294 Members in our Group!!!

December 29, 2007

Dear Airleaf Victims and Supporters,

Welcome to our new members. As of today, we have 294 members in our group, and the numbers will continue to grow as the word about Airleaf’s closing continues to get out.

In as much as this was a holiday week, there is not too much official government news. I did contact the other Senator in Indiana, Evan Bayh, to discuss the problem. I was told there was nothing his office could do except to question the Attorney General, so I said that’s fine—do that. Of course, they are first sending me a form to fill out with the information before they can question him.

Many of you have written to me to tell me that you’ve notified Detective Buskirk about what you feel is owed to you. I neglected to put his email address in the last update as some of you reminded me! If you haven’t taken that step yet, you can write to him at:

jbuskirk@rnetinc.net

Three of you had problems getting the email through. If this is the case, forward it to me at Bonkaye@aol.com and I will try to send it to him.

One of our authors, Bob, sent me a very good point to share with you when seeking restitution. He stated that those of us who published our books with Airleaf should ask for our money back that we spent publishing the book(s) because now we will have to republish with another publisher. I agreed that asking back for this money is an excellent point that I hadn’t thought of. So if you sent your letter to Detective Buskirk, you may want to send him a follow-up stating that you would like the cost of printing your book to be returned to you since you need to have the book reprinted.

One of our great supporters, author Richard Fracasso, has given me some excellent suggestions including refocusing me to look for a class-action attorney which I put on the back burner due to the lack of queries I sent out at the beginning of the campaign. Following Richard’s advice, I did speak to a very reputable one who is interested in our case this week. We will speak in greater detail next week after he returns from vacation. Richard also thought it would be good if I could have a database with where you live in order to start pressuring other government officials where there may be a cluster of authors. So if you would be kind enough to send me an email with your name, city, and state, I would appreciate it. Please send it to Bonkaye@aol.com.

I would like to tell you Richard’s story which is now on our Airleaf Victim’s website. Richard authored the book Strawberries With Love, a beautiful tribute to his late wife, Ann. The book is filled with poems and antidotes about their life together before she died in 1976. In Richard’s own words, “I received a letter of solicitation from Airleaf Publishing regarding my book Strawberries with Love that was published by another publishing company in 2004. This book was a tribute to my late wife, who was the love of my life. In 2006, I paid Airleaf $4,000.00 for their promotion services. I also sent them 270 books to sell from my original publisher, Vantage Press, and was told that I would receive $3.00 - $4.00 for a book. To date, I have never received any money from them.

I am a 76-year old disabled and completely blind man with no children or family. I lost my wife in 1978 so I have virtually no help to fight this. I have a genetic disorder chorideremia that leads to blindness. Please do whatever you can to help me."

Before I called Richard in November (I got his name from a tip from a former Airleaf employee who felt very bad for him for being defrauded), he was not aware that our campaign had been started. When I called and introduced myself and the word “Airleaf Victims” came out of my mouth, he was ready to hang up the phone, thinking it was another “Airleaf” call. When I explained what we are doing, he was so excited to be part of our group. Richard is totally blind and has no family. He is very vulnerable as far as getting information. You can only imagine how distressed he felt after being taken for $4,000.00 to invest in a dream so his dead wife’s memory could stay alive.

Now I call Richard weekly when the update comes out to read it to him so he can feel his is on a winning team instead of just being with a losing publisher. He is such a wonderful man, and I’m so glad to have him as my new friend.

Interesting side bar—some of you, including Richard, were told that you would have your radio interview done through the Airleaf-famous Ian C. Moore in the San Francisco Bay area. And, his show, Culture Shock, was the last standing link that Airleaf had before the website went down two weeks ago. I had appealed to Mr. Moore to take his link off the website as other sponsors had done to show their support back in October, but received no response. So now after investigating his website a little more closely, I realize why—he was an Airleaf published author. He obviously worked hand-in-hand with Carl Lau on these radio promotions with no doubt, something in it for both of them. I must say that after listening to Richard Fracasso’s interview, that I am the one in “culture shock” that this man has a show at all and “interviews people.” You can listen to this interview at the link below, and click in Richard Fracasso. It would have been nice at the start of the interview if he stated Richard’s name correctly. And if you want to have a contest with me, count how many times Moore says, “hum” throughout the interview. I’ll be listening to other Airleaf victims interviews in the next few days and give you an update.

