To The Moderator: I realize this isn't specifically an offshore bookie topic, but I think this forum is the one for people who need to know about this. If you consider it wrong of me to place it here, I apologize.
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This is a warning to anyone considering any print advertising to avoid Gambling Online Magazine like the plague. They are liars and thieves, and you would be much better off giving your money to Card Player or another legitimate outlet. Please note that while their magazine did not perform at all, that's not necessarily what my problem being posted is. The fact is that I was defrauded by the magazine, more specifically by Eric Morris, which is far more serious.
While I have had conversations with Eric for a couple of years, by first real business dealings began with him in July, when I began placing an order for a single page ad to begin being ran for a client in October.
By August, Eric had learned (through me) that we were probably going to do a magazine insert for this same client through his competitor, Cool Hand magazine. He became very anxious to have us do an insert with him, and offered us a very good deal on that distribution.
The price he gave us was $16,000 to insert and distribute 115,000 cd-roms. This rate comes out to be $0.139 per piece, compared to the print industry average of $1.25 it seemed like a dream come true. Remember, when something looks to good to be true, it probably is, and that certainly turned out to be the case here.
The first sign of problems happened in October, a full two months before this insert was scheduled to take place. We were asked to have the 40,000 cd's shipped overseas to be delivered to Hong Kong by October 9, which seemed a bit early, but we managed to have them arrive a day early. What were we told? That there is absolutely no room in that office for 40,000 cd-roms and that they would be sitting on the loading dock. Eric and David at the magazine said there is no problem, even though the guys in HK seemed to be freaked out over it.
During the month of November I checked into this distribution several times, and was continuously assured that there are no problems, and that everything was going to roll out according to schedule. That schedule was to have 75,000 inserts in the North American edition distributed on Dec 1 and the 40,000 overseas to be distributed on the third week of December.
On December 2nd or 3rd, I checked in with Eric again, who, once again, assured me that all 75,000 copies went out. I immediately got another problem. It appears they also inserted a vanity card for Casino Heat, and my client was getting calls from bonus hunters trying to claim the Casino Heat bonus at their site. Seems to me that it would have been nice to know, in advance, that there would have been another insert, not only so that we would know our insert is devalued, but also so we would have been prepared for the phone calls dealing with Casino Heat.
A couple of more weeks pass, and I'm still not getting anything at all. At that point I had some guest accounts and the number of real players could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Granted, most cd's will take a few months before you capture the entire audience, but you also expect to see a large chunk of them come in immediately. If a large chunk can be counted on the fingers of one hand, it doesn't give a good forecast for the ending campaign, which isn't much better after 4 months have passed.
At that time, it seemed apparent to my partners that nowhere near all of the cd-roms went out, but I was foolish and continued to try to convince them otherwise. I got in touch with Eric again, who once again assured me that all CD's had gone out, and that the other 40,000 would be going out on schedule.
Well, at the end of the month (maybe it was the first few days of Jan), we get a letter from David P. saying we needed a copyright statement saying what was being distributed was our property and not pirated. So much for that 3rd week of December that was suppose to have happened.
By this point, I had about a hundred guest accounts, and could count the number of real registrations on my fingers and toes. Not only that, but they were all $20 players, which tends to make me think they were advertisers who had received the cd from the preview copy that comes with invoices. I'll have to make a point to pull the data on all of those accounts and compare it to the names of casino and portal operators who advertised that month.
Oh yes, I forgot to add that my invoices didn't come until the end of December, when they should have came in early November. Maybe they were trying to decide if they should bill me for an insertion that never happened??
At the beginning of October, I sent Eric a detailed assessment of this. I told him there is absolutely nothing more I can do to convince my partners that he distributed these cds. The fact is that after more than a month, the initial flow of accounts from those first 75,000 cd-roms should have been much higher than what I got. Anyone who has ever dealt with cd-roms knows this.
