, and he also donates his “own money” to ARC as well.

Because he’s such a swell guy. The guy who doesn’t seem to have a job, and owes thousands in child support and unpaid rent, is also a philanthropist. Sure thing.

We never got an answer as to why he hadn’t paid ARC a penny of the $1,600 he says he raised at the April 22 Meat Up. Take a wild guess what he told someone else his reason was?

His girlfriend’s Autistic son of course. Because it’s his job to be the full time care taker of a child he’s only known for a couple years. That and the fake profiles are just keeping him way too busy these days. He also said that he has “yet to receive all the money promised.” But he makes money in cash at these events. So……why hasn’t he donated that?

Also, it’s disturbing in that message that he threatens to drive to Christina and Josh McClintock’s house to “square off.” Instead of addressing where all the money is he is falsely accusing innocent people of starting pages exposing him. Hey shithead – we know who runs that page, and it’s neither of them.

And that’s just from the Meat Ups. He also has local businesses raise money for ARC (not sure if they’re paying for these ads) including several that are not restaurants:

He has hundreds of posts like that. “Such and such restaurant is donating x percent of all sales to ARC if you say you’re from NSE.” I have a hard time believing these restaurants write a check to ARC. And as we saw with Gina, he has his advertisers write checks to him, which he then tells people are going to ARC. So God knows how much he’s actually made from all of these. Maybe a lot, maybe a little. But his ass needs to get audited.

Check out this:

A “generous donation?” How much did this poor guy get suckered for?

The other day Greg attempted to clear his name on NSE about the allegations of missing money:

“I will be getting a complete list of every donation organized by me.”

Dude, you’re taking in over $100,000 a year according to YOU. How do you not have records readily available? Why do you need to put together lists? It’s also been three days and we haven’t seen a list.

But please, tell me more about how this is a “legal matter” now. Because nothing would make us happier than you attempting to bring this to court. Ya see Greg, there’s this thing called “discovery.” And that would reveal all the shady shit you’ve been up to my friend. So yea, I think we can all agree that we can’t wait for the lawsuit buddy.

He’s since updated it with two payments:

We already saw that one though. Where’s the rest?

Only $1,090 more? That’s less than $11,000. And it doesn’t say who the check is going to either.

When we spoke with ARC about this they only gave us a grand total, not a list of checks Greg sent them. So who knows if these even got to them. Either way, it’s way less than the $100,000 he claimed to raise for them in 2017 alone. And Greg would’ve gotten a receipt back from Arc that he could easily just produce.

Oh right, he doesn’t touch the money:

Sure thing.

Greg’s been working tirelessly to discredit both Turtleboy and North Shore Eats Exposed for weeks now, while painting himself as the victim:

And his idiotic follower blindly believe his lies about companies not paying to be there.

And one more thing – Greg also claims he works for Arc:

LOL. Oh Suzanne, what are we gonna do with you?

He says Arc asked him to find internships for autistic kids. Except he couldn’t do this, so he tried to guilt a a restaurant into giving his special needs students an internship because they owe him for the business he drives towards them:

 

“they are only IEP, not special needs.”

This guy know NOTHING about the developmentally disabled. An IEP is a confidential document. Something Greg would have no access to. You don’t go around telling restaurant owners you extort for cash about other people’s kid’s IEPs. That’s illegal.

Then again, if you’re an advocate for autistic kids like this you’re also not supposed to casually drop the r word in conversation.

I don’t even know who to contact about this. Normally I’d say the AG, but she’s probably suing Trump right now for Global warming, or something really vital to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Maybe we can get some opinions from some tax people, or accountants, or lawyers. Someone who would have some suggestions on how we can get to the bottom of this. Because this asshole has no intention of shutting down his page, so we’re gonna have to shut it for him.

Stay tuned for Part 7.

 

 

 

North Shore Eats Episode 7: Greg Bates Admits Rigging Raffles, Buys Toilet With Gift Card He’s Supposed To Raffle Off, Screws Over Jimmy Fund And Shames Woman He Stole Gift Cards From

Welcome to the season finale of Greg Master Bates – Douchebag Extraordinaire. Before we get going the Patch has a quick correction to update:

Yup. The Patch printed fake news. Shocking, I know. I got all excited when I heard Greg Bates was finally going to jail. Yes, we cited them, because that’s what real journalists do. They draw on published sources. But as it turns out the Patch didn’t do any actual reporting, and didn’t even bother speaking to the BPD. Instead they just kind of printed the first rumor they heard on Facebook.

The best part is the writer who got called out on initially not citing us then went on to say that he spoke with the BPD:

Except he clearly didn’t. Oops!

Anyway, we’ve buried Greg Bates by now. His reputation is destroyed, and we’ll keep an eye on him going forward. Hopefully some sort of governing body will investigate him. Let us know if you have a recommendation on who Turtle Riders should contact. If he continues to do shady shit we will continue to call him out, but for now this is the final chapter of our story – terrible, random things Greg Bates has done.

Like that time he invited one of his followers out for beers and wings for a food review, and then made the follower pay the tab:

Or how bout that time he messaged a follower and told her that he was going to rig his “raffles” to make sure she won:

Or that time he told the Anchor Pub & Grille that he was gonna raffle a gift card for them, but then he ended up trading it in for a second-hand toilet:

“Some more proof that he’s using gift cards as currency.. So my friend had a brand new toilet he didn’t like and couldn’t return so he sold it to Greg for a $50 gift Anchor gift card that was meant for a NSE raffle and not for his own personal use. Idk if you can use this or not but figured i’d send it.”

