John Von Achen. CIA in Russia and Ukraine. Dead at 49. RIP.
John Von Achen.
Where to begin?
I first heard his name while in Saint Petersburg, Russia in the late 90s.
My top sales guy, Leonid Khomutinnikov, had raved about his sales class provided sometime in the mid 90s at one of the two Russian phone companies majority owned by American Investment company PLD Telekom. The training course was either held at the smaller though 100% owned Baltic Communication Limited (BCL), or the much larger 71% owned PeterStar Telecommunications. I think it was BCL.
These names are now things of the past for the mergers and acquisitions of such Russian telephone companies made them into departments of much larger national Russian phone companies.
PeterStar a part of Megafon, one of Russia's premeire national cell phone companies. As to BCL I simply dont recall.
I do recall John Von Achen, and I admit I was curious as to who he was and how he had gotten the generally reserved Leonid to show such enthusiasm.
It was early 2006, I had just quit Harris Corporation a few months earlier, as my corrupt boss Dana Mehnert (Dana Mehnert is likely a conspirator in the 2014 failed CIA assassination attempt on Obama. I've described my reasoning for this conclusion in other posts contained in this blog. Simply look for the two with 'Dana Mehnert' in the title) had me in his sights and was about to have me fired.
Dana had waited until I had booked the largest contract to that time from a South American customer (US$14.5M from the Chilean Army to reequip their 6th division with brand new IP cavale networked military radios in a project called ACERO, which translates into Steel in English), then called me into a meeting with the senior HR rep present, let me know in no uncertain terms that I didn't fit in and was to be fired. I was relieved for I could not wait to get out of that company, away from certain of those people for their vibes were off the chart negative, and said I think Ill save you the hassle, retain a bit of pride and quit.
And so I quit. This must have been late 2005. I had had an idea to start my own boutique sales training company in Russia with self as owner, manager, and trainer. The results of which may still be seen on facebook at RICK MACY SALES TRAINING.
The commercial venture went well, I selected a Russian partner I had known for some years, indeed we had worked together in Moscow at Comstar Telecommunications (now part of national cellphone company MobileTeleSystems), Igor Baykov. Igor had just left Nokia being unhappy with the corporate brainwashing for which he had little taste. Interestingly, at least to me, Igor runs his own company focused on Russian telecoms and lives on a Cambodian beach. Bravo Igor!
And for a time Igor and I were happy. Our first customer the monopoly phone company of my Russian 'sparrow' wife's hometown of Nizhny Novgorod, the company then known as 'Volgatelecom'. They had ordered 6 days of training, three of corporate sales and three days of customer service. Theory, exercises, role playing with video feedback to hammer home effective behaviors and those less so.
And we had more and more customers. Cisco, Ingersoll Rand, Rostelecom, Telstra, Megafon, Dalsviaz and more. I was happy. I think I was good as a corporate trainer.
In early 2006 I had been invited by a former employee, a gal I twice hired. Born in Yurga and included in a special Russian Presidential club for good students, Elena Ponomareva. Lena had been my deputy sales director while in Siberia launching Beeline Cellular Communications, and again in Moscow as my deputy for Customer Care.
I had liked Elena for she had played to my ego calling me among other things 'her teacher'. Elena now lives in Cyprus running some sort of Psychological Seminar company. It has a Facebook page and could be found were one to be interested.
In 2006, Elena was head of the newly born Russian CRM association. As such she had organized a Moscow based CRM conference and asked me to provide a presentation.
As I believed myself to be in the process of reinventing myself as trainer/guru I readily agreed. And at the day of the event Elena asked me one more thing, would I chair the afternoon's telecoms section. Of course I said yes.
I don't recall much of my presentation but for that my style was akin to that of an American day time talk show host like Phil Donohue, where the emcee wanders into the crowd to effect reactions and to manipulate emotions.
I always liked that sort of stuff. Made me feel alive. Real.
After the conference, John Von Achen and his tall brunette assistant Russian Julia Kochareva approached me,complimented me, and began to pitch me on the idea of doing an audio book together.
I was of course delighted to have garnered such interest, I was curious to meet John and Julia was a pretty girl, quite smart. So why not?
