Like all conmen, Malc has a certain charisma and charm. Over the years and across his various failures he has indeed sucked in a whole host of people, who should have seen him coming and moved swiftly out of his path, and are much the poorer for not doing so. I think the true measure of their competence is how long it took them to work out what a complete charlatan Malc is and to get themselves well away from him again.
It is notable that the only person who has stuck by Malc is Tim Baldwin. Tim and Malc are 2 peas in a pod (or 2 crooks sharing a cell creates a nicer metal picture). It is hard to decipher from the Tim and Malc relationship who was scamming who and at what point, but they have both scammed each other along the way and the really big losers at every stage have been TXO and EEGC shareholders.
Fortunately UK law requires companies like TXO to produce audited accounts and to hold AGMs. The TXO AGM on 28th Apr will allow shareholders to hold their board to account for their diabolical performance and conduct. Unfortunately the slack US system does not afford EEGC shareholders anything like the same opportunity. Malc has turned into the Scarlet Pimpernel.