What I told him at that time is that the invoices will not be paid until we get something concrete referencing the distribution. What I specifically told him we wanted was an affidavit of performance from the distribution company stating the date of distribution, the number of copies distributed, and the number of copies returned. Any distribution house will provide these affidavits. In fact, most magazines get them automatically and would have had them on file.
A couple of weeks pass before I hear from them, which I assumed was because of ICE. When I did hear from them, it was emails from from Eric and from the lady in accounting demanding payment on the invoices.
I wrote back to Eric and cc'd accounting and directly told him I had already sent him a message saying these invoices will not be paid until we get a performance affidavit from the distributor. Eric immediately wrote back and said he didn't get the other email but that he would get what we were asking for. I tend to think he's a liar, because if he really didn't get the other email he would have asked me more about what the problem was and why I wanted the affidavit. Since he didn't ask, I volunteered the information, because this was a huge problem, that was ignored up to this point. I'll also add that during this entire period, from Dec 3 to the end of Jan, Eric continued to repeatedly assure me that all 75,000 had been shipped - stated as fact each time (as opposed to "I think").
About another 7 to 10 days pass and I get an email from Eric asking when he can expect to receive payment on the invoices. I should have wrote and told him to lay off the pipe, because he obviously has no short term memory. Instead, I wrote back and told him that I've already stated that no payment will be issued until we receive these affidavits.
Another week or so passes with no word from them. At this point, it's pretty damn obvious that they are trying to hide something. After all, we're well into February at this point, meaning I've spent close to two months trying to get this one single statement from the distributor, not to mention the previous month of being assured that everything went out on schedule.
Since they did not seem to have any intention on helping up get the problem resolved, I sent a break down of the problem to Michael Casseli at Online Casino News, because both he and his company (Lyceum Publishing) are listed in the credits of the magazine. I told him in detail what the problem was and ask that he call my partner on the matter. When he spoke to my partner, what he told us is that he has nothing to do with any of this and is just listed as the editor of the magazine. Essentially, he knew nothing and wouldn't have even known there was a problem had I not brought it to his attention.
So, Michael was not any help, Eric was still ignoring us (or sitting on his thumb, or whatever the hell it was he was doing during all of this time). The next course of action was to contact the distributors directly. We started with the US distributor in Illinois, since those had been sent a full month earlier than the overseas copies.
When we spoke to that guy, it was immediately apparent that something was wrong. He seemed confused about the number of copies, and the dates for distribution he was stating were not when the copies went out. The quantity of copies is what bothers me though, as we had sent him 75,000 and he seemed confused by the thought the he should have sent out that many. He put us on hold so he could check on it.
When he came back, he said he had called and spoke to David Pritchard at HHC. This is actually David from Eric's office, not from HHC in the UK. He said that David told him to not give us any information, and to only say that he will call us on the matter. Again, a sign that something is definitely wrong, as if they didn't have anything to hide, he would have just told the guy to verify what was shipped.
The very same day, I got an email from Eric saying that he knows my partner spoke to the US distributor, but that guy doesn't know anything about Hong Kong. Whatever Eric. The jig is up. He also sent me 5 or 6 attachments from various casinos giving him a good endorsement (pretty much viral marketing type recommendations). I don't need other casinos telling me how they did with the magazine. Our ads are tracked and I know that during this entire time, from Oct 1 to present, I have received a total of 2 clicks from that magazine. Like I told you Eric, we never cared about that, but the expense of these cd's is an entirely different story.
After a couple of days we finally got that call from David. There were a couple of startling facts that were revealed in that conversation:
A. The 40,000 in Hong Kong was nothing but a test, and by their own admission, a failed test. I'll say, as I didn't get a single sign up (to date) out of that batch. My understanding with them was that this was an established distribution for their global edition - not using me and my money to test a new market.
B. That out of the 75,000 that were sent to the IL distributor, a minimum of 50,000 disks were still sitting there.
Well, that let's me know why Eric spent month's dodging the issue. Eric, you know damn well that when I sent you that first request for an affidavit in January, certainly at some point thereafter, you would have known that 2/3 of the cd's sent to that distributor were never shipped. Why then, do you continue to lie (and I mean directly lie - no other way to see it) about the matter, thus doing nothing but wasting several months of lead time.