John explained he had published a series of audio books in CD format. Perhaps to address and reduce any possible skepticism I might have John claimed he had done another CD to broaden his CD company's appeal with another American speaker unfamiliar to me, and John proposed if I would write it and record it under his management he would pay me $1500 cash.
I said yes. Having a CD audio book in those days could only affirm my new found status as trainer and management guru. The writing was easy. Just as it is now in this blog. The recording took more time as Julia, a synchronous translator, would immediately after my spiel in English would say the same in Russian. That too, some getting used to. And while I am a decent trainer of the corporate sort, John had the far better, deeper voice for such recordings. John had presence, he worked at it. He had to hide the lack of substance behind that commanding voice was an opinion I developed and still now hold to.
After some discussion we called the audio book 'First Among Equals: Profitable Management Advice'
After we recorded and he produced the audio book, I was surprised when in approximately 6 months time he gave me, prese tes to me gifted to me all the CDs he has made. I was happy to have them and didnt think about it.
I've had time since then, and John passed a few years back while I was still in the US at the tender age of 49.
Now let's take a step back and identify the CIA/FSB methodology used above. Elena had invited me to a conference where I 'would just happen to meet John Von Achen'. Nothing random in that at all. There for this is probably a spy term dry and clinical.
Let's continue with the story of John and I. We had fallen out for a few years due to his gal pal who he later married and divorced, Julia Kochareva, now residing in Orlando, Florida, coming on to me at a wonderful resort in Turkey that John was somehow managing.
The story John had told me was that the owner Mikhail Prokhorov had bought, listened to, and was so enamored with one of John's CD (Mr. Prokhorov is of note as he also owns the NBA's Brooklyn Nets and is one of Russis's richest men).
John invited myself and my family for a free two week stay at Sungate, this Turkish property having been purchased by Russia's third richest man, Michail Prokhorov. Beautiful 5 star Turkish hotel.
I thought my God John I know you and you while a good bullshitter and captivating speaker you know nothing about running hotels. I know even less. So I took the opportunity to present to John a man I had mistakenly considered a friend, Patrick Naughter, a man with a strong background in hotels, coming uup the fianance career path into general management, who these days runs a Hilton in Moscow just outside of one of her airports.
And unless I miss my guess Patrick is also MI6, explaining his feigned friendship with me for several years, from 1998 when we met in Saint Petersburg, up until 2014 when I realized what he was up to.
And in December 2015, my Russian FSB trained 'sparrow' honeypot trap Svetlana delighted when she asked me in our first Skype video call in a very long time, "Rick didnt you know that 80% of your expat friends were intelligence agents?" This confirming dots I had strung together, Stephen Gardner introducing me to Patrick. Patrick introducing me to Canadian Kyle Patching, he who I believe works for Canadian CIA, and who sent me time and time again NLP coded suicide messages 'hang in there' as tagline for each and every facebook message he sent me over the years. This Kyle Patching who again played a dark psy ops game asking me to pick him up razors while in the US claiming they were there cheaper than in Russia. Being suspicious I later checked and found this a bold faced lie.
By then only corrupt NCIS agent Douglas Boyce had admitted to me having been in the employ of the CIA when we met in Russia in 1999. This he told me in the comfort of his Virginia Beach home in the spring of 2014.
So back to John Von Achen. While his guest at Skygate, we are enjoying an indoor pool, wherein John excellently slips and knocks his head on the tile floor. I thought it real, not yet realizing there was even a thing called 'street theater' nor how many times I had been subjected to it.
John seemed woozy and was carried off. My wife was in our three story free hotel room with our son then 9, leaving me with alcohol in my system and the lengthy brunette, Julia Kochareva alone in the pool. And as 1 and 1 equals 2, I responded to her come ons and we made out there and later on the beach under the moonlight. Proclaiming her fidelity to John, she allowed me to digitally masterbate her to orgasm. By digital, I mean using my hands and not a computer.
I was pleased. Felt like I was alive. Had no idea I was being set up for a long term bit of psy ops. One thing I can say about spies from experience. They take their time so as not to appear rushed or forced. What would be the point of that?
