About $2000 in donations were misappropriated by Beverly Erickson, the former Treasurer of UNSCREWED in the fall of 2007, and the organization has been struggling to recover ever since.

President Tom Stillwell explains, “when UNSCREWED was begun, it was a spontaneous, ad hoc organization, with everybody scrambling to get things rolling quickly so as to aid artists in need as soon as possible. Because of the urgency, we didn’t institute proper precautions immediately. Bev set up a checking account in her own name because we didn’t have a business name or incorporation papers until some time later and couldn’t open an account in the company name. We trusted her because she had been a longtime member of Comic Book Resources under the name ‘PaperGirl’, had served as a Moderator on the site, and was well-known and highly regarded by all involved.”

In October of 2007, UNSCREWED was informed by an artist that a Paypal transfer sent to him had been canceled. Other payments were found to have also been canceled. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that the organization’s checking account had been closed around the same time that Erickson had relocated from Florida to Alabama. Attempts to contact her went unanswered for over a month.

When Erickson was finally contacted, she explained that she had made “an honest mistake” and had accidentally used the wrong checkbook to pay some bills; by the time she discovered the error, she was in dire financial condition and could not pay the money back. She promised to send a small amount out of each paycheck until the debt was paid. No payments were ever received, and she has subsequently changed her phone number; attempts to contact her by letter, email and through family members have been unsuccessful.

“Legally, there was nothing we could do; the donations were sent to her Paypal account and deposited into a checking account in her name, with our consent,” Stillwell stated. With no other recourse, Stillwell began paying back the missing funds out of his own pocket., as well as replacing the canceled transactions, again at his own expense.

The organization’s leadership decided that it would be best for the group to absorb the loss and move on rather than spend a lot more time and money trying to recover the lost funds and harm UNSCREWED’s reputation in the process. Work has proceeded on the comic anthology the organization is publishing, and some artists have been assisted with filing claims against non-paying publishers. Despite the financial blow to the organization, no request for assistance has been denied. The situation has not affected UNSCREWED’s work.

But recently, when a disgruntled former acquaintance of Ms. Erickson with knowledge of the situation had begun threatening to expose the story, it was decided to go public.

“All we can do is honestly say what happened and accept responsibility for the errors we made in the past,” Stillwell said, “we’ve addressed those errors so they can’t happen again; the bank and Paypal accounts are in the organization’s name, the new Treasurer, Brian Crowley, lives nearby, and notifications of all account transactions are sent from the bank to multiple board members on a daily basis. Beyond that, all we can do is continue to replace the stolen funds and try to keep the organization going; it’s too important to just let it collapse.”

Reposted with some massive additions from the comments section from people who worked with Ross Rojek. And since the article still gets hits months after originally posted, obviously there is still interest in this case.

Ross Rojek, formerly of Another Universe, formerly of Comics and Comix, formerly the guy who served four years of a nearly 7 year sentence for screwing a bunch of investors who were fooled into believing he had created some kind of cool facial recognition technology that was going to keep the world safe from Al Queda, was released on September 18, 2008 from Sacramento Community Corrections.

If you are one of the many self publishers who shipped Rojek product for which you were not paid (including me), don’t expect him to be making good on those debts any time soon, felonious scoundrel that he is.

Rojek apologized to those people hurt by his actions on his personal web page. But that’s down, now. I’ll bet it was heartfelt. At least, heartfelt to people who fall for sappy crap.

Here’s an early Comics Journal article on Rojek’s arrest.

Ross got into an interesting bit of trouble over dvd’s of My So Called Life.

Here’s a website which once had pages and pages of jokes excoriating Rojek, and now you can get them in handy downloadable format! 73 pages of Rojek memories!

Somewhere on the internet, Rojek’s ex went public and ballistic at the same time, and if I could find that, I’d post it, too.

Rojek isn’t mental, or misunderstood, he’s yet another creep with no moral compass.

Just my opinion.

But then, he ripped me off, so I’m entitled to not feel a lot of sympathy for the guy. And while it may seem as if we are piling on here, in my experience, people like this don’t go away. The public needs to be aware of scammers and how to spot them.

Additions from those who experienced the wonder that is Rojek below the fold:

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I am very sorry that I cannot find the correspondence that brought this to my attention, so please contact me again so I can credit you.

The Google/ Authors Guild case concerns Google’s attempt to scan all books and post them to the internet without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder. While Google claims this act is their do-no-evil public service as internet uber-librarians, Google stood to earn millions of dollars from the exploitation of these works and had no intent to provide the creators or publishers of same with one penny from the use. While Google claims that only a small portion of any of the books is available for public perusal at any time, this is de facto copyright violation for commercial use.

When I have found these books scanned online via Google, huge sections of the books were available for use by the reader. Nifty for research purposes, but crappy of Google to take advantage of the content provider (author). Google’s empire made some 6 billion dollars last year alone.

(EDIT)While this article, which is written by someone who is clearly unhappy with the settlement, claims Google only made “snippets” of works available. I was able to read 20 pages of copyrighted texts at a time. Basically, entire chapters.

One commenter demanded to know had ANY of the annoyed authors ever made any money on their books after the advance?

Why, yes. I have. Thanks for asking. That’s how I have made almost every penny I have ever made on A Distant Soil.

The Authors Guild settlement will, supposedly, make a portion of the advertising funds raked in by Google payable to authors. How that is all going to work out remains a bit murky.