Link to Culture Shock: CultureShockNews

One of our Airleaf Victims, Jack Pransky, took a trip to Airleaf last week. He asked me to share his account of the experience:

I drove to Martinsville and arranged to meet Captain Jeff Buskirk at the door of Airleaf. At the time we had no idea whether the doors would be open or locked, or if anyone would be there. He arrived a few minutes before I did and told me that Carl Lau was there and had just run out to do an errand (I think maybe to pick up another author) and would be back in a few minutes. I am grateful for Captain Buskirk being there with me; it helped tremendously.

When Carl Lau arrived back he had another author with him. No other staff was at the office. Before I could say anything, Lau immediately apologized to me and said he would try to get me everything I needed. Apparently Capt. Buskirk had already told him I wanted all my book production materials. Carl brought me back into the production room and asked me to bear with him because he didn't really know anything about the production end of the business or where anything was. He went through the file cabinets trying to find the files of my two books and couldn't. He called a few staff people who might still be around or working for him part time, but no one was in except for a woman named Dawn (Rogers Duncan) who was driving down from Indianapolis. Captain Buskirk finally found one of my files. I told Carl that I also wanted whatever computer files were used for the production of my books and especially the printer-ready copy that was sent to the printer. He searched in the computers, said he didn't know what he was doing, but eventually found them. Then he tried to copy them onto a disk for me but couldn't. Dawn then arrived and did it for me. So I got from them the main things I wanted most: the computer files, and one of my two hard files. They said would continue to look for my other hard file, which had apparently been archived, because I had put that one in a long time ago when they were still Bookman.

The other issue was money. 1) I had paid them for a book that was never delivered; 2) I had never been paid for book orders that had been made through them for my first book, Somebody Should Have Told Us! (ironic title, no?). Carl told me what his financial situation was. When all is said and done he will owe something like a quarter million, and he doesn't have it. My conclusion is I'm not sure we'll be getting any money back, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
In the midst of all the searching for my stuff I had the opportunity to talk what him about the whole situation and what he thinks happened and his deep regrets, and all that. He sounded sincere, but the facts speak otherwise. At the very least, what should have been done immediately, at the first sign that things were amiss, is he should have sent a letter out to all his authors telling us what was going on and what we could expect, and if he wasn't sure at that point then that's what he should have told us, and then he should have kept us informed at every step along the way.

I did not approach him with anger, even though I certainly have been very angry at many points along the way, especially when I could not get one word either by phone or over e-mail from anyone in that office for months (and I could easily go there again when I think now of potential lost resources that I can't afford and all the hassle I have to go through all over again to get my book in print). Instead, I was just firm in what I wanted, but in a nice way. Regardless of what I felt for him personally, there is no excuse for what happened to all of us, and we deserve all our stuff back and compensation. That's my cut on it anyway.

Oh, one last point. One thing I learned was it's not like we can just take our pdf files of our books (if they're completed) to another printer (which is what I was hoping). We've got to get rid of the "Airleaf" insignia/logo and, more important, we've got to get our ISBN numbers changed (unfortunately!!!!!). This is why we also need our Microsoft Word files from which the pdf-printer-ready files were made. All this, of course, is a real pain in the ass.

Bonnie, thank you for all you have done for us!

Sincerely, Jack Pransky

I spoke at length with Jack about his visit when he returned. He is such a kind, warm, and nice man, like most of our Airleaf Victims. That’s why we are victims. Most of us are honest, caring people who only wanted to leave something behind for our future generations. We kept hoping against hope that the lies Airleaf fed us would become truths because we found it inconceivable that we would be part of a publishing scam.

I have no sympathy for Carl Lau because he still takes no responsibility for his thievery. In fact, he recently wrote this note to one of our other authors:

If you think of it in a funny way they (referencing in an earlier sentence to Bonnie Kaye and Brien Jones) talk that they want me out of business and then they complain that I’m not doing the services. It takes money to fulfill these services and they have shut off the money supply. The only thing they really want is to get me out of the way, and to do that they have lied and lied and told half truths. Yes I owe money but when I found out that they had convinced my investor not to invest I quit sending sales letters out not knowing for sure how I was going to survive without an influx of capital.

So, for the record, let me review these facts for all of you. I sent the following email to Carl Lau on August 7, 2007:

Hi Carl,
I see that you've ignored the warnings sent to you by my attorney as far as paying me for the books I sold. This has caused me great pain because every time I receive a notice from your company about your travels, I realize you are traveling on my money--and the money of countless others whose lives are being destroyed by Airleaf.