Years later, with John owing me $2000 he calls me and says that Julia admitted to him to having an affair with some man unknown. I pretended to be shocked and stayed quiet. In some months John came back at me saying Julia had told him it was me and that he had given me the chance to 'fess up which I passed on, not wanting to throw either self or Julia under the proverbial bus. You see she had asked me for my silence in this matter and I had agreed.
John and I met in a local Saint Petersburg hotel to discuss the matter. This was a psy op, magnificent and dark. He played it for all it was worth, throwing back a huge curtain as he entered the room. I recall thinking, my God, what showmanship, having a difficult time to take him seriously, though the matter, a triangle of sorts serious enough.
As I look back now, I see the set up for what it was. I cant recall the exact date, but it was around the time of my poisoning in August 2011, and of my mother's passing in September 2011. I had also received a call around that time of unknown origin from some Russian man claiming to be from Moscow interested in my Saint Petersburg company Akademia-Konsalt.
On December 25th, 2011, the man who had poisoned me in August 2011, Alexander Tregubov admitted falsely (though this I would only learn in October 2013) to beating on Evgeniya Viktorovna Kosheleva, a prostitute I had taken to and had for reasons emotional and deeply psychological decided to protect, with the goal of getting her from the bordello and to a university. Why? Because I thought that I could. And having suffered the loss of my mother, the 35 pounds, and so much more, saving someone's life, someone I barely knew, when my own seemed somehow caught up in some sort of horrific maelstrom, seemed somehow right, noble, perhaps even earning grace of a sort, if there is to be such a thing to be had.
Back to John. As Russian and US relations cooled after the Crimean adventure, John moved South to ply his trade in the Ukraine, even speaking at a lecture with Richard Branson.
It seemed suspicious to me, then as now. John had supposedly published so many books, if to look on Amazon, perhaps 30. I never understood where he found the time. And from John, although I had of him grown fond, there was always a sense of falseness he radiated.
My best guess, like so many in my life, especially since my original move to Russia in 1996, John was a spy, CIA. He's dead now, though he lives on in my memory, in these stories. I can't help to wonder if karma plays a role in those so untrue who die so young as John, or as in such cancerous pain as another colleague, Peter Owen Edmunds. Another story for another time that one.
RIP John Von Achen.
Where to begin?
I first heard his name while in Saint Petersburg, Russia in the late 90s.
My top sales guy, Leonid Khomutinnikov, had raved about his sales class provided sometime in the mid 90s at one of the two Russian phone companies majority owned by American Investment company PLD Telekom. The training course was either held at the smaller though 100% owned Baltic Communication Limited (BCL), or the much larger 71% owned PeterStar Telecommunications. I think it was BCL.
These names are now things of the past for the mergers and acquisitions of such Russian telephone companies made them into departments of much larger national Russian phone companies.
PeterStar a part of Megafon, one of Russia's premeire national cell phone companies. As to BCL I simply dont recall.
I do recall John Von Achen, and I admit I was curious as to who he was and how he had gotten the generally reserved Leonid to show such enthusiasm.
It was early 2006, I had just quit Harris Corporation a few months earlier, as my corrupt boss Dana Mehnert (Dana Mehnert is likely a conspirator in the 2014 failed CIA assassination attempt on Obama. I've described my reasoning for this conclusion in other posts contained in this blog. Simply look for the two with 'Dana Mehnert' in the title) had me in his sights and was about to have me fired.
Dana had waited until I had booked the largest contract to that time from a South American customer (US$14.5M from the Chilean Army to reequip their 6th division with brand new IP cavale networked military radios in a project called ACERO, which translates into Steel in English), then called me into a meeting with the senior HR rep present, let me know in no uncertain terms that I didn't fit in and was to be fired. I was relieved for I could not wait to get out of that company, away from certain of those people for their vibes were off the chart negative, and said I think Ill save you the hassle, retain a bit of pride and quit.
And so I quit. This must have been late 2005. I had had an idea to start my own boutique sales training company in Russia with self as owner, manager, and trainer. The results of which may still be seen on facebook at RICK MACY SALES TRAINING.
The commercial venture went well, I selected a Russian partner I had known for some years, indeed we had worked together in Moscow at Comstar Telecommunications (now part of national cellphone company MobileTeleSystems), Igor Baykov. Igor had just left Nokia being unhappy with the corporate brainwashing for which he had little taste. Interestingly, at least to me, Igor runs his own company focused on Russian telecoms and lives on a Cambodian beach. Bravo Igor!
