I met Paul Self in person at an airgun event WAY back when; I believe shortly after he started posting on airgun forums. When we met, I recognized his name as a relative newbie on the forum. Seemed like a friendly and gregarious enough guy, but something about him put me on alert. That was SO long ago, I don't recall if my uneasy feeling was because of weird stories on the forum about him (already), something about his presence, or (I think) a combination of both.
Regardless, I was interested in an air rifle he was selling (several of brand-new); but passed on the offer to stop by his home and pick it up. I did buy one from him, but had him ship it to me. Though the airgun was a disappointment, that's because the manufacturing of that well-known brand had just been moved to Turkey and the quality was almost laughable; NOT anything I held against Paul Self (the gun was extremely cheap not only in quality, but his selling price).
Having met him in person but had only the aforementioned dealing with him, thought my experience was worth sharing in this thread. I'm neither condemning or defending the man. But that said, I do believe it more than coincidence that dealing with someone whose written communications fall somewhere between difficult to decipher and nonsensical is a recipe for disaster.
The man seems to be genuinely remorseful and trying to make amends here and now. I hope that happens. That said, one of the more devious identifying pathologies of sociopaths is habitual lying; sometimes to stratospheric levels. I'll not speculate about what we have here.