Surely you saw it drive by right? I HAD to have fallen off a turnip truck to be in the middle of the this online drama. I must vent. You may or may not listen.
Once upon a time, you may recall I "worked" for a little online radio station called Blockhead Radio. They had a small but faithful following and even had cross promotions with major selling venues. BHR was run by two people who shall remain nameless so they cannot accuse me of mudslinging.
Loooooooooooooong and boring story short they ran a fun radio station focused at handmade artisans for roughly a year. It was lots of fun and I made a TON of fabulous friends I wouldn't trade for anything :) (Ok maybe for fabric, but they know that about me and accept it!) Anyhoo, it was fun for awhile.
Then it all hit the fan. There was a radio telethon for a fellow artisan who was supposed to be in serious health need. Well over 100 artisans banded together to donate $12,252.40 worth of merchandise to auction off for this artisan. The auction brought in 5,233.32, roughly 40% of the contributions which is a good percentage for a silent auction. The money was supposed to be given to the artisan in need. I tracked said artisan down and called him, he says he received the money and it did go to his health care. I have no idea if that's the truth.
The radiothon came and went. By the time the radiothon started, my relationship with the owners of BHR was already strained and after the auction they openly lied about my own brother and caused unnecessary drama in online forums thus ending our relationship for good.
You don't mess with my family or my friends. Let it be known.
So the radiothon finished and it was a 'success'. BUT then it all started to crumble....not everyone got the merchandise they bid on, artisans had no idea where to mail their items that someone had won, it all fell apart. The owners of BHR disappeared off the face of the earth, supposedly selling all their stuff and going to galavante the country in an RV. By the time THAT was supposed to have happened, I knew they were scammers and I cut all contact off with them. Sadly, they got away with lots of advertising money because they were SUPPOSED to paint ads on the side of said RV.
Yeah, I think that RV is pulling the Turnip Truck I fell off of.
So, that is a SUPER shortened version. My personal aspect of it is I was supposed to get 30% of the advertising monies as my salary for working roughly 20-25 hours a week for this radio station for about 4 months. I had access to ONE of their online shops and from that shop alone, just in advertising sales on THAT one shop, MY percentage is 640.00. So you can do the math at how much money they ACTUALLY made if my 30% is 640. So needless to say, I want my money but I will never see it.
So time passes, they disappear, I do background checks (because well, that was my job was to stay on top of information, they just didn't know how good I was at my job.) and find out they've gotten in trouble for scamming people before. Churches even! (lovely people, I tell you.)
Soooooooooo I'm a forgiving person, but that doesn't mean I forget. So I'm living my happy little life when a familiar name pops up on my Yahoo "updates" stream. Silly little person had been signed in under her "old" online identity and I easily followed the online trail to find these two owners of BHR------
Living in another state. RUNNING A SHOP OF THEIR ART!!!! INTERESTING. Considering I got a sob story of how they were homeless and what not, I find it interesting they had all that time to create art, or when they were homeless where did they store all the art? (because I recognize some of it as art they created back in 09.) So I do not believe said story about being homeless and "just now" getting back online when they have an Etsy profile that started in Feb 2010.
They are scammers. They cheated money out of countless artisans, and did even worse to a friend of mine, details of which I won't discuss because it's under investigation. Let's just say, they cannot hide and they will get the karma coming to them.
So the moral of the story is do not trust everyone you run into! We all know this, and I do not regret my time at BHR when it WAS a reputable radio station. It had a good purpose and it served a good number of artisans for a short time. It was most definitely a learning experience for all involved and for myself, I learned a lot about how to handle myself, my business and I learned I am not afraid of doing what needs to be done to protect myself and others.
The owners of BHR are now running a brick and mortar art studio/shop and are claiming to have found God and other lies but not once have they apologized publicly for what they did or owned up to it. In fact the only "apology" I got was that they were sorry for how "I felt". That my friends is not an apology, it is trying to make ME look like the bad guy.
Face it scammers, you're going to get what comes to you.