Now, I probably would have been content to let this go to the attornies without bringing it to the attention of the public, if it were not for an additional lie by Eric that's only purpose was to try to make what I said look questionable.
You see, when we first spoke of this distribution, Eric said he would send some to newsstands and some to subscribers. On Sept 30 I told him I wanted as many as possible to go to subscribers, and by mid-October this had been established that we wanted NO newsstand copies because we didn't want to waste our money on something that may or may not be purchased.
Why do I mention this? Partly because absolutely no copies went to subscribers, but mainly because earlier this morning when my partner was speaking to the magazine's president, it came out that Eric states that I am a liar and that this topic was never even discussed. He must have been working under the assumption that it's his word against mine, except for the fact that I have every email sent between us and have detailed notes on all phone conversations. This, combined with the clear lies and deception on this matter, makes it a little more than his word against mine. Eric, if you are going to call me a liar, then you damn well better expect your lies to be brought to public attention.
This is really besides the point. What did the magazine offer to do? They offered to send us back the remaining 50,000 copies and to not charge us for the distribution. Yeah, right!
1. That 50,000 copies is useless, because they are tracked with an ad id assigned to this distribution, and if these are sent through another outlet now, I won't know if the traffic comes from that outlet or from the few newsstand copies that they did actually send out.
2. The remaining 65,000 were shipped to newsstands, so at this point, there's absolutely no way of knowing how many, if any, of those were purchased and how many will be returned. Essentially, it's far beyond the 50,000 - it's the entire 115,000 that have been wasted, and I'm not going to eat that cost just because they "generously" offer to not charge me for a distribution that never happened.
3. This doesn't even account for the lead time (December to March) that has been wasted by your continued lies. This is a four month delay that does come with a price. I can clearly demonstrate to any court that revenue streams, and subsequent projections, have been directly impacted by your actions, and therefore, you are liable for the punative damages associated with that.
We told them that their pathetic offer is unacceptable. We are out 200,000 with everything considered combined, not counting the time that I will now be billing them on top of it for all the chasing around I have been done on this. Paying anyting less than that is unacceptable, and since they said they would rather have it go to the courts, that's exactly what will be happening.
Eric, you should have just been honest with me from day 1. You should have never continued to tell me that everything went out if you didn't know for sure. And once you did find out the shipment didn't go, you should have told me right away rather than to take the course of repeatedly telling me the opposite of the truth for months at a time.
So, as of now, this matter will be going to the courts. We will first be filing a case against the parent, HHC, in the UK courts. Depending upong the outcome of that case, it will be followed by a lawsuit out of Costa Rica served against the magazine directly. When I'm finished with that, Eric, I will be filing a personal suit against you just so I can drag your ass to my neck of the woods and make you go through a lengthy proceeding. Once all court outlets have been exhausted, I will seek other forms of justice. I don't care if it takes me 5 years, this will not be let go and I will continue to hunt you down until you pay what you have cost me.
If you will recall, I never approached you about an insert - you approached me. What this means is that you have solicited funds under false pretence, which is fraud. I may just have to seek action through criminal courts as well as civil. Either way, you aren't going to come out on top of all of this.
To the owners of this magazine, I would recommend you dump this ass and get someone on board who does not defraud your customers.
To Eric, burn in hell. It is very well documented that you are the one who lied. It's bad enough that someone I considered a friend scammed me, but for you to say I'm the one making shit up is a slap in the face that I will NOT let go.
To advertisers in the magazine, I would highly recommend you pull your ads, and would certainly recommend against any inserts with them. As you can see, they are liars and thieves, and there are way too many honest magazines on the market to waste your money on assholes like that.
To readers of the magazine, while you are not directly involved, you are at the same time paying to support a company that steals from others. I would suggest that you give your money to another magazine instead. There are plenty of good ones out there.
