Nevada County Supervisor Ted Owens sent us fake emails pretending to be a supporter!

December 17, 2008: Ted Owens has now topped his other illegal and unethical actions in his unrelenting 4-year effort to help his buddy Frank Cadjew steal our historic public road. Owens sent us several emails in which he pretended to be one "Red Fergus," along with two other emails under his own name in which he embellished his story in an effort to cover up his previous emails.

Nevada County Supervisor Ted Owens sends fake emails to political foes

Unfortunately for Owens, he is not the sharpest tool in the shed. Owens forgot to change his email account name on the first email he sent us and then tried to correct it in his following 5 emails, only succeeding in digging a deeper hole for himself. Owens also apparently didn't know that each of his emails have identifying "header" information that identifies his computer and internet provider, information which we could see with one click.

Owens sent these emails out of the blue. We had not had any contact with Owens in over two years--not since he abused his power by calling out law enforcement to stop us from walking on the road in 2006. Is it just a coincidence that Owens carried out this scheme just two weeks after being re-elected to another 4-year term? Did he suddenly have too much free time on his hands? Or was he laying low for two years just waiting to come after us? His emails were clearly an attempt to harass us and have us believe that we could not win our battle with him and the Cadjews.

We have asked Mr. Owens if there were others who were also involved with this activity, but he refused to respond. Instead, he has threatened to sue us! Imagine a corrupt politician suing a historical preservation group after he sent the group unsolicited fake emails.

Ted Owens must resign. This Chicago-style politician places the public second to his friends, in this case, the Cadjews. He has spent 4 years trying to bestow property rights to the Cadjews--rights that belong to the people of Nevada County and California. Now, we see that Owens will attack political foes with a fake identity and fake emails. And he threatens to sue us?

Politicians like Owens won't stop their corrupt and abusive activities so long as there are no consequences. This latest is only another in a pattern of abuse by Owens, only this time he will see some consequences. We are in the process of taking legal action against both Ted Owens and Nevada County, following the filing of a police complaint.

Details

Owens used three computers for this activity. The first was his computer at his construction business, Owens Construction. His first 4 emails were from this computer. He has an email account for his construction business, ted@owens-construction.com. Owens also has a Juno account, trailblazerx1@juno.com, an account he may have opened just for this email scheme. Juno has free dialup service and email accounts and can be set up quickly. He also has his official Nevada County email account, ted.owens@co.nevada.ca.us. All emails from Owens are shown further down this page after our description of the emails. Each email shown includes the "header" information which identifies the sender's computer and email pathway.

First email details

Owens's first email sent at 5:40pm on November 19th has his biggest blunder--he sent it from his own Owens Construction email account, rather than his Juno account, trailblazerx1. We've all clicked at the wrong time, but this was a doozie.

The contents of the first email are so bizarre that they alone caused suspicion. Incomprehensible and filled with riddles and mysterious people and documents, it is unlike anything we've ever received from a real supporter. Needless to say, we were scratching our heads when we read this first email. It was unsigned, and yet it said it was from Ted Owens at Owens Construction. We were wondering what he was drinking.

Second email details

A few seconds after he clicked "Send" for his first email, he must have realized his mistake, panicked, and compounded his problem by sending us another email from his Owens Construction account 5 minutes after the first email. This time Owens let us know that it was he who was sending this email, attempting to explain away his other email by claiming he just received the email from someone and felt he should forward it to us. Too bad he didn't take a little time to think about what he was doing with this email.

His big mistake with this second email is that he did a "Forward" of his first email but he forgot to change the "From:" line. That "From:" line says Ted Owens, just like the one we got 5 minutes earlier. If he had actually received an email from a stranger and was forwarding it to us, the "From:" line would show the name of the sender who sent it by mistake to Owens (in this case, his fictional person, who Owens identified in the next email as "R. Fergus" and "Red Fergus").

The second red flag with this second email is that we had already received the email that he was "forwarding" to us, and it shows Ted Owens as the sender, just as the one he was forwarding. Two separate emails at two different times, both sent by the same computer and though the same internet pathway. 

The third red flag with this second email is that the date/time of the "forwarded" email shows the exact same time (5:40 pm) as the first email this fake supporter "Red" (Owens) sent to us. Are we supposed to believe that "Red" sent it to Owens, then realized his mistake that same minute and then sent it to us? And yet "Red" didn't add a note about the mistake to us?

The fourth red flag with this second email is that there is no way that he would have just happened to be sitting at his computer at 5:40, opened this email from a stranger, read enough of it to know what it was about, look up our email address, wrote a comment to us, and then forward it to us, all within 5 minutes. Trying to play two people while in panic mode without screwing up requires above-average intellect.

And then there is what might be called a CSI moment with this second email: his fake supporter "Red" put two spaces after each period--something most people do not do, and he occasionally uses an uncommon style of writing, three dots ... between phrases. Not surprisingly, both quirks also show up in Owens's two-sentence comment to us!

