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| Legacy Archived Main Board Business chat and general industry chat. All participation is welcome. Dont post your fucking spam here. |
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12-15-2004
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#1 |
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Banned
Want to see your own Advertising Here!
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Vancouver Canada
Posts: 15,115
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So on the 1st of December I received a wire.
I hear others did too. Thats good. They said we'd get another one today. Has anyone? I haven't yet. as at 11.53 pst... Talked to them...wires confirmed out today for period 11/16 - 11/30 2004. They also said amounts owed for Sept and Oct will be paid by the end of this month. |
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12-15-2004
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#2 |
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Members
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Six Feet Under
Posts: 2,150
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From what I gather then 1 dec. payments, where spread over 10 days... some got paid by time others waited days after that to receive their payments. 10 days from now is xmas - santa better bring presents this year or there will be lots of unhappy kids.
__________________
"Chaos is the law of nature, order is the dream of man." ~Henry B. Adams (Historian) 1838-1918 |
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12-15-2004
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#3 | |
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Members
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Cincinnati OH
Posts: 114
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Quote:
At least it's something. So what choice is everyone taking, the stock option or the payout over the year? |
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12-15-2004
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#4 | ||
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Members
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Six Feet Under
Posts: 2,150
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Quote:
Quote:
__________________
"Chaos is the law of nature, order is the dream of man." ~Henry B. Adams (Historian) 1838-1918 |
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12-16-2004
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#5 |
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Members
 Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Hollywood, California
Posts: 45
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I am waiting on hold for them now. They suck, the question I'm really wanting answered is : IS ANYONE STARTING A CLASS ACTION SUIT?
So the 1st came and went, no ach transfer. I think mine came a week late. Here's the 2nd chance to pay us since they cut us off in september, and suddenly, my reserves disappear from my cmi, and once again, no checks were cut. According to this recording I'm listening to, ibill is having record call volumes. Nevertheless, the cmi says this : US Payout 12/15/04 Please be advised that we are currently experiencing a delay with the US payout for check date 12/15/04. However, this payout is still on track to be processed and paid. Another update regarding the US payout will be posted by Friday December 17, 2004. I love how vague they are : still on track to be processed and paid - WHEN? Also, it's really fancy how they pick Friday for the update on WHEN - since friday means they don't have to start even trying to cut checks until monday, and then if you're an ach person, they will have a problem with their file format submitting to the new bank and then once that is fixed the new bank takes 48 hours to send / complete the ach transfer. We will be lucky to be paid before xmas. they suck, they should have told us all the truth - they're unable to pay us anymore and are going fucking under - so we could have moved on to new processors months ago. grrr. it's not even 8 am and i'm cranky where is my massage!?> ~Liana |
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12-16-2004
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#6 |
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Members
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Hollywood, California
Posts: 45
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OK so, i'm still on hold. It's been at least 20 minutes, right?
I'm sitting here, checking out other forums, checking out other sites, looking up " ibill class action " on google.. and I came across this. Now I"m sure this is very very old news that you all knew about but perhaps not the specific details, which i'm suspecting led ibill into the mess it is currrently in : E-Commerce Porn's New King Seth Lubove, 03.22.04, 7:04 PM ET LOS ANGELES - The son of notorious white-collar scamster John Peter Galanis has quietly resurfaced as the buyer of the nation's largest processor of payments for Internet porn. Credit-card processor Intercept's (nasdaq: ICPT - news - people ) 2002 acquisition of Internet Billing, or iBill, may go down in history as one of the most boneheaded acquisitions ever by a public company. Now, it's finding it just as embarrassing to get rid of iBill. IBill is the largest processor of credit-card payments for the purchase of dirty digital pictures (see "Visa's Porn Crackdown"). It is literally the engine of paid Internet porn. The company had successfully operated anonymously behind the scenes until 2002, when Intercept paid $104 million to acquire iBill from its founders. After first telling investors that porn made up just a minor amount of iBill's business, Intercept (which had $259 million in revenue for 2003) finally confessed that porn was actually responsible for 85% of iBill's annual credit-card transactions, which once amounted to as much as $720 million. Having agreed last month to a settlement of $5.3 million for the various class-action lawsuits that resulted from the company's understatement of iBill's dependence on porn, Intercept also announced a deal to relieve itself of the business and sell the division that includes iBill for a lowball $37 million to a group that included management and outside investors (after dropping plans from October to take all of Intercept private). Then, on March 15, the company reversed course yet again and said it would sell iBill separately to yet another buyer, whom the company never disclosed. "None of those names have been made public," said an Intercept spokeswoman. "I can't respond." For good reason. It turns out the identity of what Intercept only characterizes as "another entity" has become an open secret among folks close to the deal, and not for reasons that will enhance Intercept's shaky reputation. In addition to iBill's former chief executive, Garrett Bender, the other person leading the buyers is none other than Jason Galanis, son of John Peter Galanis, the notorious white-collar crook who bilked investors of $400 million before he was thrown in prison, where he still resides. As Forbes reported in 2000 (see "The Long Reach Of John Peter Galanis"), the disgraced father has had heavy if not controlling influence on Jason's businesses, which have been involved in the spectacular blowup of a Colorado bank and millions in losses for commodity giant Cargill. Unlike his father, Jason Galanis has never been convicted of a crime. He has, however, had at least one scrape with the law. While serving as chief executive in 2001 of something called EGX Funds Transfer (formerly known as Incubator Capital), a once-publicly traded financial processing outfit, Galanis and his brother and sometimes-business partner Derek were arrested as part of a big