Skip to content

Another Thing Remarkably Successful People Do – They Don’t Plagiarize

November 13, 2012

Update 2012-11-13 @ 3:00 pm ET: Darkangelo updated his post to mention the original article and author.

Update 2012-11-14 @ 12:54 pm ET: Inc. author Jeff Haden responds with additional information.


TEAM/LIFE Round Table member has a new post on his blog entitled, Eight Things Remarkably Successful People Do. It reads like these are Darkangelo’s own thoughts, but a simple web search reveals that he copied and pasted from this Inc. article by Jeff Haden.

Joe — and I know you and/or your colleagues are reading this — please cite your sources next time before you pass off a post as your own. Don’t plagiarize.

31 Comments leave one →
  1. November 13, 2012 11:26 am

    He’s just duplicating his buddies Woody, Baby, and Clod. They all seem to quote people rather than coming up with thoughts of their own.

    Quite the bunch, they are. And the last people on this earth I would ever feel the need to extract wisdom from.

  2. Rascal Teamster permalink
    November 13, 2012 11:54 am

    OMG…..are you serious? As someone who’s spent the last 16 years as a writer and speaker, I am PO’d. That happened on the forum I owned, and we permanently banned the guy. You aren’t even allowed to copy and paste an entire article….even if you cite the source.

    You can quote bits and pieces, but what Joe did was reprint without permission, and it’s criminal. This is how the Team teaches it’s leaders to be glowing examples?

    Joe, you should be ashamed of yourself. If you can’t come up with an original thought on your own, that doesn’t give you the right to steal someone else’s. There’s no way Joe went through the trouble to get permission and just forgot to put the customary, “reprinted with permission from Inc.

    Did it bother you wen you hit the enter key to post it, Joe, or was it really easy for you?

    Amthrax, I hope you sent a copy of Joe’s blog to Mr. Harden and Inc magazine.

    I wonder how many other leadership gurus can’t come up with their own thoughts?

  3. November 13, 2012 12:15 pm

    Update: Darkangelo had updated his post with a mention of the original article and author.

  4. Rascal Teamster permalink
    November 13, 2012 12:21 pm

    Amthrax, from what I can tell, he either needs to remove it or get permission to reprint it. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

    He’s using this to pump himself as a leadership guru in order to make money off his reputation. He’s in the leadership business. From what I know of copyright law, Jeff harden has to agree to it’s use that way. You can’t just cite a source and reprint in it’s entirety.

    But you were right, Amthrax, he’s reading the blog 😉

  5. Melanie Morgan permalink
    November 13, 2012 12:36 pm

    Omg, I dying laughing!!!!! 🙂 That is hysterical! 🙂

  6. November 13, 2012 12:36 pm

    If Darkangelo had a syndication deal with Inc. like Yahoo does (see this link on Yahoo Small Business), he would be able to reprint the article. I seriously doubt that this is the case.

    The Inc. article was published on November 7, 2012, and it gained moderate traffic on search engines and social networks. These mentions all linked back to the original article. If they did include some of the original post, it was only a few lines or a list of the 8 habits and not the entire text of the post.

    My problem was that Darkangelo was implicitly declaring Haden’s thoughts to be his own by not originally citing the source of the article. That’s stupid at best and plagiarism at worst. As Rocket mentioned, the TEAM/LIFE leadership has a habit of copying and pasting complete text of articles when it suits them best.

  7. Melanie Morgan permalink
    November 13, 2012 12:43 pm

    Great find Amthrax…hahahaha! ” Don’t plagiarize.” How my gosh!!!

    These guys are a real piece…of something, Open mouth…insert foot!

  8. November 13, 2012 12:45 pm

    What would be really useful is for someone to go through all of the TEAM/LIFE leadership team’s published books and see if there are any instances where plagiarism occurred.

  9. Melanie Morgan permalink
    November 13, 2012 12:48 pm

    Omg,… Amthrax, that would be the majority of what they publish!

  10. Former Round Table permalink
    November 13, 2012 1:40 pm

    I think I learned about the importance of citing sources, giving proper credit, and not plagiarizing in school. You know, that same education system that TEAM/LIFE claims is useless. Hmmm.

