September 8, 2007
Dear Fellow Authors,
First, let me thank those of you who have submitted your paperwork to the Attorney General and Detective Buskirk of the Martinsville police department.
Yesterday I had a long conversation with the detective who is compiling all of your information. Even if you are not able to find receipts, contracts, or emails, please send him your story with whatever facts you do remember because this will build the case for Airleaf to supply him with all of his records.
Here's is his email address so you can send him your story:
jbuskirk@rnetinc.net
You may feel more compelled to speed up your story after I give you the following news.
Since starting my Airleaf Victims campaign, I have received information from five ex-Airleaf employees. This information was extremely disturbing to me, and I know you'll feel that way too after you read it. In case you think that any of the ex-employees are exaggerating, well, they're not. All of this will be proven when Airleaf is confronted by the investigation and forced to show their records. I have compiled some of this information to share with you.
1) Airleaf sold the authors a package called the Germany Book Fair - and didn't go. Carl Lau had his staff tell the authors that during the time he was supposed to be in Germany that he was out of town at the book fair, but he was sitting right at his desk. That was fall of 2006.
2) Airleaf was selling the authors Bowker Club after they knew that Bowker had discontinued the service. $84,000 was collected from that service that never existed.
3) Airleaf sold the London Book Fair in April 2007 to authors, but again, didn't go.
4) Airleaf sells the Books-To-Film Program where Carl Lau supposedly pitches books to Hollywood producers, but doesn't. The last trip he took to Hollywood for this program in April 2007 consisted of taking a tour of a studio instead of pitching the books. The authors are supposed to get a report about whom he spoke to and what they said, but he instructed his employees to make up false reports to send to the authors about two weeks after the fact. Or, he himself lied to the author and made up stuff to appease them.
5) Airleaf sold ads in Advance Magazine, the New York Times and other large ads for hundreds of dollars but had no intention of actually running the ads.
6) Airleaf has no money to pay the suppliers, but Carl Lau insists that his sales people keep selling services that they know won't be done.
7) Writes off his plane, car, and gas on the company's expenses even though they have nothing to do with the company.
8) The www.americanauthorcontest.com is another total fraud. It's being run by Airleaf to draw people in so they can put them on their mailing list to try to sell them something. There are no real sponsors and the judges are the Hollywood producer people Carl supposedly is in business with. He actually just pays them money out of Airleaf's money.
9) Carl had one representative sell a Kirkus Review for $799 in February '06 in which he never submitted the books or paid Kirkus to do Kirkus only charges $250 for a review on their website). Every one of those authors got completely scammed. The books were never sent in.
10) When an author pays money, they aren't paying for their printing, they are paying for printing jobs of other authors from many months prior to their job. That's why so many authors are told, "Your book is at the printer."
11) Airleaf charges big bucks to authors that claim to target 5,000 - 10,000 bookstores, television producers, radio shows, etc. Those numbers were completely pulled out of the air who knew for a fact that all those packages were frauds from the very beginning.
12) Airleaf has also resorted to selling the authors their own books back to make some money, claiming it's an inventory reduction. It's really a last ditch effort to get cash in.
13) Airleaf keeps touting the movie "Jessie's Girl" to mislead authors into thinking that their books are being made into movies. I investigated this claim after three of the five ex-employees told me this. I went to the website of where this film is being made--Litestone. Of course, there seems to be a real connection between this company and Airleaf. If you go to Google and type in "Life Stone Entertainment," one of the links is to Airleaf. And remember that contest mentioned above by one of the ex-employees? When you go to the link for the contest, one of the judges is Al Smith, the CEO of Life Stone when you look up their staff. And Jessie's Girl is coincidentally written by Lawrence Dixon, the Vice President of Life Stone. So it seems like there is a genuine conspiracy here that I will leave the police to investigate.
These are some of the major issues that were passed on to me that I wanted to share with you. The people who wrote to me claim they left Airleaf because they could no longer participate in the fraud. These accusations will all be investigated by the police and Attorney General.
Please help me with this:
If you paid for any of the specific services listed above such as the Germany or London book fairs, pitching of books to Hollywood, or press releases sent to thousands of non-existant people, please let me know so I can start sorting out the fraud.
In the next day or so, I'll send you a compilation of your complaints (anonymous of course) so you can see the degree of fraud involved here.
By the way, one of the ex-employees stated, "I understand you are possibly putting together a lawsuit, but I seriously doubt you will get any money from Airleaf. They have literally run out of money." I guess this is true because recently, they were unable to meet their payroll for two weeks.
