I hope he and Chris Chan share a cell.

Nooooooo! I don't want Chris in prison. Nick - I don't know, he definitely deserves prison, and in all honesty, it is probably the best thing for him, because at least he'll a roof over his head and food in his belly. But still, part of me, the selfish part, will miss his videos; his drunken rants, his passive-aggressive megalomania, his death threats.

How much time is he looking at? By my estimation, 12 (!!) felony forgery charges could get him up to 36 years in prison. Damn, he's already forty years old, so he might very well die in prison, you know, shankings and such notwithstanding.

I hope he posts bail. I don't know how he could, since it's set at 5,000 and Nick can't even afford to buy a spatula, but still... just one more video. One more before he fades away into the mists of memory. This can't be the end.

Can it?

He uploaded like two videos this morning. I watched them before I went to work.

Life is a fragile, fragile thing.

Can Nick Bravo claim autism as a defense? Wouldn't hurt trying. Seems to work out well for Chris.

I haven't been following Mr. Bravo. what's the context for this?

I doubt it. Even if Nick were autistic, which he's not, his pride would prevent him from ever trying to go this route. He's got a lot of mental and emotional issues - manic depression, alcoholism, NPD - but facing up to any of those things would require Nick to admit that *he's* at fault; that his problems are the result of his own flaws, and not the work of outside agents.

I was talking to Tim about this very subject a couple days ago, but obviously it doesn't matter now, and would never have mattered anyway.

SDC - how much have you missed? Have you missed all of Nick, or just the last year or so? Because if it's just the year, this arrest is apparently the culmination of a prolonged investigation, spearheaded by one of his trolls, into a series of house thefts and real-estate scams that Nick and his former BFF / conman guru, Tim the Christian, were involved in a year or two ago.

He's had a warrant out for nearly a year, which is presumably why he vanished off the internet until this past December.

SDC, very long story short, he's been involved in real estate fraud for a few years now with someone else on YouTube and it's catching up to him.

He made off with a lot of money, but the person behind it all probably made off with wayy more and my guess the DA probably wants Bravo to help go after the other guy.

This sounds like some quality drama. I think I need to catch up.

He got upwards of 0,000 for his part in the fraud with Tim the Christian, though I don't know where he is in all this. Probably in Barbados sipping on a Mai Tai?

Also he spend about ,000 making a professional demo to become a movie actor and it was amazingly awful. I stopped updating on him after that.

On a very special episode of CSI...

"You think you can just cross over to the other side of town and we wouldn't have known? Uh-uh Chico, you see we cops, we talk to each other.... Hands behind your back"

or whatever

Can't say I'm really surprised. First thing I'd do if I committed a white collar crime is get the fuck off youtube, facebook, hell probably poeTV. I guess if I was his attorney I'd probably try to pull some Brandeis shit and say that youtube was the part of his inevitable arrest.. I dunno.

He'll be back in a few years in a Richard Speck -esque prison video, saying "if they knew how much fun I was having in here, they'd turn me loose!" right before going down on a guy.

I'm happy in the sense that I'm glad he finally going to be processed in the system for the shitbag he is (regardless of the actual punishment), but I'm not happy that him and Tim basically got away with this.

On a side note, a lot of people are referring to Tom Davis (the guy who basically kept pursuing Bravo for years) as a troll, but I think that's unfair. He was never really a troll and the things he did actually helped real-world people, namely the 2 families who actually got the houses returned to them when the state found out about the forged deeds. I don't know who this guy is or what his story is, but the fact he turned all this info over to the DA (which seems to be legit) did some good.

If he's a troll then basically all private eyes and journalists are trolls.

Trolls like Jack Thaddeus and Bluespike are like Batman villains. Tom Davis is just Batman.

It's a bittersweet thing. It's sad in the sense that a man's life has basically come to an end, a man we've known for many years, a man who once put a warlock's hex on baleen. But Nick's been one of the walking dead for years, and the only real hope he has is to hit rock bottom and build himself back up. I doubt that'll happen, given the nature of the American penal system, but at least prison will give him access to resources that he wouldn't have had otherwise.

Tom is a vigilante and a good human being, worlds apart from assuckers like Jack Thaddeus and Bluespike. Nick saw him as a troll, and to Nick, I suppose, this was true, even though Tom had the moral and legal upper hand in their duel; the Petrovitch to Nick's Raskolnikov. However, there was a dramatic reveal on the forums last night: as Nick had vaguely suspected, Tom Davis is not actually a retired Air Force veteran! I'll reprint Tom's confession here:


__________

And let me go on record and say that I was never in the Air Force and have no military experience at all. I only made that up to get under Corky and Tim's skin. I had to rile them up and it worked beautifully. I wanted to be what Corky hated. An older man, military enthusiast, and conservative type who trusts the government. It was exactly what Corky needed to throw him off guard so I could uncover his little scheme.

