In the April 30 Media Watch column I misidentified the deletion of Twitter posts related to a story on AJ “Ace” Thakore’s PointGuardU website related to a story his site got wrong about basketball recruit Damion Lee. Lee eventually accepted a scholarship with Louisville. Rather than deleting Twitter posts, Thakore deleted a series of about 20 message board posts, many of which contradicted the information he reported on Lee.
The web has no shortage of sites dedicated to college athletics, and most notably recruiting. Coverage of UA athletics and UA recruiting is no exception. Numerous sports networks have sites and affiliations and reporters who are assigned to cover the Wildcats. Most of the time, the sites get along. Sure, they’re competitive, but generally speaking there’s a reasonable professionalism displayed among those responsible for compiling information.
Over the course of its nearly 10-year existence, PGU and some of its followers have managed to badger, harass and attempt to intimidate pretty much every other Wildcat site on the web.
Thakore’s response to my misidentifying the posts is an example. On the Sunday following the column, Thakore left five messages in succession on my answering machine, each increasing in tenor and rage as the machine cut him off every 60 seconds. By the third message—this could get confusing, so bear with me—Thakore threatened to fire someone he was about to hire for a customer service position with his veterinarian design website company, DVM Multimedia.
How does that affect me? Thakore had become aware I was in line for a job as the replacement for the soon-to-be customer service rep, so his idea to retaliate was to threaten to fire the guy he had known for 15 years, the guy who he was offering twice the salary, as a way to make sure I wouldn’t get this job.
“(He’s) in a very precarious position, because I don’t feel like hiring him,” said Thakore on the answering machine.
It appears likely Thakore will hire the individual after all, but not after inflicting torment to a supposed friend who had nothing to do with this incident whatsoever.
All told, Thakore left 10 messages over a seven-day period. Among the valuable insight he provided:
Thakore is a millionaire. This was reiterated about a half dozen times. “I don’t mind looking dumb. I make millions, kind of, so what do I care. You guys have fun with your $15-20 an hour jobs. I’m going to go check my bank account.”
Thakore is a man of power. He was sure to mention this three or four times, including but not limited to, “I’m a man of power,” and “I think you’re going to realize the power I have, and I’m going to come after you if you want to start a war with me,” and “You’re going to make $5 an hour,” which is really powerful because it shows Thakore is capable of usurping federal minimum wage legislation.
Thakore says “buddy” a lot, when I don’t think he means buddy in the friendly kind of way. Fifteen times in 10 messages, by my count.
Thakore does PointGuardU for a hobby. “I run PointGuardU in my spare time, like eight minutes a day. I post something in the forum, I go on with my life. I hire people to do that stuff.”
Yet Thakore, a self-proclaimed millionaire (so he reiterated on about a half-dozen occasions), seemingly has plenty of time to leave multiple vitriolic messages on answering machines and/or voice mails.
Until he moves onto someone else.
On May 16, Thakore berated Gabe Encinas, a writer for the website azdesertswarm.com, in regards to a story Encinas wrote for that site. In his twitter messages to Encinas through PGU, Thakore lashed out at the writer for stealing material from PointGuardU in regards to an upcoming recruiting visit.
“I stumbled upon a story about (high school recruit) Markelle Fultz,” Encinas said. “I saw it on two sources, I saw it on PGU and 247Sports. This looks good, I’m going to write a piece on it, it was published and PGU tweeted at me first and said I was a hack.”
In all modes of journalism, and certainly in the sports realm, attribution is often handled in a very laissez-faire manner. If somebody else breaks a story, a reporter has a few options: run with someone else’s story without reference, give credit to the outlet that ran it first or make your own calls to confirm the information. In sports, ESPN does an excellent job with attribution. It will have its reporters place calls, but when a story was first reported by another outlet, ESPN gives that outlet credit.
Thakore isn’t the only offender, but as outraged as PointGuardU gets about others allegedly lifting their information without attribution, let’s just say PGU is a far cry from ESPN on the issue. And in other ways, their offenses run even deeper.
“They tweeted out (UA assistant coach) Damon Stoudamire was leaving (for a similar position at the University of Memphis), and that was first reported by Jason Scheer, and there was no credit,” said Encinas. “They steal information all the time. I was marketing director at Zona Zoo last year, and all our graphics from facebook and twitter I’d see on their website. I just find it very funny that they’re the ones to call out people for not giving credit.”
