Flight Africa's Fantastic Frischling Follow-up!

Earlier today we mentioned Frischling sent tweets to @FlyEU (who runs the Flight Africa blog) asking how @FlyEU could be tracking his Twitter account IP. We were confused because @FlyEU never Tweeted this and it was not in his blog post.

Well guess what... @FlyEU never publicly said that. Instead, he was a message he had sent to the the fake Kenya Air account back in 2009. (Read this if you missed his first blog post.)

It seems the only way Steven Frischling would know about this "we're tracking you" threat is if he was indeed the person behind the fake Kenya Air Twitter! Which furthers @FlyEU's allegation that Frischling was trying to extort the airline for $1 million.

Check out Flight Africa's follow-up blog post today with the screenshots:

http://www.flight-africa.com/2011/06/impersonator-steven-frischling-aka.html

Remember this individual had nothing to gain by coming forward with this information. Please write on his blog to thank him!

Frischling Comes Out of Hibernation...

Steven Frischling: Over 1 Billion Lies Served!

He came out of hibernation to respond to Flight Africa, who shared the tale of Frischling trying to extort an African airline two years ago:

One problem: FlyEU never claimed this. We saw his Tweets and his blog. He never once said he tracked it to his Twitter IP.

Again, Frischling thinks nobody will bother to check out what he says. All he wants to do is get out of something for the next 10 seconds. It's like he thinks he is outsmarting everyone

Happy Lying, folks!

Update: The impostor Kenya Air Twitter!

Flight Africa Rips Steven Frischling A New One!

The person behind the "Flight Africa" blog and @FlyEU Twitter (11k+ followers) has come forward with the following personal tale of Steven Frischling: "@flyingwithfish or Steven Frischling: The Airline Social Media Fraud"

Brilliant, brilliant, BRILLIANT!

Highlights: The blogger describes the sudden emergence of social media in 2009 and businesses eager to join in, and consultants showing up offering to help:

But amongst the good fellas who pioneered this new phenomenon, there was one douchebag called Steven Fritschling; a fraudulent guy who had used his skills to build a fishy online brand as a "Travel Strategist". Steven Frischling is to social media campaigns what burglars are to expensive art. Armed with the internet, and I must assume, loads of idle time(the current global job market offers an evil but creative mind some ample playground, especially if this idler has access to the internet), he would hop onto hundreds of airline websites in the "Contact Us" pages collecting email information. What followed next was an avalanche of social media consulting offers. He would search info about airline, pick some tips from Slideshare and package the half-baked ideas carefully as his own; offering road maps to a social media paradise.

Apparently Frischling contacted an African airline (not identified but we believe to be Kenyan Airways) offering to run their social media services. Apparently he was ignored, and did not like this.

A few weeks passed by and then one day, we started noticing a new account impersonating our official airline Twitter account. It was Steven Frischling. He was simply searching for mentions of the airline on Twitter and then replying to conversations from passengers etc with misinformation. It was his way of taking revenge.

Frischling then threatened to sue the airline for $1 million, saying the airline had ripped off all his ideas! Flight Africa posted screenshots of Twitter Direct Messages in which Frischling apparently offers to "help" with the fake Twitter account.

Of course we can't authenticate the screenshots, but what motive would Flight Africa have for making this all up? This person has nothing to gain by coming forward.

Most normal people cannot comprehend this behavior. My boss then, a great guy who was doing wonderful digital initiatives at the airline and who had taken a bold move to adopt social media at a time when it was anathema to most companies including airlines was shocked beyond words. In the corporate world of where people fancy doing things in an appropriate manner, Steven's antics are like a horror movie.

They decided to ignore him because he had no claim.

Eventually we decided to simply ignore him and by the time I left, the airline's social media campaign was a shining example for others to follow. Steven the douchebag eventually gave up when he realized that his hope of netting $ 1 million from fraud was just a bad dream but not before giving one last kick. He published an article on Boarding Area in which he expounded on his claims of how the airline had used "his ideas" and how he had a paper trail etc.

This is all vintage Frischling. It's not even shocking how he lists the airline on his resume, claiming he "Developed a total emerging media strategy for Kenya Airways." How deranged is that?

We don't know the guy's name, but thank you for coming forward with your story. This person has nothing to gain by telling this story publicly and it can't be tied to this blog/bitter brides/scheming ex-girlfriends, etc. What wild story will Frischling come up with that explains this all away?

Did Steven Frischling Try to Blackmail African Airline?

Frischling finally came out of his Twitter silence to respond to a Tweep called @FlyEU. Check out the exchange:

Then FlightAfrica left the following comment here:

We were victims of his fraudulent activities some two years back; he sent us some unsolicited emails on social media and then went on claim to that he was "consulting" for us. Then the airline went through another month of blackmails and threats that he would sue us for $1 million for using "his ideas".

He gloated on Twitter and created a fake Twitter account where he posted fake tweets to confuse our tweeting passengers. He even wrote a blog post about the whole episode http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwithfish/2009/11/19/airline-executives-social-media-e-mail-reply-all-blunders/

Reading it, you can see the psychopath was thoroughly enjoying his antics. For someone who is not used to this cruel side of human beings, i was shocked beyond words at this behaviour and the embarrassment this had caused all the hardworking people with whom we had sat for hours and days and months to create a vibrant social media campaign for our airline. When I saw him take over the KLM project, i knew he would soon use these same tactics but I had seen enough of the devil, I wanted nothing to do with him. Besides, I thought the KLM people would read through his antics quick enough and discard him.

Now, if this was an anonymous poster/brand new Twitter it might be suspicious, but this appears to be a very legitimate individual! @FlyEU almost 12,000 followers and http://www.flight-africa.com/ blog looks to be well-established with content going back a year.

We can guess this is Kenyan Airlines as @FlyEU has a Kenyan Airlines plane on his page, and, Frischling claims credit for Kenyan Airlines social media plan in his LinkedIn resume!

We will post more after FlyEU puts up his blog post...