Another CSI moment came when we checked our website statistics (which provides us with extremely detailed data about our visitors), which showed NO visitor looking at our website the night before, much less for an hour the night before, as this fake supporter "Red" claimed in his first email to us. The closest was someone with an ATT/SBC internet provider looking at our site earlier that same day for 10 minutes that morning, 20 minutes that early afternoon, and once that late afternoon. Turns out, that was the Ted Owens computer, confirmed by an email sent by Owens later and also by our website statistics which show his first 4 emails came from this computer.

In this email, Owens makes a lame attempt to distance himself from "Red" by asking us "Who is your new friend?"

Third email details

So now we move on to the next email, sent 24 minutes after the last one. This email is from "R. Fergus," with an email address trailblazer1x@juno.com. This email is supposedly a copy of an email from "Red Fergus" to Owens, apologizing to Owens for sending the first email to him. This is where things really get interesting. The first thing that pops up in our minds is why would "Red Fergus" copy to us an email he supposedly sent to Owens--and copy it to us before he ("Red") lets us know about his supposed mistake? But Owens wasn't thinking clearly, or maybe that's as clearly as he can think--all he was thinking about was trying to reinforce the point that he and Red were two different people. And again, there is a problem with the address section of this email. If it was a copy of an email to Owens, where is the copy information? Owens put in a "Re:" at the beginning of the subject, but that is not what would show up in a copy. In a copy, the subject is the same as the other party's subject--no "Re:" at the beginning.

Another red flag is that in this email, "Red" shows his name at the bottom. In his first email to us, he wanted to be anonymous, but suddenly, half an hour later, he decides to tell us his name.

Then he does something else that is another glaring red flag--"Red Fergus" asks Owens for his phone number so he can talk to him (and discuss how Owens is "on the wrong side of this affair"). Yet, "Red" just wrote that he just found Owens's email on Google. If "Red" found Owens's email, isn't his phone number close by? But wait: the email "Red" found is the Owens Construction email. Even though we have Owens's official Nevada County Supervisor email address in plain sight near the top of our homepage, "Red" didn't see that one, but used Google to find Owens's email address. Now if we type in "Ted Owens Truckee" into Google, we get his Nevada County Board of Supervisors email address, which also has his phone number, we get his re-election website with a different email and phone number, we get our famous HDTC website (which Red Fergus supposedly read for an hour the night before). Only on page 2 of Google's results is CATT, (Contractors Association of Truckee Tahoe) and if one digs way down the first page of CATT, one will see the Owens Construction email address and right next to it, his phone number. Yet, "Red" is asking Owens in this email for Owens's phone number, just a few minutes AFTER he had already supposedly searched and found his Owens Construction email address to mistakenly send his email to. Right.

Fourth email details

Then, 6 minutes later, at 6:15pm, "Red Fergus" sends an email to us. This email asks is we got his ("Red's") email, and apologizes for something we wouldn't know about if Owens himself had not "forwarded" "Red's" email to us. Amazingly, without yet hearing from Owens, "Red" knows that Owens has forwarded his email and that Owens has told us about "Red's" email landing in his inbox. We say "without yet hearing from Owens" since it is three and a half hours later that Red tells us that he got a reply from Owens along with a "lengthy" response about the trail (next email).

Oh, and there's one more item in this short email from "Red Fergus"--the three dots...there they are again.

After being given a name to our anonymous supporter, we did some checking with the details from the first email. Google shows no Red Fergus in the US--no "foundation" with a Fergus. Nothing with trails and a Fergus.

Fifth email details

Then at 8:20pm, we email "Red" and ask him to elaborate on some of his items in his first email. We also ask how it is that he is able to send an email from the Owens Construction email account.

"Red" answers us at 9:41pm (from a different computer), telling us that Owens has told him that he forwarded Red's first email and he also sent a lengthy response to Red and that Red has now decided to "sideline" his "simple effort."

The computer Owens used for this email (75.5.240.116) was also used two hours earlier to view our website, from 7:20pm to 7:48pm, and again at 9:44pm to 9:46pm, just 3 minutes after sending this email.

Nowhere is an explanation for how the first email got to us at 5:40pm. The one that says it came from Ted Owens at Owens Construction. The one that is identical to the one that Owens "forwarded" 5 minutes later that also says it came from Ted Owens at Owens Construction.

Sixth email details

We emailed "Red Fergus" and asked him to provide more information, but did not hear back from him again. We then emailed Ted Owens asking him if he could copy to us his "lengthy response" which "Red" told us about to see if Owens has changed his position on the historic road. We also asked Owens to assure us he was not intimidating our supporters.

Owens wrote back, this time, using his official county computer system, not mentioning the "lengthy response" but telling us that "Red Fergus" called Owens at his "business office" and that "Red" "may be related" to Owens and may meet Owens in February when "Red" comes to California! Owens was thereby re-affirming that he was aware of the "Red Fergus" character and was continuing the sham. Also notice the way Owens signed this email and compare it to the previous one. This one shows "T. Owens" and the previous one shows "R. Fergus". It's clear that Red = Ted.

After reading the entire set of Owens's emails below, what stands out is how similar they sound to one of those slimy Nigerian scams that find their way into our inboxes too often. And this guy is a Nevada County Supervisor?