BUT--ON THE BRIGHT SIDE--when I spoke to Detective Buskirk, he explained to me that any personal assets that Carl Lau has tied into the business could be sold to compensate us for the money we put out. So that was encouraging. As I mentioned earlier, according to one of the ex-employees, "Carl Lau writes off his plane, car, and gas on the company's expenses even though they have nothing to do with the company." So hopefully those assets will reimburse our money one day.
Please let me know if you have any questions. You know I will fight with you until we win, but I need your help as well. I'll be speaking to another class action attorney this week and let you know the results. I still haven't heard back from the first one.
With great hope,
Bonnie
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
AIRLEAF UPDATES, September 5, 2007
SEPTEMBER 5, 2007
Dear Airleaf Fighters Group,
I am writing you this letter with a heavy heart. After compiling almost 50 complaints to date, it is disheartening enough to read each of your letters seeing the pain and anguish you have had to deal with. In addition, I have five ex-employees of Airleaf who have given me some very disturbing information about what has happened to your hard earned money. I'm sure you're not suprised if I tell you how much fraud was involved with book promotions, book sales, and book publishing. I will put that information together for you by the weekend along with some of your stories I'll compile.
On a positive note, I received this letter from Detective Buskirk who is assisting me in getting information gathered for criminal charges. He has asked for your help in putting the case together for him. I have sent him your stories, but he needs you to tell him yourself.
I am sending you the letter he sent to me today. I know this may take some of your time--but I think I told you I'd need some of that from the beginning. I think we have an excellent chance with this, so please take the time to send Detective Buskirk the information he is requesting. If you never signed a contract for services, please tell him that. Please go through your computer emails or any other letters or ads you might have. Any correspondence is good too. Even if you don't have the paperwork you need, please send him your story in the meantime.
If you have any questions, please email him at:
jbuskirk@rnetinc.net
He's is very helpful and wants to help us. But he actually needs as much hardcopy as possible. His mailing address is at the end of this letter.
After you take care of this, please DROP ME A LINE to let me know that you've done it. And please keep sending the information in to the Attorney General's Office. So far, 27 of you informed me that you have done that this week. Detective Buskirk will be working with the Attorney General's office as well. If you haven't taken that step, here's the information again:
Attorney General Information: (Please email me when you complete this, or if you have completed and not told me, please let me know)
This is the link:
Office of the Indiana Attorney General - Steve Carter
They will ask you the address of the company, owner, and phone number. Here it is:
Carl Lau, Owner
Airleaf Publishing and BooksellingCopyright © 2005 All rights reserved.35 Industrial Drive · Martinsville, Indiana 46151
Telephone: 1 800 342-6068
I am now pursuing avenues with the media to pursue our story. As soon as I make the proper contacts, I'll let you know. I'm also working on finding the right class action attorney. I contacted one, and I'll follow up with him by the beginning of next week.
Thanks for you help. United we will win! Hopefully we'll win our money back, but for sure, we'll win back our dignity and send a message to the numerous scam artists that we will not be taken in again.
Best regards to all of you my fellow authors,
Bonnie Kaye
LETTER FROM DETECTIVE BUSKIRK:
Good morning Bonnie,
Thank you for your continued information gathering in this case. I am sending you this so that you may forward this information to the contacts who are interested in pursuing charges against any and all who are responsible under Indiana Criminal Code.
I would like to let you know that the easiest criminal charges are those dealing with the failure of Airleaf to pay the royalties from the sales of the books. However, I would also like to see if we can show an ongoing criminal pattern of deception. Therefore, I am asking that each author send me the following list of items so that we might review this information.
1. I need their contact information including Email, Addresses and Phone numbers.
2. A copy of their contracts, all contact information with the company such as emails, letters, and other representations from the company.
3. Any and all accounting to them on the packages bought, books printed, sold, and payments received.
4. Any names of the people each author worked with or talked with, and any other outside person they may have learned information from, such as an outside printing company or other vendor. Names, TX numbers and companies are very important in order to make a net these people can not escape from.
5. Finally, I need them to explain to me why they feel the company stole from them, not just shoddy work. If we can show or if they believe they did not receive any of the services paid for, then we might be able to file criminal charges on that, if we have a good pattern and witnesses from some of the former employees who may feel they sold packages that were bogus.
6. Each author's case will be looked at upon the individual facts of the case. Until each case is examined, I cannot guarantee prosecution for anything, but from my experience, it would appear that there are criminal charges possible in many of the cases that have been forwarded to me.
