How much the Florida Democratic Party knows about William "Will" Rankin it isn't saying.
The party keeps its candidate for chief financial officer at barge-pole length, doesn't help him raise money, doesn't invite him to mixers, seldom mentions his name.
So I'm wondering if they're just put off by his bio that doesn't add up. Or all the address hopping. Or his cockadoodle campaign website(be sure to click on "coalitions")? Or has the FDP been contacted by the same distraught people I have -- Europeans claiming William Rankin owes them, or people they know, money.
What's so odd about three people insisting Rankin conned them is, nowhere in his lengthy self-promotion does he place himself in South Africa, Europe or the United Kingdom. The closest he gets is calling himself "an experienced international businessman." On his website bio he was born of humble parents in northern Kentucky, is hard-working and patriotic, a veteran and a fraud fighter.
But for several years Rankin, 54, was in Europe and Africa.
In November last year reporters unearthed and wrote about Rankin's failed attempt to make a go of Millionaire Lifestyle Magazine, "an online publication for uber-wealthy jet-setters," which was begun in South Africa. He is listed as the founder and publisher. Check out the magazine's bio page.
The magazine is the issue, according to the three women who contacted me by telephone and by email. Rankin was looking for investors. Two of the three of them bit. The third said she loaned him money to bail his best friend out of jail in South Africa, and she sent me the promissory note to prove it.
Now, I thought I was finished writing about William David Rankin. He isn't going anywhere. In nearly 11 months, his campaign hasn't generated any movement or raised enough money to scare a bunny rabbit let alone Republican CFO Jeff Atwater.
But it's not every day I get an overseas phone call claiming a state candidate in Florida is a con man. When I got the first one from "Amber" on March 25, in very broken English, I dismissed it. This could be just a woman who held a personal grudge, I reasoned.
Then within the month, on April 22, I got the second call from Avi, a woman with a heavy Scandinavian accent on a bad connection. Avi claimed she had come across my earlier stories and wanted me and the people of Florida to know Rankin stole as much as $4 million from her. Now I'm thinking, wait a minute: One call is a dismissal, two calls are a red flag.
Finally, in September, I get a call from Pandora Newby in Bath, England, who tells me her story and sends me a copy of the promissory note with Rankin's signature. She's been trying to get her money back -- $8,000, the amount with interest he owes her -- but he doesn't respond.
Now I'm thinking, hold on here. Either this is mistaken identity of vast proportions, or there's some diabolical international plot afoot to destroy the reputation of a state candidate 6,000 miles away in Florida ... or, if you remember the film "Catch Me If You Can," we've got ourselves a Leonardo DiCaprio impersonator.
A third caller isn't a red flag, it's a victim alert.
I think Avi is probably the same person who contacted Chaz Stevens at his website, myactsofsedition.com. Avi told me a lot of the same things Chaz reports from her email. She explained on the phone and in writing why she didn't want to give her name:
From Avi's email: "At this moment i prefer to be anonym because of the damage this person have done for me and my family ...William Rankin belives evrything he tell about him self ...He get dangerous and start telling you to keep your mouth close or like he told my laywers to go to hell (i have it in writing)."
She said, "He stole a couple of my years and my money too like 4 millioner $ ...I tell you can write a book about this man."
Pandora Newby didn't have such a long and involved experience with Rankin. She told me she met him through a friend and hoped if she helped him find investors in Britain, he would give her a job at his magazine. She was working in Wales at the time and wanted to move back to London.
She was with him on one occasion, she said, when he got a call from South Africa informing him his best friend Sean Sandell had just been arrested and thrown in jail. "He was desperate for bail money, so I offered to loan him the money under a conventional loan agreement. See the promissory note in the attachment below.
Here's what Newby wrote in her follow-up letter.
"When the loan became due and I contacted Mr Rankin via email over a number of years, he always replied promptly that he did not currently have the funds. I suggested a payment plan or anything that would start the repayment process; he was unwilling to make any sort of payment plan andseemed to be travelling extensively to Canada, South Africa, U.K. and to various states within the U.S.A.
"I began to realise I would need legal assistance which, after research, became unrealistic due to theretainer costs. Although the loan is relatively small, it rankles with me very much how dishonest Mr.Rankin has been, why he said he needed the money and why he has not to date paid it back. It also somewhat feels like my duty to make known the character of this man before he takes on such aresponsible position if elected to the position of CFO for Florida."
Well, Rankin denies all of it.
He denies Amber, Avi, and Pandora. No, he doesn't deny them, per se. He acknowledges he was in South Africa, Sweden, England and other European countries during six years in the middle of the last decade. He was trying to establish his magazine, he said. But he denies owing any of them money.
"No, no, no, I don't owe anybody," Rankin told me. After the magazine, "all sorts of people showed up claiming all sorts of things, but they're not true."
He said Avi "is probably Maria Borg, a woman I had a business dealing with in Sweden. She actually stole from me, not the other way around. Took property out of my name. There are probably half a dozen people looking for her for fraud."
Could he prove it?
"Call my attorney in Stockholm, Mats Osterholm. He will tell you all about it."
I called and emailed Osterholm. No call-back, no return email. Rankin said he recently discovered Osterholm had a different number and email address. So I tried those.
Nothing.
Nor did I hear back from the contact he gave me as his American attorney.
I waited two weeks to write this, contacting and recontacting lawyers, hoping to corroborate Rankin's Maria Borg story. I even phoned Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Allison Tant, leaving a message on her voice mail, asking her if maybe she had heard the same stories. No call-back there, either.
As for Pandora Newby, Rankin told me, "The matter with Pandora was eight years ago. It's been resolved. We're old friends, she voluntarily loaned me money, we even kept in touch and she's been paid back."
Could he provide anything in writing to show me the debt has been satisfied?
His answer: "I'm just going to tell you it was resolved."
Newby said later, calling the two of them "old friends" is absurd. "Friends, I think not. I wanted a job, so I met him and that was a big lesson for me -- I had never realised, naively, that a person can say anything in writing and that their character need not back it up in any way. Mr. Rankin used the word 'integrity' a lot. That resonated with me. ... He certainly had some skill with vocabulary."
What is it about American politics? Or Florida politics? Or both. Who dropped the ball here? Never mind that he hasn't got a platform or a ghost of chance Nov. 4. How did William "Will" Rankin become a major political party's sole challenger for a Cabinet post in the fourth largest state in the nation?
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
