On the Adam Dicker allegations — An update
Progress is being made settling issues brought to light a few days back.
A few days back I wrote regarding accusations made against domain name investor Adam Dicker. Since that time, a few things have happened that I think warrant posting an update.
First, a number of people have come forward with stories regarding how they believe Adam deceived them or broke promises. Second, Adam is now responding to some of these claims. Third, it appears Adam has paid money to many of those that believe they were owed.
The allegations that have been divulged fall into a couple categories:
1. Paid Adam Dicker (or one of his firms) for a service and they say it didn’t work as promised or the service wasn’t delivered as promised. These are fairly simple, and range from Niche Websites services to advertising on DNForum.
2. Entered into a partnership/contractor/employee relationship with Adam (or one of his firms) and Adam either didn’t or couldn’t deliver on his alleged promises.
This latter category gets tricky given the number of verbal promises involved.
One of these complaints is from forum member LannyB, who stated she was excited to be invited by Adam to be a VP of one of his firms. She stated she started working 60-70 hours a week, thinking “the opportunity to work with Adam was going to be a once in a lifetime, and from the way he talked….a goldmine.” But, she states, “the promises of wealth and success never came”.
Lanny elaborated:
One project in particular, he told us it by now cleared 100k a month easy and that we would be making a sizable percentage of that. We worked out a profit share percentage for everyone in the firm that we felt was fair based on the numbers Adam was giving us. But Adam was very shifty regarding giving us REAL numbers and real financials, he was very vague and often avoided answering questions regarding those things or contradicted himself. Following awhile he gave us more access and responsibilities it became evident that it was barely clearing a fraction of that, and not even that sometimes.
Another project he told us profited 2-3 million per year and that we would be making a percentage of that, still months and months later it was very evident that it was also only making a tiny fraction of that.
She went on to describe the hardship working with Adam was bringing on her family, counting paying for daycare for her children in order get the work done.
Adam responded to Lanny, which you can read in full here. Part of his response:
When we were in Spain, Lanelle, Rick and I spoke. They mentioned they needed some $ to continue and I offered them both $2500 a month hoping that things would pick up.
As time went on we realized that some projects were not right and some people were not right for certain projects. Like with any business we tried shifting around and reduced some people. Things never picked up and we scaled down much further.
It took me way too long to pay Lanelle, Chelsey and Simon. Yes, I kept saying I would pay them and I kept putting them off. At the time I didn’t have the $ since I spent too much on Webcorp and was too embarrassed to tell them. I always planned on paying them it just took way too long. I make no excuse for that.
WebCorp is Adam’s firm for developing domain names into websites.
Here’s another complaint. Adam just refunded this person. And another, which I don’t believe Adam has responded to publicly.
Adam states that all employees have now been paid in full. He’s dealing with other requests for refunds on a one-off basis.
I reached Adam this afternoon and he stated “My response is straightforward. If anyone has an issue they ought to email me at adam (at) dcg.com so that I can try and get it resolved with them.”
He also reiterated that “all employees at Webcorp have been paid in full, they were ahead of this came out.”
Yesterday, Shane Bellone, who brought the allegations to light, stated he doesn’t plan to publish part 2 of his story. It was originally scheduled to be published on Friday.
