Recently, a number of folks have written me asking whether or not Sam Sethi, former CEO of Blognation, had ever made good on his promise (and contract) to pay me or any of the other bloggers that spent several months of their lives supposedly in his employ writing for his start-up.
Those of you familiar with the story are probably aware that Sam had accrued a rather incredible amount of debt to myself and many others all while swearing up and down that he’d secured venture capital for his enterprise and that it was just a matter of those funds clearing the bank and he would be settling up with everyone for their back pay, travel expenses and even bonuses.
In my case Sam owes 3 months of pay – from the middle of August to the middle of November, plus about ten thousand in travel expenses.
If you’re at all curious to check up on the fact that Sam promised to pay you can do a Google search or read this post where Scam Sethi states unequivocally that he would make good on his commitment to pay everyone. He’s also said previously that he was taking a loan out against his assets to make good on his now very past due commitments to each and every writer unlucky enough to have been taken advantage of by the lying cretin.
So, no, Scam hasn’t paid me – he hasn’t responded to my invoices – and last I heard he hadn’t responded to an inquiry sent by Marc Orchant’s widow either…
Greetings from Hollywood… had no clue you were in Venice….
Now that this stuff is blowing over I think your best bet is to put it behind you and move on as best you can… negative things will suck you into them and drain you…especially after losing a close friend…. and after having everybody continuously rehashing everything…….do your best to not let the crazy events of the last few months color your new year too much… easier said then done, but keep looking FORWARD!
Trace.
Sam –
Pay Marc’s family and then seek an apology to all of those that you have hurt. It is called honor and respect…
Dan,
I’ve sent Sam email, sms and messages via Twitter. For the most part he ignores me except for a single time when I saw him for a moment on Skype and sent him a message. He didn’t respond but later that day he sent me an email claiming that he had an “undisclosed buyer” for the Blognation platform and he estimated that he would be able to pay everyone in a few months starting with Marc’s family.
Unfortunately, this is highly suspect and likely to be just more of Sam’s lying as he owes Jeremy Baines the developer for blognation something like $80,000 and he doesn’t own any of the content on blognation since none of the authors have been paid making it tough to figure out just what asset he thinks he can sell someone that would yield the roughly $250,000 or so that he currently owes to Marc’s family, me and the other folks unfortunate enough to have been roped into Scam Sethi’s Scheme.
Oliver
PS: come to think of it that is probably a good name for his next business; Scam’s Schemes…