Or that time the “we don’t do ads” guy announced that an imaginary “corporate company” (whatever that means) tried to “sponsor his page”:

Newsflash moron – you can’t sponsor an entire Facebook page. The page does not belong to you. It belongs to Facebook. Also, he’s totally not gonna fill the page up with ads, even though 99% of his posts are bought and paid for.

Or what his former coworkers at UPS said when the story came out:

“I went tonight and asked if he knew Greg bates.  He said “that prick”. I showed him the article.  He said Greg was told “it’s highly suggested to retire before you get fired”.  He would start arguments with upper management constantly  and would pass up over time and then file a grievance saying he was never asked to try and get paid. 

Or that time the Anchor Pub and Lucky Dog announced that he was banned from their restaurants after reading what he’s been doing:

Or that time he allegedly threatened Merrimack Valley Eats with a lawsuit for copyright infringement (using the word “Eats”) for their Facebook group, and deleted all comments that mention other food review pages:

Pretty much everything he does violates Facebook’s TOS, for whatever that’s worth:

And finally, perhaps the biggest dick move he’s pulled thus far is what he’s done to a really nice lady named Linda. She was doing a fundraiser for the Jimmy Fund and Greg offered to give her some gift cards to help her out. Except the whole thing was just a ploy to line his own pockets:

I’ve attached the screen shots of every message between Bates and myself.  As you can see he approached me last year about the damn GC’s for my Fundraiser. 

I never asked last year and this year I posted my own request on that page and not one restaurant responded.  It didn’t bother me as I bought and paid for my own raffles as I always do.  Now that I look back on these I should have been suspicious of the whole GC fiasco.  He didn’t have a list of who supposedly donated and on the one hand tells me to go pick them up and on the other says “most will want to see me.” I charge no ad dollars so they are always looking to get on my good side. lol.” 

UNREAL!! He actually wrote that these businesses will “want to stay on my good side.” He knows that they’re all afraid of crossing him for fear of his wrath. I hope the businesses who are still associating with him read this. This is what he thinks of you.

Right, get on his good side by paying cash and GC’s.  It was a nightmare going around picking up those damn cards and in some instances they had no idea what I was talking about .  There are some later messages unrelated to the first fundraiser GC situation.  At one point he was deleting my comments on a post about Rastapasta running out of food one night because “he promoted it”.  I commented that it was poor planning that they ran out food and if I were them I wouldn’t be bragging about it.  I called him out for deleting my comments then he starts messaging me and tells me they had donated a GC for my fundraiser in April so he didn’t want them to see my comments.  Well he never told me they were and I never got one.  I have no idea how many others may have given him one and he didn’t tell me or turn it over.

 

So basically this woman runs an actual, real fundraiser for the Jimmy Fund. Greg swoops in, pretends to be the hero who’s going to help her out by getting her some gift cards, then fails to come through on most of them and makes her drive around everywhere talking to business owners who have no idea what she’s talking about.

Here’s the best part – he couldn’t help her out and get the gift cards because that’s when he was supposedly locked up for not paying child support:

Then he messages me about a comment I made about The Corner Butcher Shop (being a good business, he was attacking them).  He tried to put them out of business or so he thought.  So I get the “no drama allowed” message and he makes it sound like Melinda was the bad guy.  Wrong, I know better.

Next comes the message that I’m badmouthing him because I was upset that he didn’t get me GC’c for my April 2018 fundraiser.  Nope, not true.  At that point I was hearing all the bad stuff and wanted to distance myself from him, so I told him to stop contacting me and not to threaten me (which he did in a subtle way).

Then in mid-May I start hearing from friends who were still in the group (I had been banned and blocked by then) that he was making comments about me on a year old thread from my 2017 fundraiser.  He’s calling me a shady character and the GF (although I think it was him posting as her) says I’m not trustworthy.  The people he tagged are the Rastapasta people  Why he did that and tagged them is beyond me.  I have no clue.  I messaged the screen shot that was sent to me by more than one person and told him to delete it.  He replies with don’t message me ever again… I will not be bullied by you.  Hahahaha!!  Seriously?  The pot calling the kettle black.

The last straw for me was the threat he posted yesterday about him hearing a lot of hysterical things and saying he has a great post from the Salem News from just last month.

He says I will post the Log picture about about the Danvers incident.  I was in a car accident and was arrested for DUI on May 9th.  It is public record, was in the police log for all to see and many did, but he has to be a dick head and humiliate and embarrass me further.  As far as I’m concerned that is over and behind me.  I paid my fine, plead out and I’m attending the mandatory driving class.  WTF does that have to do with his “foodie” group?  Nothing.  He is an evil vindictive person who thrives on hurting others who don’t agree with him.

Yes, that’s right. This woman did absolutely nothing wrong to Greg and was screwed over by him when he never delivered the gift cards for her fundraiser. Naturally once he figured out she was no longer on his team he decided to find her year old post about the Jimmy Fund fundraiser:

And then posts the story from her DUI in the comments so it would come up first on NSE:

So basically he went and got the gift cards on her behalf, and instead of giving them to her he used them to buy a toilet.

Don’t worry Greg – you’ll get yours someday. Karma is a bitch. And I certainly hope that restaurants of the north shore don’t choose to continue to do business with them. I’ll never shame a business for doing business with someone else, because we just don’t believe in doing that. But just let them know that if they choose to, Greg is actively fucking them over, and will turn on them in a heartbeat if they don’t do as he tells them to.

See you in next year’s Ratchet Madness Greggy.

P.S. This one’s still for you Jay Rose.