Drug Enforcement Agency bust of a San Diego ecstasy manufacturing and distribution ring. Although all the charges were dropped against Jason, Derek was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in jail. Derek's attorney, Janice Deaton of San Diego, says she will soon file an appeal of Derek's conviction, citing "prosecutorial misconduct" and asking for a "huge reduction in sentence based on his actual role." She describes Derek as a "very minimal player," and adds, "he didn't participate in this for any financial gain, and didn't contribute any money." Deaton says both of the Galanis brothers knew one of the principals of the drug ring, Dennis Alba, from prior business dealings, which is how they got caught up in the bust. But Deaton contends just the brothers' name alone was enough to arouse suspicion. "Their dad is what got Derek in trouble," she says. "There were other people more involved than Derek who got their cases dismissed. It's the Galanis name. It's really a shame." Although Deaton didn't represent Jason in the matter, she said she's spoken with him frequently, and says she's "impressed with him as a businessperson." In an e-mail exchange, Jason Galanis acknowledges the heavy burden of his father's name in the DEA bust. "Unfortunately, I was again maligned by indirect inferences about my relatives, which are, admittedly colorful people. One cannot choose their relatives," he says. "This has haunted me for my entire career. My father left our family when I was 16, when he was indicted and arrested. He has been incarcerated almost my entire adult life...Since my brother's incident, I have wanted nothing further to do with my father or his poor life choices." At the same time, Galanis also contends he is only acting as an intermediary for a "handsome fee" in the iBill deal, not as a principal, on behalf of a "Dr. Molina." Molina is apparently Luis Enrique Fernando Molina, a Galanis business associate and Mexican hotel developer whose family controlled Pepsi-Gemex, the largest independent Pepsi bottler outside the United States. But others familiar with the deal say Galanis is more deeply involved than he lets on. "My role has been a central on in making the transaction come together," says Galanis. "It is possible that peripheral parties could form the wrong impression." Galanis similarly described himself as a "part of the investment banking team" that took Robert Guccione's Penthouse magazine public in 2002, then helped Molina in a deal in November to put another $107 million into Penthouse in a real estate/equity swap. But according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Galanis was identified as recently as last fall as the only person associated with Penthouse Financial, a separate company from Guccione's teetering empire that controls Penthouse's racy website. Galanis now says it was more of a licensing deal, and that the contract has since been terminated. Galanis' Penthouse experience provides a nice bit of synergy with iBill, perhaps, but iBill's role in the Internet economy--at least the part where people pay for stuff--can't be understated. The company acts as the critical aggregator and gatekeeper between thousands of websites, porn or otherwise, and the bank that ultimately processes the bulk of iBill's credit-card transactions and doesn't want the aggravation of dealing with all those pipsqueak businesses. The bank in this case happens to be First Financial Bank, a subsidiary of $8.5 billion (2003 sales) blue chip financial processor First Data (nyse: FDC - news - people ). The fact that First Data would have to sign off on any deal that hands over a treasure trove of sensitive credit-card data to Galanis, or whomever he purports to represent, probably doesn't sit well with the conservative Greenwood Village, Colo., company, which also owns Western Union, TeleCheck and now Concord EFS. First Data is already said to also be looking to exit from the porn payments business. The company has been shopping around its more than $1 billion porn and high-risk merchant portfolio, made up mostly of iBill and a handful of other big porn payment intermediaries like it. Considering the business only contributes $10 million to First Data's $1.4 billion in profits, the risk to First Data's hard-earned reputation seems hardly worth the hassle. Like intercept, First Data is also keeping quiet about the possible deal. "First Data does not selectively comment on its business plans," said a First Data spokesperson in a statement. "It is not our practice to make public the details of our specific contractual arrangements or our business relationships with our clients." But if you were clearing credit cards for the likes of hotlegsandfeet.com., enema-sex.com and my hotwife.com, you'd probably keep quiet about it too. The Article from Forbes |
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12-16-2004
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#7 |
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Members
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Six Feet Under
Posts: 2,150
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There is still value in IBill - any vulture can see that, but they are pissing away alot/most of the goodwill by not addressing the major problems in a correct way. Every person and company on this planet goes thru crisis in their lifetime... its how you deal with those crisis that makes you either a stronger or weaker (or even dead) person/company.
When Epoch was down, I remember talking with them, and they actual had a strategy to get them out of the mess they were in, and we decided to back them by not moving our processing away - even when others where jumping up and down on the boards, e-mails, phonecalls, icqs etc. telling us to pull processing and sue, before it was all gone. Now its 4 years ago, and Epoch have pulled one of the best turn arounds I have seen in the adult industry, and I´m glad that Epoch had good people with vision working for them, when "the shit hit the fan" - it made all the difference. Now I would really like to see IBill do the same as Epoch - we need processing in the adult industry - but they need to start with better communication, and only promise things they are 100% sure on - save the "sales speech" to when there is a product to sell.
__________________
"Chaos is the law of nature, order is the dream of man." ~Henry B. Adams (Historian) 1838-1918 |
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12-16-2004
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#8 |
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Banned
Want to see your own Advertising Here!
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Vancouver Canada
Posts: 15,115
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I may be being a moron...
But can anyone find its stock trading. I can't find a quote on ICPT? |
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12-16-2004
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#9 | |
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Easy Like Sunday Morning
Want to see your own Advertising Here!
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Behind a couch, somewhere in Philly
Posts: 7,628
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12-16-2004
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Banned
Want to see your own Advertising Here!
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Vancouver Canada
Posts: 15,115
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Quote:
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 07:31 AM..
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These same website operators contact third party billing companies that specialize in processing credit cards in aggregation on behalf of pornographic websites;
h34r: 
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