This information can be forwarded to me by using my email or sending it to the address below. Please let them know what system you used to forward your information so that I can open the attachments if they send it thru email. They also need to make sure the documents are readable before forwarding it to me.
Finally, I need this information ASAP. I will probably be reassigned from detective work on January 1, 2008 and I need to get this case filed and into court prior to this date. So everyone needs to be as expedient as possible.
Sincerely,
Capt.. Jeffrey C. Buskirk Martinsville Police Department
PO Box 1415 59 S. Jefferson Street Martinsville, Indiana 46151
You can also send the information via email. You can cut and paste any email correspondence you have into a Microsoft document and send it to jbuskirk@rnetinc.net
Dear Airleaf Fighters Group,
I am writing you this letter with a heavy heart. After compiling almost 50 complaints to date, it is disheartening enough to read each of your letters seeing the pain and anguish you have had to deal with. In addition, I have five ex-employees of Airleaf who have given me some very disturbing information about what has happened to your hard earned money. I'm sure you're not suprised if I tell you how much fraud was involved with book promotions, book sales, and book publishing. I will put that information together for you by the weekend along with some of your stories I'll compile.
On a positive note, I received this letter from Detective Buskirk who is assisting me in getting information gathered for criminal charges. He has asked for your help in putting the case together for him. I have sent him your stories, but he needs you to tell him yourself.
I am sending you the letter he sent to me today. I know this may take some of your time--but I think I told you I'd need some of that from the beginning. I think we have an excellent chance with this, so please take the time to send Detective Buskirk the information he is requesting. If you never signed a contract for services, please tell him that. Please go through your computer emails or any other letters or ads you might have. Any correspondence is good too. Even if you don't have the paperwork you need, please send him your story in the meantime.
If you have any questions, please email him at:
jbuskirk@rnetinc.net
He's is very helpful and wants to help us. But he actually needs as much hardcopy as possible. His mailing address is at the end of this letter.
After you take care of this, please DROP ME A LINE to let me know that you've done it. And please keep sending the information in to the Attorney General's Office. So far, 27 of you informed me that you have done that this week. Detective Buskirk will be working with the Attorney General's office as well. If you haven't taken that step, here's the information again:
Attorney General Information: (Please email me when you complete this, or if you have completed and not told me, please let me know)
This is the link:
Office of the Indiana Attorney General - Steve Carter
They will ask you the address of the company, owner, and phone number. Here it is:
Carl Lau, Owner
Airleaf Publishing and BooksellingCopyright © 2005 All rights reserved.35 Industrial Drive · Martinsville, Indiana 46151
Telephone: 1 800 342-6068
I am now pursuing avenues with the media to pursue our story. As soon as I make the proper contacts, I'll let you know. I'm also working on finding the right class action attorney. I contacted one, and I'll follow up with him by the beginning of next week.
Thanks for you help. United we will win! Hopefully we'll win our money back, but for sure, we'll win back our dignity and send a message to the numerous scam artists that we will not be taken in again.
Best regards to all of you my fellow authors,
Bonnie Kaye
LETTER FROM DETECTIVE BUSKIRK:
Good morning Bonnie,
Thank you for your continued information gathering in this case. I am sending you this so that you may forward this information to the contacts who are interested in pursuing charges against any and all who are responsible under Indiana Criminal Code.
I would like to let you know that the easiest criminal charges are those dealing with the failure of Airleaf to pay the royalties from the sales of the books. However, I would also like to see if we can show an ongoing criminal pattern of deception. Therefore, I am asking that each author send me the following list of items so that we might review this information.
1. I need their contact information including Email, Addresses and Phone numbers.
2. A copy of their contracts, all contact information with the company such as emails, letters, and other representations from the company.
3. Any and all accounting to them on the packages bought, books printed, sold, and payments received.
4. Any names of the people each author worked with or talked with, and any other outside person they may have learned information from, such as an outside printing company or other vendor. Names, TX numbers and companies are very important in order to make a net these people can not escape from.
5. Finally, I need them to explain to me why they feel the company stole from them, not just shoddy work. If we can show or if they believe they did not receive any of the services paid for, then we might be able to file criminal charges on that, if we have a good pattern and witnesses from some of the former employees who may feel they sold packages that were bogus.
6. Each author's case will be looked at upon the individual facts of the case. Until each case is examined, I cannot guarantee prosecution for anything, but from my experience, it would appear that there are criminal charges possible in many of the cases that have been forwarded to me.