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This is a warning to anyone considering any print advertising to avoid Gambling Online Magazine like the plague. They are liars and thieves, and you would be much better off giving your money to Card Player or another legitimate outlet. Please note that while their magazine did not perform at all, that's not necessarily what my problem being posted is. The fact is that I was defrauded by the magazine, more specifically by Eric Morris, which is far more serious.
While I have had conversations with Eric for a couple of years, by first real business dealings began with him in July, when I began placing an order for a single page ad to begin being ran for a client in October.
By August, Eric had learned (through me) that we were probably going to do a magazine insert for this same client through his competitor, Cool Hand magazine. He became very anxious to have us do an insert with him, and offered us a very good deal on that distribution.
The price he gave us was $16,000 to insert and distribute 115,000 cd-roms. This rate comes out to be $0.139 per piece, compared to the print industry average of $1.25 it seemed like a dream come true. Remember, when something looks to good to be true, it probably is, and that certainly turned out to be the case here.
The first sign of problems happened in October, a full two months before this insert was scheduled to take place. We were asked to have the 40,000 cd's shipped overseas to be delivered to Hong Kong by October 9, which seemed a bit early, but we managed to have them arrive a day early. What were we told? That there is absolutely no room in that office for 40,000 cd-roms and that they would be sitting on the loading dock. Eric and David at the magazine said there is no problem, even though the guys in HK seemed to be freaked out over it.
During the month of November I checked into this distribution several times, and was continuously assured that there are no problems, and that everything was going to roll out according to schedule. That schedule was to have 75,000 inserts in the North American edition distributed on Dec 1 and the 40,000 overseas to be distributed on the third week of December.
On December 2nd or 3rd, I checked in with Eric again, who, once again, assured me that all 75,000 copies went out. I immediately got another problem. It appears they also inserted a vanity card for Casino Heat, and my client was getting calls from bonus hunters trying to claim the Casino Heat bonus at their site. Seems to me that it would have been nice to know, in advance, that there would have been another insert, not only so that we would know our insert is devalued, but also so we would have been prepared for the phone calls dealing with Casino Heat.
A couple of more weeks pass, and I'm still not getting anything at all. At that point I had some guest accounts and the number of real players could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Granted, most cd's will take a few months before you capture the entire audience, but you also expect to see a large chunk of them come in immediately. If a large chunk can be counted on the fingers of one hand, it doesn't give a good forecast for the ending campaign, which isn't much better after 4 months have passed.
At that time, it seemed apparent to my partners that nowhere near all of the cd-roms went out, but I was foolish and continued to try to convince them otherwise. I got in touch with Eric again, who once again assured me that all CD's had gone out, and that the other 40,000 would be going out on schedule.
Well, at the end of the month (maybe it was the first few days of Jan), we get a letter from David P. saying we needed a copyright statement saying what was being distributed was our property and not pirated. So much for that 3rd week of December that was suppose to have happened.
By this point, I had about a hundred guest accounts, and could count the number of real registrations on my fingers and toes. Not only that, but they were all $20 players, which tends to make me think they were advertisers who had received the cd from the preview copy that comes with invoices. I'll have to make a point to pull the data on all of those accounts and compare it to the names of casino and portal operators who advertised that month.
Oh yes, I forgot to add that my invoices didn't come until the end of December, when they should have came in early November. Maybe they were trying to decide if they should bill me for an insertion that never happened??
At the beginning of October, I sent Eric a detailed assessment of this. I told him there is absolutely nothing more I can do to convince my partners that he distributed these cds. The fact is that after more than a month, the initial flow of accounts from those first 75,000 cd-roms should have been much higher than what I got. Anyone who has ever dealt with cd-roms knows this.
What I told him at that time is that the invoices will not be paid until we get something concrete referencing the distribution. What I specifically told him we wanted was an affidavit of performance from the distribution company stating the date of distribution, the number of copies distributed, and the number of copies returned. Any distribution house will provide these affidavits. In fact, most magazines get them automatically and would have had them on file.