I've asked my lawyer to proceed, but in addition, I feel the need to proceed myself in my own pro-active way. If you won't pay me what your company owes me by August 15th, I will make it my business to do everything possible to make sure that others are not taken in by your unlawful and unethical practices. I have been in touch with some of your authors who have tried legal avenues but are having little success. Obviously, you're not fazed by the law when it's a straggler here or there. But maybe you'll take this more seriously if I begin a class action law suit with all of your dissatisfied customers. I have researched every book that you have published and spent the last four months tracking down many of the authors. I am about to ask them to join me in this action. In addition, I will take out a website warning people about Airleaf, and invest my own money in Google advertising to point potential victims to the site telling how you have stolen my money and the money of others to go on cruises and Hollywood trips. In addition, I will mention this experience in every upcoming interview I have until I have a reporter ready to do an expose of your company. I do have some national publicity coming up in September due to my interview in Cosmopolitan magazine's September issue, so this will give me an excellent opportunity to discuss Airleaf.

I wanted to give you one last opportunity to do the right thing by me before I proceed with my public campaign to get my money.
Bonnie Kaye, M.Ed.

Even I had a hard time believing that I was being ignored on such a serious matter. So when the deadline date came and went, I took out the domain name for www.AirleafVictims.com, put up the original website, took out a Google ad alerting people, and started sending letters to you, the victims. I wanted to let you know that I didn’t do this without warning or on a whim. I felt desperate—like all of you—and having a background in organizing groups, decided to take advantage of that fact.

Since starting this campaign, I have been legally threatened and maligned by Carl Lau and some other Airleaf former employees. I was even offered a payoff to stop this campaign, but refused unless we were all compensated.

Carl Lau claims that I “cut off” his money supply to fulfill the services, but we all know that the services were not being fulfilled long before our campaign. Some people paid for publishing services over a year before our campaign and never saw a galley. Other people paid for trips, books to Hollywood, Kirkus reviews, and other newspaper and television promotional campaigns. These NEVER took place. Where was all the money authors paid upfront for those services? Oh—incidentally, Airleaf borrowed $216,000.00 for a business loan in February 2007. If they were financially solvent at that time, why was there the need for a business loan?

I wanted to remind you of this because people with sociopathic behavior like Carl Lau try to get others to feel sorry for them as if they were the victims. No matter how nice he may seem in a conversation, the actions speak for themselves. Instead of taking any responsibility for screwing up, he is still blaming me and others.

In the weeks ahead, we will keep fighting on until we see justice. We are definitely a force to be reckoned with, and we must remain vigilant. Next week I will also contact the postal authorities to file a complaint about inter-state fraudulence due to the notices that many of us received via the United States Mail. I’ll keep you updated.

This is my request for this week. Please send a note to the Oprah Winfrey website.

Here is the link: OPRAH LINK

This link will take you to the page for ideas. Please tell them that you are an Airleaf Victim, and they can view our website at www.AirleafVictims.com. Explain how you have been defrauded by this company, and how the government of Indiana refuses to cooperate in bringing justice. Hopefully, if at least 100 – 150 of you send in this request, one of her producers will notice and call us. I sent mine in today. If you do this, please send me at note at Bonkaye@aol.com so I can track them.

Please know that I am spending several hours each week investigating solutions for our printing and marketing problems. By the end of January, I will present the best information I have found for everyone to fit your own personal needs. At this time, many companies are coming to me trying to get your business, so I am cautiously looking at each one. If you have had publishing experiences either positive or negative, please feel free to send me that information.

Have a peaceful, healthy, and happy New Year. You should all be proud to be part of an important victory this year, and next year hopefully justice will be served.

With love and hope,
Bonnie Kaye

Airleaf Victims Update, The Attorney General, FBI and the Governors are now Taking Notice.

December 15, 2007

Dear Airleaf Victims and Supporters,

Welcome to our new members which brings our group to 262. As authors tried to call Airleaf this week pleading for their “before Christmas books” promises only to find the phone disconnected, there was a large number of people who looked on the Internet for information and found our group listed on the Google search engine through the Google advertising link and the high ranking of our stories on that search engine.

For all intents and purposes, Airleaf has shut down its doors. The sign has been removed from the door, the website is no longer functioning, the phone has been shut off, and the employees are gone.

There has been much speculation as to whether or not this is the final drag-out death of Airleaf or if it will be bouncing up again under a different name. Carl Lau has claimed that he has investors that are going to bail him out. Not to sound cynical, but I say “No Way.” Now that the fraudulence has been exposed, any investor who has an ounce of sense would see the major legal, criminal, and civil woes facing Lau.