And for a time Igor and I were happy. Our first customer the monopoly phone company of my Russian 'sparrow' wife's hometown of Nizhny Novgorod, the company then known as 'Volgatelecom'. They had ordered 6 days of training, three of corporate sales and three days of customer service. Theory, exercises, role playing with video feedback to hammer home effective behaviors and those less so.
And we had more and more customers. Cisco, Ingersoll Rand, Rostelecom, Telstra, Megafon, Dalsviaz and more. I was happy. I think I was good as a corporate trainer.
In early 2006 I had been invited by a former employee, a gal I twice hired. Born in Yurga and included in a special Russian Presidential club for good students, Elena Ponomareva. Lena had been my deputy sales director while in Siberia launching Beeline Cellular Communications, and again in Moscow as my deputy for Customer Care.
I had liked Elena for she had played to my ego calling me among other things 'her teacher'. Elena now lives in Cyprus running some sort of Psychological Seminar company. It has a Facebook page and could be found were one to be interested.
In 2006, Elena was head of the newly born Russian CRM association. As such she had organized a Moscow based CRM conference and asked me to provide a presentation.
As I believed myself to be in the process of reinventing myself as trainer/guru I readily agreed. And at the day of the event Elena asked me one more thing, would I chair the afternoon's telecoms section. Of course I said yes.
I don't recall much of my presentation but for that my style was akin to that of an American day time talk show host like Phil Donohue, where the emcee wanders into the crowd to effect reactions and to manipulate emotions.
I always liked that sort of stuff. Made me feel alive. Real.
After the conference, John Von Achen and his tall brunette assistant Russian Julia Kochareva approached me,complimented me, and began to pitch me on the idea of doing an audio book together.
I was of course delighted to have garnered such interest, I was curious to meet John and Julia was a pretty girl, quite smart. So why not?
John explained he had published a series of audio books in CD format. Perhaps to address and reduce any possible skepticism I might have John claimed he had done another CD to broaden his CD company's appeal with another American speaker unfamiliar to me, and John proposed if I would write it and record it under his management he would pay me $1500 cash.
I said yes. Having a CD audio book in those days could only affirm my new found status as trainer and management guru. The writing was easy. Just as it is now in this blog. The recording took more time as Julia, a synchronous translator, would immediately after my spiel in English would say the same in Russian. That too, some getting used to. And while I am a decent trainer of the corporate sort, John had the far better, deeper voice for such recordings. John had presence, he worked at it. He had to hide the lack of substance behind that commanding voice was an opinion I developed and still now hold to.
After some discussion we called the audio book 'First Among Equals: Profitable Management Advice'
After we recorded and he produced the audio book, I was surprised when in approximately 6 months time he gave me, prese tes to me gifted to me all the CDs he has made. I was happy to have them and didnt think about it.
I've had time since then, and John passed a few years back while I was still in the US at the tender age of 49.
Now let's take a step back and identify the CIA/FSB methodology used above. Elena had invited me to a conference where I 'would just happen to meet John Von Achen'. Nothing random in that at all. There for this is probably a spy term dry and clinical.
Let's continue with the story of John and I. We had fallen out for a few years due to his gal pal who he later married and divorced, Julia Kochareva, now residing in Orlando, Florida, coming on to me at a wonderful resort in Turkey that John was somehow managing.
The story John had told me was that the owner Mikhail Prokhorov had bought, listened to, and was so enamored with one of John's CD (Mr. Prokhorov is of note as he also owns the NBA's Brooklyn Nets and is one of Russis's richest men).
John invited myself and my family for a free two week stay at Sungate, this Turkish property having been purchased by Russia's third richest man, Michail Prokhorov. Beautiful 5 star Turkish hotel.
I thought my God John I know you and you while a good bullshitter and captivating speaker you know nothing about running hotels. I know even less. So I took the opportunity to present to John a man I had mistakenly considered a friend, Patrick Naughter, a man with a strong background in hotels, coming uup the fianance career path into general management, who these days runs a Hilton in Moscow just outside of one of her airports.
