Ross Rojek arrested for fraud (**OFFICIAL THREAD**)

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pgh kenny
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Post by pgh kenny » May 5th 2004, 2:52 pm

okay, i just noticed the unshipped merchandise thread

in that context it is more understandable that this is a very sticky situation indeed.

unless i am under the influence of crack, ross' ex-wife is justin's wife and justin maintains contact with ross due to being the step-father of ross' child.

justin has been fired from au but is sticking around to liquidate business and I guess he's hoping to get paid for ????

so would it be true that if merchandise were moved to fullfillment center, that justin would not be paid anything from that transaction - how is he being compensated for his services (looking for customer lists, etc. etc.)

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Post by Jason R » May 5th 2004, 2:57 pm

He wouldn't be getting any money from me, so I don't think he would be getting paid for helping.

He might be getting paid for liquidating fixtures and merchandise, but that doesn't concern this product. I believe he is helping more out of karmic issues than for financial gain.

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pgh kenny
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Post by pgh kenny » May 5th 2004, 3:04 pm

I agree with you Jason; he sounds like he does want to make things right. However, the temptation to make money off of this is sure to be enormous. Who gets the leftover boxes after all the known customers have been sent their boxes?
Jason R wrote:He wouldn't be getting any money from me, so I don't think he would be getting paid for helping.

He might be getting paid for liquidating fixtures and merchandise, but that doesn't concern this product. I believe he is helping more out of karmic issues than for financial gain.

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Post by Jason R » May 5th 2004, 3:10 pm

Ideally, I would like to find volunteers in Sacramento to destroy (it does not take much to dent and destroy these things, the post office does a good enough job) unshipped quantities at the end of the project.

As long as people have a chance to get their stuff, and as long as Ross doesn't profit from it, I'm open to any number of suggestions. Maybe school kids still use lunchboxes and they could be donated? If people tried to sell excess quantities, they could possibly be sued. These boxes are marked as "not for individual retail sale."

I guess BF or Disney could take the unclaimed merchandise if they wanted.

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Post by Jason R » May 5th 2004, 3:13 pm

I should add that one idea I had was to try to couple 120 of the the unclaimed lunchboxes and bonus discs with DVDs (which I would try to get donated for a fundraiser) and try to recoup some overcharge and bonus s&h money.

That's pretty hands-on though.

As for legal advice, pretty much it comes down to the fact that anybody can sue anyone for anything. Sometimes you can also be sued for doing nothing.

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Post by Jason R » May 5th 2004, 7:01 pm

Update: I requested a fax from Agent Baker saying that they are neither claiming the DVDs and lunchboxes as spoils of the investigation against Ross Rojek or as evidence.

If they will send this, I believe that I can make a reasonable argument that distributing them to their owners is the right thing to do. If they won't send it, it is not unreasonable for me to bow out of trying to do it.

Gary, we seem to butt heads here lately, but I know your intentions are good. I hope that you will see that my intentions are equally good. I'm not trying to deflect blame to MSCL.com, and I'm also not accepting blame for what Ross did, I'm just trying to do something to make things resolve somewhat more positively.

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Post by Justin at AU » May 5th 2004, 7:21 pm

Hey everyone,

Wow, what a day. See there has been lots of activity on here. As for the question of what I get out of all this, nothing but good Karma like Jason said. I am just trying to helpout before the doors close.

Now for my news. I found a list of every order in all the SQL mess. It only gives me order number on who ordered it, but then I found another list that list customer information and order numbers to use for cross referencing. The Customer information list has noted in it on who has already received the bonus disk and lunchbox. I dont knwo when the last time it was updated, but this is the best I have found so far.

I am going to try and clean it up as it also has every order that au ever had. If i can get this done fast enough then we should be good.

Justin

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Post by Jason R » May 5th 2004, 7:30 pm

One down. :D
If I get a fax from the FBI authorizing me to move the stuff, I'll do it.

Question for the programming types here. Does anybody know a way to take one list of emails and automatically compare it with another list and automatically spit out the emails that don't appear on the master list?