A couple of weeks pass before I hear from them, which I assumed was because of ICE. When I did hear from them, it was emails from from Eric and from the lady in accounting demanding payment on the invoices.
I wrote back to Eric and cc'd accounting and directly told him I had already sent him a message saying these invoices will not be paid until we get a performance affidavit from the distributor. Eric immediately wrote back and said he didn't get the other email but that he would get what we were asking for. I tend to think he's a liar, because if he really didn't get the other email he would have asked me more about what the problem was and why I wanted the affidavit. Since he didn't ask, I volunteered the information, because this was a huge problem, that was ignored up to this point. I'll also add that during this entire period, from Dec 3 to the end of Jan, Eric continued to repeatedly assure me that all 75,000 had been shipped - stated as fact each time (as opposed to "I think").
About another 7 to 10 days pass and I get an email from Eric asking when he can expect to receive payment on the invoices. I should have wrote and told him to lay off the pipe, because he obviously has no short term memory. Instead, I wrote back and told him that I've already stated that no payment will be issued until we receive these affidavits.
Another week or so passes with no word from them. At this point, it's pretty damn obvious that they are trying to hide something. After all, we're well into February at this point, meaning I've spent close to two months trying to get this one single statement from the distributor, not to mention the previous month of being assured that everything went out on schedule.
Since they did not seem to have any intention on helping up get the problem resolved, I sent a break down of the problem to Michael Casseli at Online Casino News, because both he and his company (Lyceum Publishing) are listed in the credits of the magazine. I told him in detail what the problem was and ask that he call my partner on the matter. When he spoke to my partner, what he told us is that he has nothing to do with any of this and is just listed as the editor of the magazine. Essentially, he knew nothing and wouldn't have even known there was a problem had I not brought it to his attention.
So, Michael was not any help, Eric was still ignoring us (or sitting on his thumb, or whatever the hell it was he was doing during all of this time). The next course of action was to contact the distributors directly. We started with the US distributor in Illinois, since those had been sent a full month earlier than the overseas copies.
When we spoke to that guy, it was immediately apparent that something was wrong. He seemed confused about the number of copies, and the dates for distribution he was stating were not when the copies went out. The quantity of copies is what bothers me though, as we had sent him 75,000 and he seemed confused by the thought the he should have sent out that many. He put us on hold so he could check on it.
When he came back, he said he had called and spoke to David Pritchard at HHC. This is actually David from Eric's office, not from HHC in the UK. He said that David told him to not give us any information, and to only say that he will call us on the matter. Again, a sign that something is definitely wrong, as if they didn't have anything to hide, he would have just told the guy to verify what was shipped.
The very same day, I got an email from Eric saying that he knows my partner spoke to the US distributor, but that guy doesn't know anything about Hong Kong. Whatever Eric. The jig is up. He also sent me 5 or 6 attachments from various casinos giving him a good endorsement (pretty much viral marketing type recommendations). I don't need other casinos telling me how they did with the magazine. Our ads are tracked and I know that during this entire time, from Oct 1 to present, I have received a total of 2 clicks from that magazine. Like I told you Eric, we never cared about that, but the expense of these cd's is an entirely different story.
After a couple of days we finally got that call from David. There were a couple of startling facts that were revealed in that conversation:
A. The 40,000 in Hong Kong was nothing but a test, and by their own admission, a failed test. I'll say, as I didn't get a single sign up (to date) out of that batch. My understanding with them was that this was an established distribution for their global edition - not using me and my money to test a new market.
B. That out of the 75,000 that were sent to the IL distributor, a minimum of 50,000 disks were still sitting there.
Well, that let's me know why Eric spent month's dodging the issue. Eric, you know damn well that when I sent you that first request for an affidavit in January, certainly at some point thereafter, you would have known that 2/3 of the cd's sent to that distributor were never shipped. Why then, do you continue to lie (and I mean directly lie - no other way to see it) about the matter, thus doing nothing but wasting several months of lead time.