This information can be forwarded to me by using my email or sending it to the address below. Please let them know what system you used to forward your information so that I can open the attachments if they send it thru email. They also need to make sure the documents are readable before forwarding it to me.
Finally, I need this information ASAP. I will probably be reassigned from detective work on January 1, 2008 and I need to get this case filed and into court prior to this date. So everyone needs to be as expedient as possible.
Sincerely,
Capt.. Jeffrey C. Buskirk Martinsville Police Department
PO Box 1415 59 S. Jefferson Street Martinsville, Indiana 46151
You can also send the information via email. You can cut and paste any email correspondence you have into a Microsoft document and send it to jbuskirk@rnetinc.net
Monday, September 3, 2007
AIRLEAF UPDATES, September 3, 2007
September 3, 2007
Good morning, Airleaf Fighters,
First, happy holiday to all of you. This is an update of the week's activities.
More letters of Airleaf horrors continue to come in daily from all over the world including Canada, the UK, and Australia. People who are out of the country really felt isolated until they heard about this new action uniting us together.
I continue to have contact with the Martinsville, Indiana police detective who is compiling information to take to the Attorney General on our behalf. To date, 14 of you have reported back to me that you have filed complaints with the Attorney General's office which will be an important step. This shows the Attorney General that there is a pattern of deceit and fraud here. If you have not filed your complaint yet, please do so with the link at the bottom of this email. It only takes less than 10 minutes, but it's very important to do this.
One author wrote to me and told me that it took him 8 months after he filed, but he did receive back $5,500.00. That was the first sign of hope for me and I am passing it on to you.
Next, I contacted a consumer attorney who does class action cases. I have forwarded him some of your information to see if he feels we have a case. Based on what I spoke to him about, he was interested. He doesn't charge an upfront fee but takes a percentage of the money won for us. He'll get back to me this week, and I'll write to you again after I hear from him.
When it comes to money, there is a lot more at stake than just the money we have invested into publishing our books or getting them "publicized." There's all the time we've invested and also our pain and suffering. I want us to be compensated for that as well.
Here's an example: Yesterday I received an email from a woman who wrote to me via Amazon where she saw my information. This is what she said:
Bonnie -I ordered your book (Straight Wives...) from your site on 6/26/07, and have yet to see the book show up. It has been charged to my credit card, I have left 2 messages for Carl (president at Airleaf) and have yet to hear a word. Could you please get in touch with me immediately and let me know what the heck is going on? I am way beyond frustrated with this whole experience.Thanks -M P
I was very distressed to receive this letter because it shows criminal intent on behalf of Airleaf. I offered to send this person a free book just to keep the good will. Airleaf is taking money for books and not even sending them out--because I know they don't have any of my books. At the time of this order, I still had Airleaf linked to my website which I have now changed. Since it's impossible to ever know the real "Airleaf" story unless there is a government generated investigation, it makes it that much more urgent for all of us to send in those Attorney General reports.
One author wrote to me when he was told that the publishing company was holding up the production because they were so backlogged. He called the publishing company and was told his order was not being held up for any other reason except that Airleaf has never paid them and they are in debt so they are not printing any more of their books. Chances are, if you never received your book, this is why.
In order to fully investigate this situation, I need your help. This is the information I would like you to send me:
1. Did you invest in getting your book published?
2. Did you invest in getting your book publicized after having it printed elsewhere?
3. Did you ever receive any kind of notices for sales statements or royalties?
4. Did you have any kind of contract? If so, was anything in there violated? For instance, my contract states that my book will be in 15 stores. It never happened.
5. Some of you said that you paid for having your book in the Kirkus reviews. Did you ever see any proof that your book was advertised there? Incidentally, some of you paid $699.00 for a review that cost $250.00 to get printed.
6. Hooray for Hollywood. So many of you paid to have your book reviewed by Hollywood producers. Did any of you ever hear from anyone connected with Hollywood productions?
Any information you can send me will help to start putting the pieces together.
Please don't forget to post a comment in our group blog. Here's the group link:
Airleaf Victims
This week, I will continue compiling the complaints. Next week, I will send all of you the complaints (anonymous) that have come in to me so far so you can get a first hand look at all of the enormity of fraud that you have revealed to me. Once you see it, I know you'll stand fast in our resolve to end this misery.
Once I get all of our information in order, I will be contacting the press to do an expose. I will write to you more about that in my next update.