Encinas responded to PGU’s initial tweet claiming attribution infringement.
“My thought was, thanks, whatever. I tweeted them back with a smiley,” Encinas said.
Thakore apparently is not a fan of the smiley emoticon. Shortly thereafter, his retort was a lot more unpleasant. In a tweet directed to azdesertswarm, Thakore said, “You stole our info and that article was written by a racist.” The tweet included a link to a website, gabeencinas.com, which hyperlinks to a white supremacist website, whitepower.com.
Now how coincidental is it that Gabe Encinas, a guy who writes for a UA sports website, should share his name with some white power zealot with a Hispanic last name? Not coincidental at all.
Thakore bought the domain for gabeencinas.com. How do we know Thakore bought the website gabeencinas.com? Because a domain registration search shows that gabeencinas.com was purchased that same day by Ajay Thakore through DVM Multimedia.
It’s not the first time Thakore has purchased domain names of reporters who work for competitive websites.
He did the same thing to Gary Randazzo, who works for 247 Network affiliate wildcatsportsreport.com. In addition to leaving a series of blistering voice mails, Thakore purchased garyrandazzo.com and linked it to a porn site. Following a threat of legal action, Thakore changed the website path. It currently links to pointguardu.com.
Said Thakore during an answering machine tirade, “You want to make it my life’s work to make sure you don’t work, that I have a vendetta against you, I will. There’s nothing illegal about that because I stay within the law, buddy.”
At the very least, Thakore certainly has more experience with the law than most, if not all, members of the local media. And definitely more than anyone else operating a website that covers UA sports as a hobby.
Scheer, the editor of wildcatauthority.com, filed a restraining order against Thakore last year following a slew of messages directed at Scheer’s wife. Scheer says Thakore also called TUSD while he was a substitute teacher, claiming Scheer wasn’t utilizing his time in the classroom properly, instead stealing information from PointGuardU.
And this is just a sampling. It doesn’t account for the vitriolic messages he’s left on the voice mails of other competitors, or the number of times he and his PGU associates have flamed message boards with offensive, juvenile trolling posts, or the many occasions witnesses have endured verbal outbursts in gymnasiums while reporting on recruits.
“This guy’s a clown,” said Encinas. “To me, since he attacked me I guess I must have made it.”
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2015.
I don’t care about sports AT ALL, but this was hilarious! What a marooon! LOL
I’m a member of Jason Scheer’s fine site, WildcatAuthority.com. A couple of years ago Ace sent me an email, unsolicited, that just raged against Scheer and one of the more established members of that site, two people I both like and respect. His email was completely irrational and I told him so, told him I had no idea why he was emailing me but if he thought such communication would entice me to become a paid member of his site, he was delusional, and asked him to never email me again. A month later I heard there was an interesting story up on his site, so I went there to try to read it and my IP had been banned. Hilarious. This guy is a first class nut job.
“That guy Ace seems like a real pleasure to be around.”
–Thought nobody ever
Dude is just proving every day that he doesn’t deserve what he has. Can’t wait to watch the car wreck finale.
His behavior is abhorrent. He has done this for years, and if you are even the littlest bit critical, you’re attacked uncontrollably by him and his followers. They go way out of their way to praise him when anything he predicts is correct, and when a case like Lee comes up they don’t even acknowledge it. If you try to even so much as mention that they were wrong, everything you say is deleted and you’re blocked from all of their media. They blocked me on Twitter literally months after I tweeted out one critical message of them. They went back months to find anyone who didn’t give unbridled praise to them. Their obnoxious, unprofessional behavior is appalling.
But the problem that my friends and I have with them, who have also been blocked for any minute critical opinion, is that we continue to view the website because they really do have an amazing amount of insight and info into UA recruiting. On information alone, they really are the best. It might be because they play by absolutely no rules and suffer zero repercussions for their errors, but it’s incredibly frustrating to continue to visit a website run by people I cannot stand, professionally and otherwise. They are able to say and predict things earlier and more often than other outlets because they aren’t held accountable if they’re wrong. But they actually are right a lot of the time, probably 90% or better. It’s so frustrating and insulting to keep coming back to them because they have what I want. Thanks for trying to keep them accountable
@Blocked by Ace. After my confrontation with that idiot I decided that I’m better off just enjoying the team when they play the game rather than following a shameless rumor mill.
those are the actions of a sociopath.
