Since my first investigative report on Tribewanted Ltd., I have discovered more information that warrants a new article on the subject. This time I'm going to show you some of the history of the Tribewanted founders, Ben Keene and Mark James -- who many may know as Mark Bowness -- most of which they probably don't want you to find out.
In following up on my first Tribewanted article, I searched the Web for more information about Mark James and Ben Keene, the founders of Tribewanted, Ltd. I found a wealth of surprising information. The first thing I turned up was this page, which has a comment at the bottom that suggests that Mark James is an alias for Mark Bowness, whom the poster alleges is a "scam artist." There is a similar post here. The text of the post follows, in case the link goes bad in the future:
"tribewanted is a run by a scam artist, who will do anything through deception to con you out of money. Mark James (otherwise known as Mark Bowness) has scammed a number of people and organisations out of money and services. His book RAD LAD LIVIN is full of false-ified comments and quotes (whom Mark wrote, not the people quoted). Tribe wanted should be avoided at all costs or you will end up losing money through them. Do not pass on your money or trust them at all!"
Obviously such messages cannot be taken at face value, but its various claims can be investigated. And so they were.
The first step is to confirm that Mark James and Mark Bowness are the same man. One Mark Bowness did author the book Rad Lad Livin', and was also behind as many as nine Web sites relating variously to Christian evangelism, tribe-forming of some kind, and world travel.
Let's start with The Engage Network, the only site Mark Bowness was affiliated with before Tribewanted that is still online, though the majority of the content has been removed. We'll take a closer look at Engage Network in a moment.
Secondly, we have Extreme Global Adventure (text-only Google cache provided, since the site has been taken offline and there is no archive.org copy), which sounds somewhat like Tribewanted, but with Mark as the sole traveler to Fiji and other tourist locations. Sometime after December 28 of 2005, the site went quietly into the night, and has yet to return as of this writing. What happened to it and its members? Only Mark Bowness knows the whole story, but it is interesting that Mark James started Tribewanted shortly after that. Did the Extreme Global Adventure become old hat, and die miserably in favor of Bowness' new Web business du jour, or was there a good and sound reason for deleting it? We may never know.
Now here's the onion: the Google cache of Engage Network shows this photo of Mark Bowness next to a link to his now-defunct blog. The same photo is associated with Mark Bowness in this 2004 interview. That photo is remarkably similar to this photo of Mark James on the Tribewanted site, and the photos on the chiefs' blog (scroll down a little more than halfway), and the Australia blog. One of Mark Bowness' former colleagues privately confirmed that the photo of Mark James linked to from the Tribewanted site above is indeed Mark Bowness. At some point, probably around the beginning of 2006, Mark Bowness became Mark James.
Let's go back to Mark Bowness' writing career. He wrote a book called Rad Lad Livin' for Kingsway Communications -- a Christian media publisher -- under its Survivor imprint. Rad Lad Livin' has been erased from the market -- not simply gone out of print or out of production, but totally removed with almost no trace of its existence, save an old amazon.co.uk listing and dozens of old reviews on Christian-themed sites. The person who posted to the springwise Web site linked to and quoted above said that Rad Lad Livin' was "full of false-ified comments and quotes (whom Mark wrote, not the people quoted)." If that's true, it would explain why the book has vanished. However, there is no evidence of legal action against Mark Bowness, Kingsway Communications, or Survivor regarding anything of the sort. No one from the publisher would go on record to say why the book was removed from publication -- just that it was no longer in print.
Mark Bowness also served as editor of two Christian magazines: TheWalk, and Benchmark, both of them "dead tree" and online. Then, sometime during 2005, both magazines abruptly stopped publication and disappeared from the Web. To find out more about why these magazines were abruptly killed, I contacted Annie Porthouse, who was also on the editorial staff of both magazines. She'd written this cryptic blog post in November of 2005 about things going badly "at the top" of the magazine hierarchy. The man at the top was Mark Bowness. Ms. Porthouse, like several other people interviewed for this article, did not want to go on record about her experiences with the magazine, or working with Mark Bowness.
Mark Bowness has a history of starting or associating himself with Web sites that promote Christian evangelism, evangelism training programs, and youth evangelism, then deleting them and starting another, similar site. The more I look, the more I find, and here's what I have so far:
Mark Bowness was also part of this Christian group for a while, though his name and profile are no longer on the site.
The precursor to Tribewanted was Extreme Global Adventure. According to Mark Bowness, it was set to be a huge hit. Here's a snippet of what he said about it on December 27, 2005 (shortly before the site vanished):
"I am a british twentysomething that has come up with the idea of the 'Extreme Global Adventure' which has quickly gained interest from Richard Branson, three tv production companies and a book publisher."
In a strikingly similar manner, Mark James and Ben Keene often go on about the media attention that Tribewanted is supposedly getting. Media attention, however, is not an indication of success or legitimacy. Tribewanted may have been featured briefly on the television show Good Morning America, but so was Scott Peterson.