Justin, please let me know what you have to do to get the list into some usable format (csv, excel file, etc)

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Post by Justin at AU » May 5th 2004, 8:27 pm

The files are huge .csv files just dumped out of sql. I will be going through them tonight and tomorrow to clean then up and then import them into an easy to use excel file.

Justin

Jason R
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Post by Jason R » May 5th 2004, 8:37 pm

Justin at AU wrote:The files are huge .csv files just dumped out of sql. I will be going through them tonight and tomorrow to clean then up and then import them into an easy to use excel file.

Justin
do me a favor, send to me. i will see if i can't throw up a simple php to query the database.

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Post by Justin at AU » May 5th 2004, 9:13 pm

Let me strip credit card information if it is in there first. The customer info file is in the worst shape. I have a full list of orders with customer numbers, just the table with the names attached to order numbers is in disarray.

Also, I dont know if it is very wise of me to give out this information to anyone but the person handling the shipping of the product to customers. Just to legally cover my own butt here. I mean if you agree to take it on after you get the fax from the FBI then I have no problem sending you the files. In the meantime I will continue to work on cleaning them up.

Justin

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Post by Jason R » May 5th 2004, 9:28 pm

I definitely don't want any CC data.

Hate to say it dude, but if it's gonna be contacting people on the list, it's me. The fulfillment company is not going to be emailing these people (other than for tracking, and that still has to be confirmed).

So, if you can figure out who is owed, just send those emails. thanks.
Justin at AU wrote:
Also, I dont know if it is very wise of me to give out this information to anyone but the person handling the shipping of the product to customers. Just to legally cover my own butt here. I mean if you agree to take it on after you get the fax from the FBI then I have no problem sending you the files. In the meantime I will continue to work on cleaning them up.

Justin

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Post by Justin at AU » May 5th 2004, 9:46 pm

I am just getting it in two files that can be crossreferenced. The problem is that the customer file with the email addresses is every customer au had.

Other news. The Bookkeeper called me back. She didnt have any sort of list just a file of people who emailed her asking for there lunchbox and bonus disk. However she did tell me the file i am using is current and does have all the accurate information on who has received a bonus disk so far.

We have a list. I didnt think we would, but we have it.

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pgh kenny
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Post by pgh kenny » May 5th 2004, 10:01 pm

Thank You. Sorry you had to get tangled up with Ross (at a level I can't even dream of). best wishes for the future and maybe owning your own comic shop someday
Justin at AU wrote:Hey everyone,

Wow, what a day. See there has been lots of activity on here. As for the question of what I get out of all this, nothing but good Karma like Jason said. I am just trying to helpout before the doors close.

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Post by Justin at AU » May 5th 2004, 11:52 pm

Thank You Kenny.

Well it was much easier than i expected, just dropped the files in access and ran a query. I now have a list of everyone who ordered the set and who has received their bonus disks, and if they cancelled, and if they refused shipment of the bonus disk and lunch box, which did happen a few times I guess from a couple boxes I found around the warehous ethat said return to sender and had the bonus and lunchbox inside.

I will call the FBI in the morning and see what is going on with a fax that says it is okay to do something with this stuff. Not only for Jason but I think it would be in my best interest as well and would make the fufillment company more at ease with the whole thing in case they had any problems with the owner being in jail. Needless to say that has made some people rather jumpy about having dealings with the company.

I am only going to be putting in a limited day at the warehouse tomorrow, so that i can get some rest before the big weekend of doom.

Also just a thought let me know what you all think. If I get the fax from the FBI saying go ahead, then I could let anyone is the Sacramento area come out to the warehouse and pick up there copy as long as they had ID i could check it off the list. I wish i was close enough to everyone who is still owed it so they could just come on down and pick it up. The only downside I could see is people may get a little upset if some poeple are able to pick them up and not have to pay shipping a second time to the fufillment compnay and someone further away would. But this is just a thought. Let me know what you all think about it.

Justin (just about ready to fall into a long long sleep)

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