Wow! You should have someone start your car for you…..this guy is nuts
This guy is obviously a nut, but the bigger question is what veterinarian would do any business with this guy’s company?
Ace called me after a slight disagreement on his website – I wanted to know why he thought Ivan Rabb was going to cal… Anyway, he calls me and berates me for literally 20 minutes, and I have to say, while he did shred me and personally attack me (he called me a faggot about 50 times) he said some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever heard: “do I come to your midget glory hole dildo factory and tell you how to run it? No! So don’t try and tell me how to run my website, faggot…” To this I started laughing hysterically which infuriated him. So he went to my Facebook and told me my wife looks like an fat ugly slut, to which I replied “that’s why I married her!” And he hung up. Dead serious, this was about a month ago. This guy is a whack job, but a totally entertaining one!
Morons love to latch on like leaches when ACE gets a prediction wrong and then ignore the other 95% of the time when he gets it right. 17-18 year old children are sometimes unpredictable. That’s why Kameron Chatman decided to betray the trust of the Arizona coaching staff, telling them he was about to commit and then randomly deciding to be a bench bum for the far below mediocre Michigan Wolverines. Sometimes there are dozens of moving parts in a recruitment and a solid commitment becomes a transfer going elsewhere. Lastly its pretty god damn hilarious that Gabe Encinas ran with a story that he had no damn clue about. He saw that Fultz was visiting and then proceeded to fabricate all of the details surrounding the visit like his idea that Kentucky is the leader for Fultz when they haven’t even offered yet and he seems to have little to no interest. If he stole information from ACE more effectively then he’d know that Arizona will be pushing for a commitment from Fultz next week on the visit. Would they do that if Kentucky was the prohibitive favorite? Likely not. He also thinks that there won’t be much roster turnover moving forward. Apparently he thinks that players are not allowed to leave Arizona early for the NBA. Anyway, you all are basically idiots. ACE may not be a kind hearted Mahatma Ghandi type person but he sure as hell gets the job done right and knows what he’s doing. I’d rather be a winner and an asshole than a loser like Scheer any day. Later losers.
Oh yeah! One last comment for everyone saying what a joy Scheer is and that ACE is not a joy to be around (@ODogg and @Wildcat Joe) … for the last two years ACE has spent probably $10K per PAC12 tournament for a suite at the MGM Grand and a crap ton of free liquor and food for his loyal site members. Has Scheer or Encinas or any other bum ever done that for their site members? You jackasses pay more than I do for your memberships and get lousy information and what else? Some free crappy swag? I get grade A information, free shirts, free memberships, free money, and yes, free booze. Suck it.
It says here that one of the staples of DVM Multimedia is reputation management. It seems DVM has a ton of work to do.
One thing that Ace and his internet tough guy cronies have in common: lame, sophomoric insults.
They should hang out at the MGM Grand and have a “Bunch of Maroons” party during the weekend of the Pac-12 Tourney.
Derek works in a laundrymat, which probably means he lives with mom and dad… Or who knows, maybe Ace.
I recognize it’s a mistake to approach this in a logical manner, but for a group that talks about the money, and talks about how amazing PGU is, they really spend a great deal of time trashing other sites. If they’re so good, why bother? Seems an odd approach, this constant self-aggrandizing superiority.
What’s the point?
To the best of my knowledge, no other site has spent the time attacking its competition to the level that PGU has attacked others. If PGU is so in front of all the rest, so dominant, so superior, then why the wasted energy?
Perhaps it isn’t what it claims. And it knows it. And it knows a lot of others recognize this too. Hence the recent decision to charge for information, which the site bragged about not doing and as mentioned in a post above used as a selling point against the other Wildcat websites.
When you act a certain way things eventually unravel. If you do enough stupid, unethical things people start to notice.
Kevin Spacey isn’t the star in this House of Cards. It’s the Ace at the top of the deck that has the furthest to fall.
Far more concerning is Schuster’s use of an answering machine. What is this, 2002? Who the hell uses an answering machine any more? Can you even buy them?
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