Amber Sandhu

Record Searchlight

With all the attention being drawn to abducted Mountain Gate mom Sherri Papini and her family, a local man who offered his services as a freelance hostage negotiator also has stepped into the harsh national spotlight – provoking some scorn from experts and questions about his background and methods.

Cameron Gamble, a self-described international kidnap and ransom consultant, was the middleman in a highly unconventional offer to negotiate with the alleged abductor. On the now-defunct website SherriPapini.com, Gamble posted a video directly addressing Papini’s assumed captor, stating that he was authorized by an anonymous donor to pay a “six-figure reward” for Papini’s return – no questions asked. Gamble was clear that he wasn’t working with law enforcement during the process, and authorities likewise disavowed him.

Gamble has gained considerable attention, and was featured in an ABC 20/20 piece about Papini’s kidnapping and remarkable return that aired Friday. He has used the opportunity to suggest that his involvement, and that of the donor, directly contributed to her release on Thanksgiving Day. And he indicated to Mike Mangas, an anchor for KRCR News Channel 7, that he believes the approach could be a national model.

READ MORE:Missing woman's family talks to ransom negotiator

Those statements have provoked controversy and questions, including a critical piece in The Daily Beast, a national online news outlet, that suggested he isn’t who he claims to be.

Gamble says he’s hurt by the suggestion that he’s a fame-seeker or opportunist. He and Lisa Jeter, a local businesswoman who says she brought him into the search in the first place, maintain he’s an honorable man who only sought to help.

AN UNUSUAL OFFER

Jeter, a friend of the Papinis who says she connected the family to the donor and Gamble, said it all came together like a "divine trifecta."

It started when Jeter posted about Papini on her personal Facebook page. Through a friend, she was connected to the anonymous donor. The offer to help was jarring to her at first, she said, and she questioned the donor's sincerity. The donor, too, “didn’t want to be perceived as someone who is crazy," she said.

He was willing to put up money for Papini’s return.

“I can’t even articulate my shock,” she said. “It was a significant amount of money he was offering.”

The donor purchased the website, SherriPapini.com, and Jeter said on Nov. 8 she contacted Keith Papini. He was appreciative and grateful, she said, but skeptical.

“He wasn’t quite ready to go this route,” Jeter said. She decided it'd be best to let him sit with the idea. Six days later, Keith Papini sent Jeter a text, saying he was “nervous” that his wife’s story wasn’t getting enough attention.

Jeter decided to call the anonymous donor again, and the man said he still wanted to help. To determine that the whole idea “wasn’t a hoax," she had the donor call Keith Papini.

READ MORE: Anonymous donor offers reward for missing woman

The donor got to work, Jeter said, and said he needed a spokesperson. It couldn’t just be a family member. That’s when Jeter says she thought of Gamble. Gamble had done a presentation at the Rotary Club of Redding, talking about sex trafficking and abduction cases. Feeling that Gamble was willing to have “tough conversations” about the subject, Jeter reached out to him.

While Gamble had heard about what happened to Sherri Papini, Jeter said he wasn’t quick to get involved. His wife asked him twice to reach out to the family, and he declined. But after Jeter’s phone call, Gamble said he decided to help.

Jeter said Gamble met with Keith Papini, and asked a lot of questions. Did Sherri have a history of mental illness? Had she been abused? Does she have a reason to run away?

“The point of negotiation is to always play a neutral position,” Gamble said, in one of several interviews with the Record Searchlight since Saturday.

In a video posted on YouTube and the website Nov. 18, Gamble identified himself as the negotiator and gave the alleged abductor a Wednesday deadline to return Sherri Papini.

“This offer is off the table in less than 100 hours,” he said, looking directly into the camera. “We don’t care about justice, we simply care about Sherri’s safe return.” He gave a phone number on which he could be contacted.

Papini was found in Yolo County early Thanksgiving Day, a day after Gamble's deadline. Authorities have said there is no evidence to suggest the ransom-turned-bounty had anything to do with her release.

But the offer had provoked a new flurry of media coverage. Some of it was skeptical, referring to the offer as bizarre. But every story had Sherri Papini’s picture on it.

Gamble confirmed that no money ever changed hands, and the six-figure reward was returned to the bank last week.

“All those elements worked,” he said. “Did it convey our message? Yes.”

In the KRCR interview, Gamble went further.

“Can we take this and duplicate this process and apply it to other missing person or abduction cases throughout the world, throughout the U.S. especially, and tweak it to fit the individual case and see if we can offer support and help in that way?” he asked rhetorically.

“This is kind of a test case,” Mangas said.

“It was,” Gamble replied.

TOUGH QUESTIONS

For law enforcement officials working the case, Gamble’s tactics were alarming.

“I felt from the beginning that this could hinder or affect the case,” Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said.

Bosenko said since there were no ransom demands, there was nothing to negotiate. “It didn’t produce anything other than being a distractor,” he said.

READ MORE:Sheriff elaborates on Papini interviews, captor descriptions

Bosenko worries that Gamble’s approach to supposed kidnappings and ransom demands could invite scam artists. And if captives are involved, it could put them in further danger.

Gamble argues that wasn't the case. “We didn’t receive any scam calls or any opportunists,” Gamble said. And while Gamble said he didn’t relay any information to law enforcement, he did forward tips to the Papini family’s private investigator.