Now, I probably would have been content to let this go to the attornies without bringing it to the attention of the public, if it were not for an additional lie by Eric that's only purpose was to try to make what I said look questionable.
You see, when we first spoke of this distribution, Eric said he would send some to newsstands and some to subscribers. On Sept 30 I told him I wanted as many as possible to go to subscribers, and by mid-October this had been established that we wanted NO newsstand copies because we didn't want to waste our money on something that may or may not be purchased.
Why do I mention this? Partly because absolutely no copies went to subscribers, but mainly because earlier this morning when my partner was speaking to the magazine's president, it came out that Eric states that I am a liar and that this topic was never even discussed. He must have been working under the assumption that it's his word against mine, except for the fact that I have every email sent between us and have detailed notes on all phone conversations. This, combined with the clear lies and deception on this matter, makes it a little more than his word against mine. Eric, if you are going to call me a liar, then you damn well better expect your lies to be brought to public attention.
This is really besides the point. What did the magazine offer to do? They offered to send us back the remaining 50,000 copies and to not charge us for the distribution. Yeah, right!
1. That 50,000 copies is useless, because they are tracked with an ad id assigned to this distribution, and if these are sent through another outlet now, I won't know if the traffic comes from that outlet or from the few newsstand copies that they did actually send out.
2. The remaining 65,000 were shipped to newsstands, so at this point, there's absolutely no way of knowing how many, if any, of those were purchased and how many will be returned. Essentially, it's far beyond the 50,000 - it's the entire 115,000 that have been wasted, and I'm not going to eat that cost just because they "generously" offer to not charge me for a distribution that never happened.
3. This doesn't even account for the lead time (December to March) that has been wasted by your continued lies. This is a four month delay that does come with a price. I can clearly demonstrate to any court that revenue streams, and subsequent projections, have been directly impacted by your actions, and therefore, you are liable for the punative damages associated with that.
We told them that their pathetic offer is unacceptable. We are out 200,000 with everything considered combined, not counting the time that I will now be billing them on top of it for all the chasing around I have been done on this. Paying anyting less than that is unacceptable, and since they said they would rather have it go to the courts, that's exactly what will be happening.
Eric, you should have just been honest with me from day 1. You should have never continued to tell me that everything went out if you didn't know for sure. And once you did find out the shipment didn't go, you should have told me right away rather than to take the course of repeatedly telling me the opposite of the truth for months at a time.
So, as of now, this matter will be going to the courts. We will first be filing a case against the parent, HHC, in the UK courts. Depending upong the outcome of that case, it will be followed by a lawsuit out of Costa Rica served against the magazine directly. When I'm finished with that, Eric, I will be filing a personal suit against you just so I can drag your ass to my neck of the woods and make you go through a lengthy proceeding. Once all court outlets have been exhausted, I will seek other forms of justice. I don't care if it takes me 5 years, this will not be let go and I will continue to hunt you down until you pay what you have cost me.
If you will recall, I never approached you about an insert - you approached me. What this means is that you have solicited funds under false pretence, which is fraud. I may just have to seek action through criminal courts as well as civil. Either way, you aren't going to come out on top of all of this.
To the owners of this magazine, I would recommend you dump this ass and get someone on board who does not defraud your customers.
To Eric, burn in hell. It is very well documented that you are the one who lied. It's bad enough that someone I considered a friend scammed me, but for you to say I'm the one making shit up is a slap in the face that I will NOT let go.
To advertisers in the magazine, I would highly recommend you pull your ads, and would certainly recommend against any inserts with them. As you can see, they are liars and thieves, and there are way too many honest magazines on the market to waste your money on assholes like that.
To readers of the magazine, while you are not directly involved, you are at the same time paying to support a company that steals from others. I would suggest that you give your money to another magazine instead. There are plenty of good ones out there.