Further confusing the matter, children’s book illustrations are treated differently under the settlement terms than other book illustrations, which are excluded from the settlement.

This is the correspondence that recently came in the email, directed at all parties who registered to receive info about the claim and settlement outlined here.
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I am baffled, perplexed, yea and verily, utterly flummoxed when I hear of poor, starving artists going up against big bad corporations and nefarious industry individuals, and these poor creators are utterly unable to afford legal advice or representation, when I REPEATEDLY RECOMMEND THE VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS to them AS IF I AM CHANTING A FREAKING MANTRA!!!

THE VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS, an organization whose name should be seared into your brain by now, takes cases pro bono or based on need as indicated by your income.

If you come to me for advice, and I direct you to the VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS, and you do not do as I have recommended, and then you complain you can’t get a lawyer…well, Darwinism is at work. I have recommended THE VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS to a number of creators over the years, and they represented me when I was a young and poor artist, and they also recommended adequate legal counsel elsewhere at very reasonable prices. I have NEVER known them NOT to represent a creator to the satisfaction of all involved WHEN THERE WAS A LEGITIMATE CASE.

In fact, I just paid my extremely expensive art and entertainment attorney his hundreds of dollars an hour fee to go over a legal matter for a creator who pleads abuse and poverty, and the money out of my pocket did not get the creator the answer they hoped for – i.e., they’ve got a loser of a case. Bummer for them.

However, if you don’t believe me, or if you don’t believe my lawyer WHOSE BILLS ARE PAID BY ME O, Clueless One, then you STILL could have gone to the VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS to get an independent assessment, which appears to be something you did not do.

Like I said, Darwinism.

So, don’t be low critter on the food chain. When your funds are limited and your grievance is genuine, contact the VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS, and do what smart people do.

They don’t get mad. They let their attorneys get mad for them.

By the way, I would like to point out that the person who first directed me to the VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS was Bill Mantlo, a former comics creator who took up the law as a public defender. Mantlo was badly injured in a freak accident while rollerblading and has been living with brain damage ever since.

Mantlo did me a great service, spent hours with me going over my case, helped secure me a link up with the VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS, and kept in touch with me until the matter was resolved. My total financial outlay over several year’s worth of legal struggles was only $1,000. I call that a bargain. It saved my project A Distant Soil.

I am eternally grateful to Bill Mantlo. Thank you for your kindness, your decency, and for giving me the information that I was able to pass along to other creators who also had very satisfactory results with the VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS.

In fact, the next time I donate to a legal fund, my money is going to the VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS.

VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS SERVICES, all right there online for anyone to read, any day, any time, for months and months and months:

About Us

etc…

But wait! there’s more!

VLA is deeply grateful to the hundreds of law firms, individuals, foundations, corporations, and government agencies for their extraordinary generosity during Fiscal Year 2004-05. This year VLA raised over threequarters of a million dollars from our Special Events, Foundation, Government, Law Firm and Corporate Membership programs.

During the past five years, VLA’s activities have been particularly supported by our law firm and corporate members. The list of members continues to grow. As of June 30, 2005, there were 30 law firm and corporate members. The level of law firm and corporate support also continued to grow. VLA received its first and largest corporate membership contribution at the $25,000 Patron level from Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP.

Wow. Look. Real money. Real lawyers. Real power. Real experience.

Really good idea.

c

A few posts down, I mentioned Michael Whelan’s adventures doing cover art for a Michael Jackson album cover, and then having trouble getting paid for it. It was pointed out to me that the cover art was for the Jackson Five album Victory, and not for a Michael Jackson album, so thanks for that, and that’s what I get for trying to remember the article off the top of my head!

I was going crazy trying to remember where I had found the story, but eventually dug up American Fantasy Summer 1987. So, not Interzone, as I had thought.

Whelan repeatedly praised the Jacksons as being nice to meet and deal with, but here’s the actual quotes from the magazine about the incident.

Whelan said: “The unfortunate thing was that so many people around them had their own ideas about what the painting should look like that my ideas of what it should be got lost in the shuffle. You can add to the fact that fifty percent of the painting was executed on a stove in an apartment in Hollywood in very hot weather, under adverse circumstances…by the time I figured attorney’s fees, how much time I spent on it and the aggravations, I probably made as much on an hourly basis as I would’ve received for a regular commission.”

Whelan reserves most of his disattisfaction for the record company who “…were constantly trying to get me to get my price down, telling me they had illustrators lining up on the street outside to do this job for free and I’m ripping them off and do I realize all the jobs I’m going to get as a result of doing this Jackson over? Well, I have to laugh because I didn’t get one job as a result of that cover.”

It got worse when Whelan was misquoted in an interview. A reporter said Michael Jackson wanted his skin lightened for the cover art. The headline read “Michael Jackson Wants to be White.”

Whelan lightened Jackson’s skin in the painting as a creative decision so the figures would stand out from the dark background, but Whelan was concerned about the fan reaction to the interview. It doesn’t appear there was any fallout from it. Jackson later went on to whiten his skin without any help from Whelan, so no harm done by Whelan in the end.

“So much for my flirtation with big-time PR.”

OK, there you have it, and thanks to everyone for your patience while I scared this up! Now you have the straight skinny! And you have an example of how even the most respected creators can get the runaround from clients!

To what extent these musical artists are responsible for the abuse of freelancers doing their album covers, I do not know.

c