Even when everything was falling down around Airleaf, people were still getting letters as of Friday, December 14, from Dawn Rogers asking them to buy their books at a special reduced rate of $1.50 plus shipping. All they had to do was give her their credit card to make the purchase of buying back their own books. Go figure!

I started receiving a slew of email from new authors when the Airleaf phones went down. People panicked about their promised Christmas deliveries that were assured by Dawn as recently as three days ago. One author told me that Dawn just promised to turn her book into a DVD, and production would begin in April through Lite Stone Entertainment. Too bad that victim didn’t have a chance to read our update last week when Al Smith, President of Lite Stone, disassociated himself with Airleaf. And incidentally, he did take down his site—it is still under construction. Thank you, Mr. Smith.

Two authors wrote to me concerned because they won’t be able to sell books on Amazon or similar outlets anymore. A former employee told me that Airleaf had not been sending any books to Amazon for a while. Amazon keeps a few books in stock of your titles, but when they are sold out, there is a posting of “out of stock.” On the bright side, if you have copies of your book, this gives you the opportunity to sell them yourself through Amazon which is a definite good thing. You can charge whatever you want for the book—including the full price—and Amazon only takes a couple of dollars. If you need help in learning how to do this, please contact me.

But the question remains of what you are going to do now that Airleaf isn’t publishing anymore. I wrote to expert Victoria Strauss who has been helping us through this ordeal. I asked her:

Question: If Airleaf is out of business, does the printer still send copies to Amazon etc. when books are ordered? How would the printer get paid if Airleaf isn't paying them?

Response: It's up to the individual printer, but I should think that if Airleaf owes them money, they're not going to print books that are ordered. Whether the books are listed on Amazon as being available is a different issue, and the fact of the publisher being out of business may not make a difference. It's hard for me to make guesses about that, since I don't know Airleaf's procedure for getting its books listed. If a publisher uses Lightning Source, for instance, its books are listed at Amazon through the Ingram catalog. To get them de-listed, the publisher would have to cancel the book with Lightning Source. Publishers that aren't in the Ingram catalog may sell via Amazon's Advantage program--again, to get a book removed from the program, the publisher would have to cancel it.

I think if it were me, I think I'd contact Amazon directly and try to get it to de-list my book, or at least to show it as unavailable. This may not work, but it could be worth a try. At least you might be able to discover the source of the book's Amazon listing.

Another issue: Amazon lists books even if copies are only available through its Amazon Marketplace listings. Unfortunately, Marketplace sellers often list books for sale even if they don't actually have them, in order to draw orders.
- Victoria

Based on this lead, yesterday I called Lightning Source. I had a lengthy conversation with the representative. She informed me that Airleaf did not use Lightning Source as a printing source. What was very interesting to learn is that any one of us can become our own publisher through Lightning Source. Of course, you have to submit the book to them in ready-to-print form. You have to have the cover designed. Even if you have a disk from Airleaf, you would have to have the name removed before you publish it yourself. The representative suggested you could have it formatted at a store like Kinko’s. You can then submit your book to Lightning Source for printing, and they work with Ingram to get your book on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. You still have to give these outlets a 55% discount, but theoretically, if you had a 6 x 9 200 page book, and you had a $20.00 price tag on it, you would pay less than $4.00 plus shipping to buy your own copies. If it sold on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, you would make approximately $5.00 off of each sale. And guess what? They actually pay YOU!

There are a number of small set up charges including the title setting and the proofing, but the cost seemed pretty minimal—under $200.00. So for ambitious people, you may want to consider this as your way to go.

Here is the link to Lightning Source where you can read all of the information:

Lightning Source ... The Power of One

Airleaf was certainly in the Martinsville news this week. It appears as if Carl Lau is having a hard time sleeping. Umm. He keeps blaming me and Brien Jones for the Airleaf problems. As stated to all of you in an earlier email, I am not working with Brien Jones. I am working with all of you. Brien is not my issue—Carl Lau is my issue. He may be the issue for some of our authors, but this is the forum to end the fraudulence at Airleaf under the ownership of Carl Lau. To set the story straight, I did contact Brien Jones last spring in my frustration after he left Airleaf. I never knew him during his time at Airleaf. He was not my representative—Krystal Hatfield was. When I couldn’t get a response from Airleaf after numerous attempts, I was willing to talk to anyone who could give me answers. Former employees seemed to be a good place to start. And there were many of them I spoke to as the months progressed in order to find out what was really going on at Airleaf. The irony is that Brien Jones did not support my Airleaf Victims campaign nor did he encourage it. I personally didn’t care because I was fighting for myself—and as each day passed, for you. And yet, I have been described by Carl Lau as Brien Jones’ “puppet.” It’s sad he thinks that I would allow anyone to pull my strings. He obviously doesn’t know me at all.