And unless I miss my guess Patrick is also MI6, explaining his feigned friendship with me for several years, from 1998 when we met in Saint Petersburg, up until 2014 when I realized what he was up to.
And in December 2015, my Russian FSB trained 'sparrow' honeypot trap Svetlana delighted when she asked me in our first Skype video call in a very long time, "Rick didnt you know that 80% of your expat friends were intelligence agents?" This confirming dots I had strung together, Stephen Gardner introducing me to Patrick. Patrick introducing me to Canadian Kyle Patching, he who I believe works for Canadian CIA, and who sent me time and time again NLP coded suicide messages 'hang in there' as tagline for each and every facebook message he sent me over the years. This Kyle Patching who again played a dark psy ops game asking me to pick him up razors while in the US claiming they were there cheaper than in Russia. Being suspicious I later checked and found this a bold faced lie.
By then only corrupt NCIS agent Douglas Boyce had admitted to me having been in the employ of the CIA when we met in Russia in 1999. This he told me in the comfort of his Virginia Beach home in the spring of 2014.
So back to John Von Achen. While his guest at Skygate, we are enjoying an indoor pool, wherein John excellently slips and knocks his head on the tile floor. I thought it real, not yet realizing there was even a thing called 'street theater' nor how many times I had been subjected to it.
John seemed woozy and was carried off. My wife was in our three story free hotel room with our son then 9, leaving me with alcohol in my system and the lengthy brunette, Julia Kochareva alone in the pool. And as 1 and 1 equals 2, I responded to her come ons and we made out there and later on the beach under the moonlight. Proclaiming her fidelity to John, she allowed me to digitally masterbate her to orgasm. By digital, I mean using my hands and not a computer.
I was pleased. Felt like I was alive. Had no idea I was being set up for a long term bit of psy ops. One thing I can say about spies from experience. They take their time so as not to appear rushed or forced. What would be the point of that?
Years later, with John owing me $2000 he calls me and says that Julia admitted to him to having an affair with some man unknown. I pretended to be shocked and stayed quiet. In some months John came back at me saying Julia had told him it was me and that he had given me the chance to 'fess up which I passed on, not wanting to throw either self or Julia under the proverbial bus. You see she had asked me for my silence in this matter and I had agreed.
John and I met in a local Saint Petersburg hotel to discuss the matter. This was a psy op, magnificent and dark. He played it for all it was worth, throwing back a huge curtain as he entered the room. I recall thinking, my God, what showmanship, having a difficult time to take him seriously, though the matter, a triangle of sorts serious enough.
As I look back now, I see the set up for what it was. I cant recall the exact date, but it was around the time of my poisoning in August 2011, and of my mother's passing in September 2011. I had also received a call around that time of unknown origin from some Russian man claiming to be from Moscow interested in my Saint Petersburg company Akademia-Konsalt.
On December 25th, 2011, the man who had poisoned me in August 2011, Alexander Tregubov admitted falsely (though this I would only learn in October 2013) to beating on Evgeniya Viktorovna Kosheleva, a prostitute I had taken to and had for reasons emotional and deeply psychological decided to protect, with the goal of getting her from the bordello and to a university. Why? Because I thought that I could. And having suffered the loss of my mother, the 35 pounds, and so much more, saving someone's life, someone I barely knew, when my own seemed somehow caught up in some sort of horrific maelstrom, seemed somehow right, noble, perhaps even earning grace of a sort, if there is to be such a thing to be had.
Back to John. As Russian and US relations cooled after the Crimean adventure, John moved South to ply his trade in the Ukraine, even speaking at a lecture with Richard Branson.
It seemed suspicious to me, then as now. John had supposedly published so many books, if to look on Amazon, perhaps 30. I never understood where he found the time. And from John, although I had of him grown fond, there was always a sense of falseness he radiated.
My best guess, like so many in my life, especially since my original move to Russia in 1996, John was a spy, CIA. He's dead now, though he lives on in my memory, in these stories. I can't help to wonder if karma plays a role in those so untrue who die so young as John, or as in such cancerous pain as another colleague, Peter Owen Edmunds. Another story for another time that one.
RIP John Von Achen.
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