<p>I can’t get over that he splits the income from selling books between himself & his ghost writer, but he bills CAI for his expenses promoting his book & purchases copies of books from bookstores( with CAI monies) to give away ( and boost sales) instead of getting them from the publisher.</p>
<p>TO me- that is a bigger deal than slandering the friends he made & going back on his word to build a school in Khane. ( well not really- but he seems to be able to convince himself he is doing good- but numbers don’t lie)</p>
<p>I wonder how Bozeman, Montana will take this.</p>
<p>My guess is that it will be very awkward for Greg in the coming months and years. Montana doesn’t take kindly to scammy people like Greg is being protrayed as.</p>
<p>This is nothing short of a scam…he’s artifically increasing book sales numbers to stay on the bestseller list, and using the booksales to transfer money from the non-profit to his pocketbook. </p>
<p>Clearly, this is dishonest, tax evasion, and scamming the system. Not good for someone who is trying to improve the education system of another country.</p>
<p>Krakauer is a very straight shooter, honest to a fault. Mortenson sounds like a con man to me. Maybe he had good intentions, and did some worthy things, but when you start outright lying, exaggerating and making the big bucks off of donations…</p>
<p>If you pass off fictional stories as being real, in order to convince people to donate to your cause, at least some of the people who donated wouldn’t have if they heard the unembellished real story.</p>
<p>Isn’t that akin to stealing? Telling people a tall tale so they donate to your cause, which you personally benefit from? </p>
<p>Most people defending him say that, well, let’s ignore the tall tales, etc and just think about all the good that he has done.</p>
<p>But - much of the good that he has done has been from money collected under false premise. Does doing good with ill-gotten donations mean that it’s ok the donations were gotten through trickery?</p>
<p>I agree with BOTW. If all the allegations are true, Mortenson defrauded readers & taxpayers. Traveling around the country was not warranted " to inform Americans of the need for schools"- that was the role of the books etc. Traveling around the country actually served to sell more books, boosting his income & notoriety, I don’t see it as specifically aiding CAI.</p>
<p>It also seems that harm was caused to people in Pakistan & Afghanistan by painting them as more hostile and less tolerant in order to portray Mortenson as more sympathetic and help his cause.</p>
<p>I think the fact that he is now paying for his own expenses- since January 2011! So that is FIVE years since the first book was published, & seems to point to a big OOPS! on the part of Mortensons finances.</p>
<p>I’m not saying he hasn’t done good- but he didn’t need to exaggerate. It is actually very interesting to me, that he apparently chose to do so.</p>