  11. Rascal Teamster permalink
    November 13, 2012 4:26 pm

    When I went to orientation at college, the first thing they told incoming freshmen was plagiarism gets you booted from school….no questions asked.

    You know what’s sick? I know some of the pasts of these guys. They were your average…he he…..Joe’s. Their histories and my history is not much different. But the way they dress, the way they behave in front of their teams, I really thought the transformation in them was genuine. I totally trusted Big O & and his band of merry gurus.

    I feel like a total idiot for not seeing through their facade. They are the kungfoo masters of deception.

  12. finally permalink
    November 13, 2012 5:33 pm

    This is the same guy that filed for bankruptcy at a time when he was claiming to be financially free and speaking on stages telling how he did it………….I am SHOCKED!!!! Joe “bankrupt” Darkangelo plagiarized an article on what incredibly successful people do………He had to considering he doesn’t know from experience…..Right???

  13. Freedomhaha permalink
    November 13, 2012 7:25 pm

    I love whenever it is obvious that TEAM does something different because of this blog. It is painfully obvious that they watch it like hawks. I know nothing would have changed unless you called him out with a screenshot. No squirming away from this one Joe. PS: I am so glad I don’t “Liva da LIEF, losa da money” to do anymore.

  14. Melanie Morgan permalink
    November 13, 2012 10:01 pm

    Freedomhaha~

    How come they are reading this site, I thought they were suppose to be the examples? They must everyone on the Team to read this site. “Standing Order Amthrax” or Amthrax of the week….hahaha!

    Sure seems like Amthrax site keeps them in line or perhaps acts as their conscience?

  15. November 14, 2012 4:58 am

    Actually I received an email — thanks Tex — letting me know my article appeared without attribution on his blog. To be frank I probably wouldn’t have cared; I’m guessing very few people read his blog, and those who do are unlikely to read my stuff on Inc.com… but then I read the post above on this site, skimmed around a little bit, saw what you guys are about… and decided that yeah, in this case I do care.

    I contacted Mr. Darkangelo and asked him to either take the article down or attribute it to me, hence his updated attribution. He said, “I had no idea. I will do it the right way from now on. I had no idea.”

    Amthrax you’re correct about Inc. having a syndication deal with Yahoo. They (and a few other major sites) can legally reprint full Inc. articles.

    Still, it’s fine if other sites use some portion of an article. If Mr. Darkangelo had run the title and the first few paragraphs, then put a “Read the rest of the article” link to the original article that would have been fine and even appreciated, since potentially that would generate traffic for the original article.

    And occasionally people want to use an article of mine in a newsletter or some other fashion… and as long as they ask, and cite me as the author and Inc. as the original publisher, I always say yes. Why not? Glad to. Flattered.

    But I’m not a fan of people stealing my work — even if it’s often not worth stealing — so I appreciate Tex letting me know. It’s always easy to look the other way when an issue doesn’t involve you… and it’s pretty cool when someone doesn’t.

  16. Freedomhaha permalink
    November 14, 2012 5:23 am

    Melanie- If they had any conscience they would stop ripping off 96% of their members.

  17. Vogel permalink
    November 14, 2012 8:57 am

    He has no clue what successful people do (given that he is not successful himself), so it’s not the least bit surprising that he would have to resort to plagiarizing someone who does. It’s just really pathetic — and illegal.

  18. November 14, 2012 9:39 am

    @Jeff – Thanks for the additional information.

  19. November 14, 2012 9:51 am

    BTW, Darkangelo also copied and pasted without attribution on the following posts/articles:

    This article by John Rogers of the Associated Press:

    http://joedarkangelo.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/another-reason-to-look-at-the-life-business/

    This Inc. article from Geoffrey James was copied and pasted without attribution to the original author, though he mentions Inc. in his post:

    5 Reasons People Fail (and what to do instead)

  20. Melanie Morgan permalink
    November 14, 2012 10:57 am

    Thank You Jeff Haden for coming with the facts and sharing them.

  21. Former Round Table permalink
    November 14, 2012 1:50 pm

    Thank you Jeff Haden. By the way, great article, great thoughts, keep up the good work.

    Darkangelo said, “I had no idea. I will do it the right way from now on. I had no idea.” HAHAHA! Is anyone else laughing their guts out? Does the guy even have any functioning brain cells? Or is his nose up Woodward’s arse so far that he totally cut off the oxygen?