With hope,
Bonnie Kaye
Attorney General Information: (Please email me when you complete this, or if you have completed and not told me, please let me know)
This is the link:
Office of the Indiana Attorney General - Steve Carter
They will ask you the address of the company, owner, and phone number. Here it is:
Carl Lau, Owner
Airleaf Publishing and Bookselling35 Industrial Drive · Martinsville, Indiana 46151Telephone: 1 800 342-6068
Good morning, Airleaf Fighters,
First, happy holiday to all of you. This is an update of the week's activities.
More letters of Airleaf horrors continue to come in daily from all over the world including Canada, the UK, and Australia. People who are out of the country really felt isolated until they heard about this new action uniting us together.
I continue to have contact with the Martinsville, Indiana police detective who is compiling information to take to the Attorney General on our behalf. To date, 14 of you have reported back to me that you have filed complaints with the Attorney General's office which will be an important step. This shows the Attorney General that there is a pattern of deceit and fraud here. If you have not filed your complaint yet, please do so with the link at the bottom of this email. It only takes less than 10 minutes, but it's very important to do this.
One author wrote to me and told me that it took him 8 months after he filed, but he did receive back $5,500.00. That was the first sign of hope for me and I am passing it on to you.
Next, I contacted a consumer attorney who does class action cases. I have forwarded him some of your information to see if he feels we have a case. Based on what I spoke to him about, he was interested. He doesn't charge an upfront fee but takes a percentage of the money won for us. He'll get back to me this week, and I'll write to you again after I hear from him.
When it comes to money, there is a lot more at stake than just the money we have invested into publishing our books or getting them "publicized." There's all the time we've invested and also our pain and suffering. I want us to be compensated for that as well.
Here's an example: Yesterday I received an email from a woman who wrote to me via Amazon where she saw my information. This is what she said:
Bonnie -I ordered your book (Straight Wives...) from your site on 6/26/07, and have yet to see the book show up. It has been charged to my credit card, I have left 2 messages for Carl (president at Airleaf) and have yet to hear a word. Could you please get in touch with me immediately and let me know what the heck is going on? I am way beyond frustrated with this whole experience.Thanks -M P
I was very distressed to receive this letter because it shows criminal intent on behalf of Airleaf. I offered to send this person a free book just to keep the good will. Airleaf is taking money for books and not even sending them out--because I know they don't have any of my books. At the time of this order, I still had Airleaf linked to my website which I have now changed. Since it's impossible to ever know the real "Airleaf" story unless there is a government generated investigation, it makes it that much more urgent for all of us to send in those Attorney General reports.
One author wrote to me when he was told that the publishing company was holding up the production because they were so backlogged. He called the publishing company and was told his order was not being held up for any other reason except that Airleaf has never paid them and they are in debt so they are not printing any more of their books. Chances are, if you never received your book, this is why.
In order to fully investigate this situation, I need your help. This is the information I would like you to send me:
1. Did you invest in getting your book published?
2. Did you invest in getting your book publicized after having it printed elsewhere?
3. Did you ever receive any kind of notices for sales statements or royalties?
4. Did you have any kind of contract? If so, was anything in there violated? For instance, my contract states that my book will be in 15 stores. It never happened.
5. Some of you said that you paid for having your book in the Kirkus reviews. Did you ever see any proof that your book was advertised there? Incidentally, some of you paid $699.00 for a review that cost $250.00 to get printed.
6. Hooray for Hollywood. So many of you paid to have your book reviewed by Hollywood producers. Did any of you ever hear from anyone connected with Hollywood productions?
Any information you can send me will help to start putting the pieces together.
Please don't forget to post a comment in our group blog. Here's the group link:
Airleaf Victims
This week, I will continue compiling the complaints. Next week, I will send all of you the complaints (anonymous) that have come in to me so far so you can get a first hand look at all of the enormity of fraud that you have revealed to me. Once you see it, I know you'll stand fast in our resolve to end this misery.
Once I get all of our information in order, I will be contacting the press to do an expose. I will write to you more about that in my next update.
With hope,
Bonnie Kaye
Attorney General Information: (Please email me when you complete this, or if you have completed and not told me, please let me know)
This is the link:
Office of the Indiana Attorney General - Steve Carter
They will ask you the address of the company, owner, and phone number. Here it is:
Carl Lau, Owner
Airleaf Publishing and Bookselling35 Industrial Drive · Martinsville, Indiana 46151Telephone: 1 800 342-6068
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