I don't want to be one of those 'stolen valor' guys. I was never in the military and I have nothing but respect for those that have served.

Who I am is not relevant and I always found it funny that Corky put so much importance on it. Corky was more concerned with what people on Youtube thought of him than he was about the actual events of his real life. He has 12 felony counts hanging over his head and he's worried who Tom Davis is. What a nut.

__________

I wish I could see Nick's face if he ever reads that.

Oh yeah, I think Tom has every right to be happy and should be congratulated for doing so much investigation on this. Those two shitbags would've gotten away with it, like you said. I love how Tom describes his character as everything Nick hated. I hope that there aren't any exploitable weaknesses in how the information was gathered though... I'm sure it's all public domain and doesn't change the facts... I just worry about that stuff.

He's one of those rare cases of internet vigilante justice that I'm not all that uncomfortable about because it was going to happen sooner or later, regardless of his trolls, and frankly he really has done everything in his power to make it come to this.

He's a sad case but not a very sympathetic one.

Masterful work, Mr Davis! It's sad that things came to this - stuff like his "I'm A Fraud" video and the Stefan Molyneux call showed that there were still some glimmers of humanity somewhere deep inside him - but Nick made his choices, and this is the inevitable result. As Nick was so fond of saying, he created his own reality.

Two quick questions, if you've got a minute:

1) What's up with Tim? He commented on one of Nick's videos last week; I sent him a reply but I think it got deleted. Is Tim still friends with Nick? (I got the impression that Nick had stopped being a Christian and turned on Tim, but I could be wrong.) And, more importantly, are the cops still after him?

2) Any plans to visit Nick?! If he's allowed correspondence or care packages, please let us know.

Hi Evil,

I too saw little glimpses of humanity and redemption in Corky. Sometimes, he would come to his senses and correctly perceive reality around him and break down and admit the truth that he was a bum and all of what he said is a lie and how he is doing nothing with his life and has no friends, family, or job. Those are the times I felt sorry for him and wanted to help him. But the very next day, he would be back to his smug self and say that he was just 'acting' in the previous video.

The truth is that Corky was doing absolutely nothing with his life and getting worse and worse by sitting in his motor home all day trying to write some silly screenplay and collecting cans from the trash to buy food. He wasn't man enough to face the music and go to a legal aid place and turn himself in. If he did, he would probably get bail and a lighter sentence by showing remorse.

Whatever happens, Corky will surely be put on probation after he gets out and they'll require him to get and maintain a job. That will be the best thing for him. He needs to learn how to support himself, build his self esteem, and learn to socialize and make friends.

1. I have no idea what is going on with Tim. He disappeared a few days after I first reported this situation to the police so my guess is that they contacted him and that scared him so he started laying low. I know that Corky, Tim and G4T went camping about three or four weeks ago so I assume they are all still friends.

2. I have no plans on visiting Corky or revealing my identity to him. I don't intend to have any contact with him in real life or do anything regarding him in real life. As soon as I turned everything over to the police a year ago, I stopped doing real life things about Corky and left everything up to them. I suggest that you don't send Corky anything in the mail and leave the matter alone. It's very serious and keep in mind that they check all incoming and outgoing mail and I don't think you want to get involved in this in your real life. Just let the police and justice system take care of him. Corky is in a very serious situation and it's best to just leave it alone and let it play out.

Opps!!

I meant to write "I am NOT receiving nor am I asking for any money out of this'....

Oh yeah, don't worry, I'm not going to mess with him. I've communicated with Nick enough in the past to know that no good can ever come of talking to him, even without the cloud of the prison-industrial complex hanging overhead.

The only thing I'd want to know is if he's OK with being painted again: there's a national art contest coming up, sponsored by the VA and open to any disabled American veterans. I wasn't going to enter, but now that poor Mr Bravo chances at life are more or less over, I thought it might be oddly fitting to immortalize him in such a contest. Even if I only won a medal locally, we could hang a sombre, thoughtful portrait of Nick in the lobby of a veteran's hospital! He would forever be the Unknown Homeless Man; the sad, enigmatic smile, his final legacy to the world.

Just do it Homer.

Tom,

Do you think Corky was a stooge or the mastermind? If he was a stooge, why would someone partner with him? He's such a huge blabbermouth.