There were two very interesting statements in the latest story published about Airleaf by the Reporter on Friday. This was the story when Lau claimed he’s not out of business—yet. The next day, his phone was disconnected as I reported to Ron Hawkins.

When Ron questioned him about why the sign was taken off the door, this was his response:

Lau said he took the sign down because of "the crazies out there. I have to protect our employees."

Now, I find that statement amusing. What criminal offense have I committed against his business? What can the law enforcement agencies take action against me for? Organizing the people scammed by Airleaf? I guess that’s why he is unable to get them to take action. Oh well!

Here’s the link to the updated story where you can once again, post your comments to Lau’s pity party:

Publishing company still conducting business Reporter-Times.com

The one thing that I can commiserate with Carl Lau about is the lack of being able to get the law enforcement agencies to take action. The wheels of justice in Indiana are moving very, very slowly. Some of you received this response back from the Governor’s office this week after you sent Mitch Daniels a complaint:

Thank you for your e-mail to Governor Daniels. The Governor is grateful for the time you took to share your thoughts with him. However, with the information you have provided, we believe this to be a Federal issue.
As such, for your convenience, we are including Senator Lugar's contact information with this e-mail and would suggest forwarding your comments to the Senator's office. Again, we would like to thank you for your correspondence, and wish you the best of luck in addressing this matter.
If you have any additional questions or concerns, please be sure to contact Governor Daniels in the future.
Sincerely,
Amanda Lewis Constituent Services Office of the Governor
Senator Richard Lugar (317) 226-5555

As soon as those notes starting coming to me, I immediately called Senator Richard Lugar’s office. I gave the story to the assistant answering the phone. He promised me that someone would call me back later on Wednesday morning. There was no call. On Thursday morning, I called again. He informed me that the Senator’s office was looking in to the complaint and would get back to me as soon as they had all of the information. So, I am asking you, our Airleaf victims, to please send a note to Senator Lugar at his email address senator_lugar@lugar.senate.gov.

If you have any trouble with that address, here’s the direct link to his website where you can hit into the “contact” information.

Link to Senator Lugar:

Richard G. Lugar, United States Senator for Indiana - Contact Dick Lugar

This is the note that I sent to him on Friday:

Dear Senator Lugar,

I represent a group of over 250 victimized authors throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. We have been victimized by a company called Airleaf Publishing in Martinsville, Indiana. Our website is at www.AirleafVictims.com where you can read some of the stories first hand.

Senator Lugar, please understand that we are all very frustrated at the moment. People have lost thousands of dollars of their hard earned money to a scam that promised numerous services but never delivered. The Attorney General's office has been very uncooperative with us. I contacted the Governor's office this past week, but they have put this in your court and said to contact you.

I contacted your office on Wednesday, but they have not been very cooperative as far as getting back to me. Could you please have someone from your office contact me as soon as possible with some answers about who can help us? This will become a national news story within the next few weeks, and I would be happy to say that your office was responsive to our pain and suffering. At the moment, I can't say that about the AG or Governor's office.

With hope,
Bonnie Kaye, M.Ed., Organizer

www.AirleafVictims.com

www.AirleafVictims.blogspot.com

"post your opinions and comments"

If you would prefer to call his office rather than email him, please feel free to do so and let me know what the response was.

For those people who haven’t contacted the FBI yet, please try to do so as soon as possible. If you prefer to call instead of filling out the link, call your local FBI office and tell them you want to report “wire fraud.” If you have any difficulty, please let me know.

As I mentioned earlier, Airleaf had its website shut down last week. They started constructing this one under a new domain name, www.novelfilmco.com. It will be interesting to see what happens in the days ahead as far as this site being developed to scam new authors. We’ll be watching, and I’ll be keeping you informed.

Although the wheels of justice are turning very slowly for us, please keep in mind the great accomplishment we have made in just a few short months.

Thank you all for your continued support, friendship, and information. Please keep me informed whenever you are contacted by Airleaf or receive a response to an email so I can track the continued fraudulence.

I would just like to share with you one last statement Carl Lau made in the article on Thursday:

Lau said many of the other claims by critics of Airleaf are false as well.

Amazing—isn’t it! I guess many of us are liars! Let’s keep the heat moving. In the end, justice will prevail.

With love and hope,
Bonnie Kaye

Continue posting your opinions and comments to our blog to show others that were not alone. Our voices in print matter. I look forward to reading all your posts...