Negotiation expert Chris Voss, who was the lead international kidnapping negotiator with the FBI for 24 years, now teaches business negotiation at Georgetown University.

He doesn’t object to Gamble’s idea to raise awareness about abductions, but doesn’t think his idea of bringing a new hostage negotiation model to the U.S. would work.

“It’s a dumb idea,” Voss said. “These kind of guys pop up in the developing world all the time. They’re a nuisance but they don’t do much harm.”

Voss said in order for Gamble to be successful in the U.S., there’d have to be more “legitimate kidnappings” — an ordinary law-abiding citizen kidnapped by someone who wants a ransom from an ordinary law-abiding family.

“There’s no market for the U.S.,” Voss said. And that’s because society doesn’t tolerate it, law enforcement is well equipped and effective enough to deal with kidnappings, and the alleged perpetrators usually get caught. When they do, they go to prison for a very long time, he said.

“Crime is a way to make a living, it’s a business,” Voss said. “But kidnappers believe they’re likely to get caught.”

In the very few “legitimate kidnappings” that do happen, the victim is usually either killed or left to die. “They don’t need a witness,” to who the captor is, Voss said.

Voss said there aren’t many people like Gamble in the U.S. But internationally, Gamble has “a lot of competition.”

“There’s no shortage of opportunists that try to stick their nose into a kidnapping,” he said.

Gamble agrees with Voss that there isn’t much of a kidnapping market in the U.S., but he points out that his methods “had some sort of impact” on how things turned out for Papini.

He pointed to the fact that web developers translated the SherriPapini.com website and the ransom letter into Spanish. After her release, Papini reportedly told investigators her captors spoke mostly in Spanish.

“So, did they see what we did? I have no doubt,” he said.

Gamble doesn’t believe his approach – which, controversially, included offering to reward the kidnappers – would lead to more kidnappings and ransom cases.

“We weren’t introducing a new idea or new market strategy for kidnappers,” he said. “The purpose was to open a line of communication with abductors.”

BACKGROUND

But since Gamble's involvement with the case, the internet and social media have buzzed with chatter that he wants to use notoriety from the Papini case to promote his organization, Project TAKEN, which trains people about “abduction avoidance” and “self-defense.”

“People have called me an opportunist," he said. "I didn’t force myself into this situation. I’m not an ambulance-chaser.”

Gamble's military record and his organization have been under scrutiny. He said he's received hateful messages from people calling what he did a "scam" and a "hoax."

Gamble acknowledges that despite a claim he made in a tweet, Project TAKEN is “just a name” and does not have official status as a 501(c)(3) charity.

Gamble said while he applied the status, he never completed the application process. While he receives donations through Redding's Bethel Church, that money does not go to the organization itself, but to Gamble and his wife, he confirmed.

His military record, a key part of the biography he uses to establish his expertise, also has been called into question. He was discharged from the Air Force after serving for three years.

Gamble said he started boot camp in May 2002, and was promoted to Senior Airman. At an annual exam, he failed to meet the minimum requirements for the eye color test.

Gamble said that prevented him from flying, but military records he provided to the Record Searchlight show only that he had been trained in operating a boom for refueling airplanes.

The medical determination "was devastating, but humbling," Gamble said.

It began a "limbo period" for him and he was assigned to be a vehicle operations assistant, tasked to driving officials around on base. But he says he kept busy, and developed a water survival program which earned him the Senior Airman promotion.

Then, his waiver was again revoked, he said.

Gamble provided his DD 214 form, his official service record. It shows he was honorably discharged and simply gives “hardship” as the reason.

Gamble says most of his training came after he left the Air Force, and when he became an instructor, teaching about Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape programs, also known as SERE.

Two colleagues in that field have vouched for Gamble's experience.

One is Judson McClantoc, former police chief of Webb, Alabama and director of training at SOLKOA Inc., where Gamble said he works. In a letter of reference provided to the Record Searchlight, McClantoc wrote that he has known Gamble since 2007 and called Gamble a man with "high moral value and an unwavering faith."

"Cameron always puts the students first and his ability to think outside the box and create a solution to a problem is unmatched in this field," the letter reads.

A SOLKOA executive did not return a call seeking comment on Gamble.

Jason Watson, CEO of TRIDENT Contracting Inc., met Gamble around 2012 when Gamble was running Catalyst Advanced Training Group, he said. According to Gamble, the two companies partnered together from 2010 to 2011 before he ventured off with Catalyst on his own.

"He's been working in things that are pretty sensitive," Watson said about Gamble. He added that Gamble always "had his back" and he would have Gamble's.

Gamble now says he has no desire to repeat the experience he had with the Sherri Papini case.

"I didn't eat for two weeks, I didn't sleep for two weeks, I was irritable. It was not fun," he said. "You can't do this to this extreme all the time. It will kill you."

Gamble said he feels that he, Jeter, and the donor owe it to the public to look closely at what they did with Papini's case, and if they can develop a "playbook" then he wouldn't have to be so deeply involved.

Gamble said for now he'll continue working for free on advising in the case of Stacy Smart, a woman who went missing in Trinity County around the same time Papini did in Mountain Gate.