Mysterious funds, mysterious photos

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Peter Tompa comments on the SAFECorner blog (which has a larger readership than his own):

PRNewswire is a paid service [...] Prof. Gill's funding for this PR effort remains a mystery as is the source of at least some of the photos with which he plays his game of "gotcha" on collectors and museums.

Mr Tompa surmises that Gill has a powerful benefactor who enables these news releases. The ACCG has no such benefactor. Just Mr Tompa. There is no mystery about where Mr Tompa of Bailey and Ehrensburg gets his funding from, his firm is one of those retained by the ACCG - and his blog's conspiracy theorising is presumably funded directly from the ACCG fighting fund, which in turn comes from the sale of ancient coins supplied by local dealers in "benefit auctions". I find it interesting that Tompa will not let the question rest of where Gill finances his information campaign, but is not in the least concerned where those US dealers got their coins from.

ACCG employee John Hooker asserts that each press release costs Gill $400 (USD), that means he has spent so far 14,400 USD on them. That is a fraction of the 80 000 dollars the ACCG has raised through its "benefit auctions". It seems to me there has been a lot more benefit arising from Gill's use of the social media to spread the word about "looting matters" than the silly posing, conspiracy theorising and frivolous court cases of the ACCG.