    Why would ANYONE follow someone so stupid? Seriously! I am totally shaking my head.

  22. Vogel permalink
    November 14, 2012 6:10 pm

    I like the cut of your jib Jeff! You just earned a new reader.

  23. Vogel permalink
    November 14, 2012 6:13 pm

    Hey we should start a pool to take bets on how long it will take for Darkangelo to amend the other articles he plagiarized. Start the clock. I’ll be off contacting the legal departments at AP and Inc.

  24. Brent Hansen permalink
    November 14, 2012 9:18 pm

    Hilarious!

  25. November 15, 2012 10:12 am

    I reckon college has it’s importance after all. No less surely, acting like one got a teeny-weeny bit of some high schooling left ‘fore frothing at the mouth bashing college.

    But you know anything goes in North Korea. I mean it’s always the dear leader (and his sycophants) owns it all, knows it all, does it all, plagiarize it all. Until you people come along and suddenly no one (read dear leader, he owns the country you know, others don’t count) can live in comfort anymore in North Korea. And you even had that Jeff guy affirm you! Can the dear leader sue him for …. something…affirming you?

    Ohhh this is bad, the knee jerk reactions are LOL and it’s all in public – the emperor done lost his darn clothes!

    But I am not crying for the dear leaders, just their hoodwinked masses.

  26. Melanie Morgan permalink
    November 15, 2012 7:22 pm

    exambot~

    “Ohhh this is bad, the knee jerk reactions are LOL and it’s all in public – the emperor done lost his darn clothes!”

    I read a long and then LOL…Thanks, I can Always count on you to make me laugh out loud!!! 🙂

  27. CGC permalink
    November 22, 2012 6:57 am

    Those who can, do; those who can’t, cut and paste.

    At least he has good excuse: “Gosh, I didn’t know I couldn’t do that!”

    And his unsourced AP article is still up.

  28. Rascal Teamster permalink
    November 22, 2012 5:39 pm

    Thanks a bunch, Jeff. I appreciate your post here. Joe didn’t know? I thought I’d faint reading that, but I was too insulted.

    You see Joe, liars always get caught. You really thought you could get away with reprinting others work claiming it as your own? And you did it more than just once? You owned multiple pizza shops and were doing very well before Team. ALL successful retailers know about copywrite and trademark law. We have to….we’re constantly advertising and putting into print things that could hang us. When you told the lie to Jeff that you didn’t know it was wrong, you had no idea that he’d print it here. But he did, and you got caught again.

    Joe, I have 354 emails from Mark & Jenn from 11/07 thru 08/10 including the one you penned that got forwarded to us all from Mark @ Jenn inviting us all to your house plan that Mark did. Yup….the one where Bill Lewis did the teaching…..the one at your house…..the one that was 14 days before you declared bankruptcy? If I asked you, would you say you didn’t know that was wrong too?

    The crazy thing about lying is you forget over time what you said originally. It’s that whole tangled web we weave thingy….it’s really not important. What is important, Joe, is this…if you want to, you can play the Bill Clinton, “I just don’t recall” crap, but understand it’s insulting to thise of us who looked up to you, and it kind of PI$$E$ us off.

    So as a public service to you, free of charge, when you forget something you did or said, because I care, I’ll be here to remind you. Remember, Chris Brady teaches that you should take responsibility for your actions and not run from them, make excuses, or play the blame game. You can find that in his LLR CD, “the promise of a champion.”

  29. Freedomhaha permalink
    November 22, 2012 7:24 pm

    Rascal- I also looked up to Joe as a leader. Sad.

Trackbacks

  1. When a TEAM/LIFE Policy Council Member Says, “Google Bomb!” TEAM/LIFE Members Respond, “Which site???” « AMTHRAX
  2. According to the LIFE Business, Copying and Pasting Equals a Great Article « AMTHRAX

Leave a Reply. Because your thoughtful opinions are valued, you are encouraged to add a comment to this discussion. Don't be offended if your comments are edited for clarity or to keep out questionable matters. Off-topic and inflammatory comments may be deleted. Comments on this website are the sole responsibility of their writers. The accuracy, completeness, veracity, honesty, exactitude, factuality and politeness of comments are not guaranteed.