I am sorry to have to ask this but can one of you give me a brief synopsis of the MF Barnes story? I was lurking then but just don't really understand it all except he swindled people out of sympathy and a bbq party. But not sure beyond that or how he was exposed. Can y'all fill me in?

There were several threads on outdoors and auto board. He posted some pictures of his supposed garage in one thread. Someone image searched for it and discovered it obviously wasn't his. Same thing with a really expensive long range rifle. Reverse image search and he had gotten it from a website that obviously wasn't his.

Hardest working man in oil

But can it top the Akita saga?
That was around th time you all were coming over and I found this place. That stuff was crazy. An almost meteoric rise and epic downfall.

I have never understood the fascination with stuff like this. If some loser wants to troll the internet why is it so interesting?

oragator said:

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But can it top the Akita saga?
That was around th time you all were coming over and I found this place. That stuff was crazy. An almost meteoric rise and epic downfall.

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man that one is vaguely familiar too. what did it entail?

A fence, an alleged longhorn, a military lie, and a downfall.
About halfway down here.
https://texags.com/forums/5/topics/1930812/0

ty!!

That's all fine and dandy but once he started organizing a fundraiser and stealing money from Aggies, it crossed the line. Now I have zero tolerance for that dude and his schtick

I don't recall MFBarnes swindling people. I do remember his outlandish stories that included playing SRVs guitar, amazing feats of weightlifting, being a letterman, working in the oil industry, barn find 1953 Corvette, and attending all the Cleveland Brown practices when Johnny was a rookie.

Jorts, on the other hand, swindled some people that I recall.

The cliffnotes are that a sad and pathetic man, unfulfilled with his actual life, lied to impress strangers on the internet with a fake life.

Sadly not a rare phenomenon.

Burdizzo said:

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I don't recall MFBarnes swindling people. I do remember his outlandish stories that included playing SRVs guitar, amazing feats of weightlifting, being a letterman, working in the oil industry, barn find 1953 Corvette, and attending all the Cleveland Brown practices when Johnny was a rookie.

Jorts, on the other hand, swindled some people that I recall.

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I think I had gotten my vague recollections of mfbarnes and akita mixed up.

How it all began in the Auto Board

https://texags.com/forums/46/topics/2610710

It's widely rumored that he still posts but never on Outdoors or Auto boards.

Wasn't there photos of an amazing woodworking shop as well?

And ammo/reloading room

https://texags.com/forums/34/topics/2608388

……plus some of the worst photoshops on the web.

The badly photoshopped pic of him playing the SRV guitar is just the best. I don't have a screen grab of it any more.

Or him as the meathead S&C dude

Yeah, wasn't there something about him being a S&C coach for the football team at one point? So many to keep track of.

And the Dallas cowboys

Forgot about jorts. Wasn't he on the radio regularly with Gabe?

jja79 said:

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Forgot about jorts. Wasn't he on the radio regularly with Gabe?

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He was on the Friend Show hour or whatever it was called.

It was pretty bad.

Burdizzo said:

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I don't recall MFBarnes swindling people. I do remember his outlandish stories that included playing SRVs guitar, amazing feats of weightlifting, being a letterman, working in the oil industry, barn find 1953 Corvette, and attending all the Cleveland Brown practices when Johnny was a rookie.

Jorts, on the other hand, swindled some people that I recall.

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Pretty sure there was a situation with him and a go fund me that didn't turn out well.

Let us not forget that he was plagiarizing reviews for porn. Somehow that was the sad cherry on top of his pathetic cake.

His sock is still pretty active on the politics board

Thisguy1 said:

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Burdizzo said:

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I don't recall MFBarnes swindling people. I do remember his outlandish stories that included playing SRVs guitar, amazing feats of weightlifting, being a letterman, working in the oil industry, barn find 1953 Corvette, and attending all the Cleveland Brown practices when Johnny was a rookie.

Jorts, on the other hand, swindled some people that I recall.

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Pretty sure there was a situation with him and a go fund me that didn't turn out well.

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I can personally confirm the swindler part of this post. I lost my love to leukemia and he stole every dollar I fronted for retainer, expenses, court costs for her estate/probate. He never filed the first document in any jurisdiction. Screw him

TheVarian said:

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His sock is still pretty active on the politics board

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I think he has more than one. In fact, the ones he has make it hard to tell who are his and who are regular posters calling him out. I don't want to identify him by name because he may be a good guy, but I responded to someone about a year ago in the Outdoor board who posted under another name with an MF Barnes post. I debunked the Barnes tale of some great-great-something or other coming over and being some sort of something over here (I'll link the thread). Anyway, the person I responded to wasn't actually MFB but another poster. I still can't tell if he is/was Barnes or simply quoting Barnes.