The post is long, but here's his description of what Mark Bowness would be doing as part of Extreme Global Adventure:
"The concept of this project is simple: One British twenty-something will travel the Globe visiting twelve Global locations spending 2 weeks in each location living the life of a family or individual in that location - eating the food that they eat, hanging out at the places they hang out, living their own stress even attending their place of work 9-5, living out their own joys and their own sorrows. Imagine living with a millionaire in New York, experiencing the stress of running their business and the luxury and comfort of living in their mansion, the meetings, the trials and the triumphs. Two weeks time , he moves on, experiencing the life of a farmer in New Zealand, early morning and long working days, two weeks later he is living in Africa with little food, little work but existing amongst a bundle of smiles. It is these extremes that this British twenty six year old, Mark Bowness is seeking and his daily findings will be recorded on line, on a blog that can be accessed the rest of the world 24/7. The experiences, the images -- all being recorded on my blog that will also display audio and visual messages to keep you updated. This is a real fusion of audio and video blogs, podcasting, e-mails and live chat to acurately convey the extreme lives that I will be following."
Holy ego trip, Batman. If so many anonymous media companies supposedly had an interest in his idea (a claim I find impossible; no one is interested in some anonymous middle class white guy's worldwide vacation, and absolutely nothing is extreme about his chosen destinations), how did he fail to acquire the necessary funding? Mark's a little more specific in this other comment spam (other sites deleted his spam, and one heckled him mercilessly) that he posted:
"Please forgive me for contacting you like this. I am just one British twentysomething who has come up with an idea that has attracted support and interest from Richard Branson, three television companies and a book company and I was wondering of you would like to spend £10 or $17 dollars in order to get your blog to the Globe."
It's always suspicious when someone's business ventures rely more on others giving them money than working hard to earn it themselves. He doesn't even mention current traffic trends, visitor demographics, or expected page views. Who would buy ad space on his site without that information?
Notice in that blog spam, Mark says: "All sponsorship will be added by the 15th January when, at the rate that the sponsorship places are going - there will be no spaces left. The pre-adventure and media exposire starts February in Australia." Well, February has come and gone, and both of the Extreme Global Adventure sites have vanished. Either Mark was lying when he implied that bloggers were signing up for his ad space at a rate that would fill his quota by January 15, or he collected at least some money from people. I wonder if he gave it back to them when the site died? I wonder if the same thing will happen to Tribewanted if it (almost inevitably) doesn't attract the 5000-member quota by September?
One strange property that all of the sites listed above share is that they disappeared in late 2004 or 2005, with several disappearing around March or April of 2005. The absence of extremeglobaladventure.com, egablog.com, and tribewanted.com from archive.org and (mostly) Google's cache suggests that Mark James (or his Web designer) has wised up to the danger of having his past on display for all to see. Just in case the above resources disappear from archive.org after this article publishes, I took high-resolution screen shots of all of the relevant sites, photos, and information.
Mark James' modus operandi seems to progress thusly:
Tribewanted follows this pattern perfectly so far, and currently awaits September to determine what will happen at step 6. If tradition holds true, tribewanted.com will disappear, and members might get some or all of their money back -- and they might not. The latest message on the news page of tribewanted.com as of July 13 indicated 832 customers. As of the same date, Alexaholic shows that tribewanted.com's traffic is declining, and the rate of new signups appears to be shrinking, based on the various past announcements of current membership numbers. Hundreds signed up during April and May, but even at the initial rate of acquisition, at this stage of the game, miracles would have to happen for anywhere close to 5000 people to sign up before September. Even 2500 would be an impressive feat. Mark James and Ben Keene have to attract more than 4100 people in 49 days. If they don't, will step 7 from the above list be in Tribewanted's future? Only time will tell. Perhaps the idea is not as good as Mark and Ben want us to believe. If it were, one could argue that reaching the membership goal would not be such a challenge for them. The other possibility is that it's a good idea with a poorly considered goal; 5000 was an unrealistic number to reach for.
Having done nothing but research Mark James and his previous failures on the Web and in the offline world, I've come to greatly pity him. I've no doubt that Mr. James is not a scammer, and he seems to be charismatic up to the limit of his short-sighted plans. He has a talent for getting a respectable number of people excited about his ideas, but according to a source close to him (and as is suggested by the trail of dead Web sites in his wake), Mark James has historically been unable to follow through with the business aspect of his plans after he has attracted a following. Perhaps that's where Ben Keene comes in.
I've spent a lot of time talking about Mark James and his business and Internet history, but what about Ben Keene, his business partner in Tribewanted Ltd.? Shortly after my first article published, Mr. James announced on tribewanted.com's The Team area that he was taking a "supporting role," and letting Mr. Keene and the Tribewanted television presenter do most of the promotion.