Here's the thread. My post is at the bottom and it came several years after the original. I don't remember how I found the original.

https://texags.com/forums/34/topics/2604017/replies/66484178

Search MF Barnes on Tik Tok. It's worth a few minutes of browsing

DOG XO 84 said:

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Thisguy1 said:

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Burdizzo said:

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I don't recall MFBarnes swindling people. I do remember his outlandish stories that included playing SRVs guitar, amazing feats of weightlifting, being a letterman, working in the oil industry, barn find 1953 Corvette, and attending all the Cleveland Brown practices when Johnny was a rookie.

Jorts, on the other hand, swindled some people that I recall.

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Pretty sure there was a situation with him and a go fund me that didn't turn out well.

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I can personally confirm the swindler part of this post. I lost my love to leukemia and he stole every dollar I fronted for retainer, expenses, court costs for her estate/probate. He never filed the first document in any jurisdiction. Screw him

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Similar experience with my case. Luckily the firm he was working for at the time covered me.

ta ta toothy said:

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Search MF Barnes on Tik Tok. It's worth a few minutes of browsing

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@markfbarnes

Barnes posted a thread on the Auto Board, claiming he found a 1954 Corvette in a barn. Poster "Guitarsoup" recognized it from another Internet board, and called him out for stealing someone else's photos and story.

I recalled that Barnes had posted on the Outdoors Board, on a thread where people were posting photos of their workshop. He posted an absolutely amazing shop. Using Google image search, I found the real owner of the shop had posted the photo on another board. I posted that info on both the Auto Board and Outdoors Board threads.

From that, people started tracking down his other TexAgs posts, and finding out that 99.99% of them were photos and stories stolen from around the Internet. And we're not talking about one or two things. It was hundreds of posts and thousands of photos. Lots of Photoshop. The time it must have taken to research and type all that info was astounding. Some people honestly were wondering if "MFBarnes82" was a collaboration of dozens of people.

He posted on lots of websites with the same, or similar handles, so it was easy to chase his stuff down.

I think he had a kid who attended A&M, so folks were trying not drag the kid through the mud.

Other folks can add or subtract from the list, but among the things I recall that he claimed, that were demonstrably untrue:

• found a '54 corvette in a barn
• had an amazing shop
• A&M grad '82 (no evidence he ever attended)
• petroleum engineer degree
• professional engineer
• strength and conditioning coach Dallas Cowboys
• Gave "Johnny Football" that nickname
• found some D.X. Bible letter
• played guitar with Stevie Ray Vaughn
• had a part in a movie as a kid
• stock car racer at Texas Motor Speedway (would have been 12-14 years old at the time)
• had an ancestor who helped found Brazos County, and lived to be 113

I also found where he had gone on Amazon and left a review for a porn movie. Someone else dug deeper and found out that he had plagiarized it.

About the time that was going down, a young lady at A&M, either on the Rodeo team or Equestrian Team, lost her family home to a fire. A GoFundMe was started and shared on TexAgs. Aggies, being Aggies, money was given. I looked at the GoFundMe, and found that Barnes had started it. EDIT: Memory s slipping, it was Guitarsoup who found that, too Folks who knew the young lady talked to her and found that she had no knowledge of the account.

Someone who knew Barnes went to him, and suggested he give up the account and the money, or explain to the Authorities what he was doing. I understand that the young lady did get all the money.

However, I think that someone else found an arrest record, and another found a huge lawsuit that was won against him.


It was one of the craziest things I've ever seen on the Internet, and certainly one of the wilder rides ever on TexAgs.

Lol that's funny, it was my mention of me having drove stock cars that had everyone questioning if I was Barnes when I first joined on here. I had no idea that was one of his stories.

I remember thinking who in the hell is this Barnes guy?

So I was looking for something else. and found that Barnes had changed his username to "SouthparkKenny"

https://texags.com/account/profile/162670/1

So you'll see that name, instead of "MFBarnes82" when looking at old threads.

Here's the Auto Board post that he lied about the '54 Corvette

https://texags.com/forums/46/topics/2610710/replies/42568824

Here's the Workshop thread on the Outdoors Board

https://texags.com/forums/34/topics/2608388/2

I was the one who interceded into the Go Fund account. Barnes reached out to me to see if I could stop the harassment of his son who was a student at A&M at the time. I was a mod. I went to Brandon and we agreed to help unwind the mess.

I helped the young lady set up a bank account and transfer about half the funds. Barnes claimed he was being overwhelmed with refund requests and Godundme was drafting money from the account due fraud claims. I cannot verify if this was true. But the account was shut down. No authorities were ever involved.

As for any accusations of fraud or criminal conduct I cannot verify that either. Records did show his name including his middle initial were found but they were from Dallas and Barnes was never documented that he lived there. Who knows.

Mark did say to me trolling was his hobby and a passion. I doubt he stopped but have never seen any convincing documentation he is still on the site. Just accusations which are easy to post without evidence.