Currently, Ben Keene runs Career Break Cafe, a partially completed online magazine with no daily content and an abysmal traffic history. There is one banner spot that has a few ads, all of which lead to internal pages that describe each featured company's travel/adventure service and how to contact them. There is no online store and nothing is for sale. There are no referral or merchant account links that I could find. No subscription is necessary to view the site. The only part I didn't explore was the newsletter, and I suppose that could conceivably function as a source of sufficient revenue if it had a gigantic number of subscribers, but I find that unlikely considering the low number of visitors. I think it's safe to assume that Ben Keene is losing more money maintaining Career Break Cafe than he's making in revenue. I can't even imagine how he plans to monetize it in the future.
Ben used used to work for Madventurer, a business that looks just like Tribewanted, except it costs more (a realistic, reasonable amount), has a history of success and customer satisfaction, and has more guarantees. Oddly, Ben has an ad for Madventurer and its subsidiary, Sportventurer (for which Ben Keene was once interviewed by BBC News) -- both apparent competitors with Tribewanted -- on Career Break Cafe. A Madventurer company representative refused to comment on Keene, saying only that he used to work there, and that Madventurer has no association whatsoever with Tribewanted Ltd.
I didn't discover how Benjamin Keene makes his living outside of Tribewanted Ltd.
So those are the two guys who founded Tribewanted Ltd.; the two guys who have only attracted 832 people (as of this writing) to their project in three and a half months, but who plan on rallying together the other 4168 in the next month and a half despite declining Web traffic. That's at least $183,000 in membership fees that have been collected so far (some may have bought up to three weeks on the island, which means more money upfront). I wonder where it all is right now, because odds are they will have to return it to the 832 disappointed tribe members, plus whomever signs up in the interim.
"Good business," in the sense that most people understand it, is when a customer gives money to a company on good faith that services or goods will be delivered, expecting a refund in full if no delivery occurs, and the company honors the agreement in full. This is predicated on the ability of the company to honor the agreement one way or the other. Tribewanted Ltd. collects money from customers, promising to either deliver a stay on a Fijian island, or a full refund if enough people don't sign up by September 1, 2006. On its face, that seems to fall within the stated definition of "good business." However, if the company spends that money in the interval between the payment and the delivery or refund, then a refund is not possible without liquidating business assets or contributing personal funds, and the company would be operating outside the realm of the common understanding of ethical business practices. Such behavior could potentially be labeled tortius.
Therefore, in order to ensure that Tribewanted is not negligently handling its customers' money, current and potential customers of Tribewanted Ltd. should demand an accounting of where their money goes after they've given it to the company. Being labeled a tribe member may sound warm and fuzzy, but really it is just a clever way of saying customer. "Where is the money going?" is a question I have asked before, but I was stonewalled by Tribewanted's public relations representative, Imal Wagner. However, another journalist did get an official answer from an apparent Tribewanted representative (emphasis mine):
"With regards to your questions, accommodation, toilets and food are all covered in the community fee.
The tribe will have a tribal kitty that will go towards the development of the Island, that will cover accommodation, toilets etc we have also put offer a good amount of finances into the investment and development of the local tribe, such as developing schools etc. Finally, we are also launching 'The Dream Foundation' a charity to help support individuals across the areas of the world that our members will come from. Yes, of course we will retain a limited amount to cover running and admin, as any business would.
In terms of your concerns we are working alongside the local tribe and the Native Land Tourist Board (NTLB) in Fiji in order to ensure that the project will be of benefit to both the environment and the tribal people."
If even one cent of the membership money is spent before the company has committed to delivering the promised services -- the stay on the island, plus whatever accommodations are decided upon -- how can a complete refund be possible? If a portion of the membership funding is being retained for "running and admin" (perhaps that means plane tickets for Mark and Ben's trips to Fiji and Australia, plus various Web site and office costs?), who will replace that money if/when it comes time for a refund? Until that question is satisfactorily answered, no Tribewanted customer can be sure that their half of the business agreement will be honored. I don't think Ben Keene and Mark James are wilfully scamming anyone, but I do think that perhaps they have wagered too much on successfully meeting unrealistic membership goals. I guess we'll all see on September 1.
And what of the comments that started this article -- the claims of Mark James being a "scam artist" and his ex-book being full of lies? I discovered the facts of the matter off the record, so I can't tell you what I found. Perhaps you can find some satisfaction in knowing that I'm convinced that Mark James is more careless and immature than he is malicious and greedy. You might well lose money through Tribewanted, but I doubt that it will be because Mark James (or Ben Keene) plotted to steal it from you.
If you don't trust these guys and are still interested in taking part in something like Tribewanted, why not check out Madventurer? After all, the Career Break Cafe recommends it.
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Copyright 2006 Jem Matzan.
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