Embezzlement in Catalyst

[Quantumboost]

A quick internet search turns up this Loren Coleman, who looks more related to the topic in having anything at all to do with Shadowrun.

[Username17]

Update: The Loren Coleman who friended me on facebook is the cryptozoologist. He is not the same person as the part owner of Catalyst at the center of the embezzlement broujajah.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

[Wesley Street]

Now, the punchline: Bull told me afterwards that if I don't change my post style that he will permanently ban me.

"Forget it, Jake. It's Dumpshock."

they kept the money and a bunch of people never got paid.

It's always the same song but no one ever seems to pick up on it.

The End of the Beginning of the Beginning of the End.

CGL's response to ICv2.

[Username17]

The Catalyst response to the IcV2 article is not exactly full of lies, it's just... well... OK, it's completely full of lies. Here we go:

First, there has been no halt to sales of any CthulhuTech products. We’re are in negotiations with our friends at WildFire for how best to move forward, ensuring this great book line continues to grow. As such, neither Catalyst Game Labs, nor WildFire, have put a stop to any books from being sold.

According to the folks at Wildfire, Cthulhutech is out of print pending contract negotiations, and they are actively looking at getting a new publisher. So this is technically true that no Cthulhutech books have had stop orders put on them. But there also are no books to put stop orders on, so it's a pretty shady announcement.

Second, the stoppage of a small, select list of Shadowrun books has nothing to do with the license for Shadowrun, which Catalyst still holds. Instead, the halt to sales is due to on going negotiations between Catalyst and its freelancers. We’re moving quickly and thoroughly to resolve this situation to mutual satisfaction, so the community can have access to these great Shadowrun books in short order once more.

As of the point in time they released that information, one of the striking employees (Jennifer Harding) said that she had not been contacted for negotiation at all. So it's not really obvious what they are doing to resolve anything to the mutual satisfaction of anyone. Also, they fired influential writer Robert Derie for being sympathetic to the striking workers even though he had not pulled copyright. Since doing that, he has terminated his contracts, meaning that books that were otherwise ready to print and sell are off the market until they are rewritten and layout is redone. By someone. That they hire. Because their layout guy is gone.

So rather than resolving the situation, they seem to be spreading the pain around even more.

Reliable sources in the company indicate that the deal for Loren Coleman to give up a bigger share in the company to the other owners has fallen apart and he may now be trying to force them out altogether. Which considering that the company is in a pretty dire situation with the licenses, is not a good position to be in.

I retain my original prediction: the most likely situation is that Catalyst loses the license in two months and another company gets the license.

-Username17

[Wesley Street]

According to the folks at Wildfire, Cthulhutech is out of print pending contract negotiations, and they are actively looking at getting a new publisher. So this is technically true that no Cthulhutech books have had stop orders put on them. But there also are no books to put stop orders on, so it's a pretty shady announcement.

Interesting. I just scoped out CGL's BattleShop; the core rules and Vade Mecum are out of print but the other three books are still listed as available for purchase. And there's still a link on their product site to BattleCorps.

Also, they fired influential writer Robert Derie for being sympathetic to the striking workers even though he had not pulled copyright.

Nail in the coffin. Who the hell is even left now?

I retain my original prediction: the most likely situation is that Catalyst loses the license in two months and another company gets the license.

Oh, fuck me. I've got five outstanding contracts with them and they're for piddly PDF-only releases. I doubt they're anything a new company would be interested in purchasing but who knows. Fuckfuckfuckfuck...

[Username17]

Nail in the coffin. Who the hell is even left now?

There's Bull and Jason Hardy of course. There's um... David Hill? And Aaron Pavao I think. And um... probably someone else.

Honestly, if all of those people caught fire and fell to their deaths, I would be at least a little bit happy. Although I do admit that Bull has occasionally written something worth reading - though his propensity to back it up by whining and unreasoned bullying makes it hard for me to credit him with that fact.

-Username17

[Centurion13]

Nail in the coffin. Who the hell is even left now?

There's Bull and Jason Hardy of course. There's um... David Hill? And Aaron Pavao I think. And um... probably someone else.

Honestly, if all of those people caught fire and fell to their deaths, I would be at least a little bit happy. Although I do admit that Bull has occasionally written something worth reading - though his propensity to back it up by whining and unreasoned bullying makes it hard for me to credit him with that fact.

-Username17

Huh. I wonder if David Stansel-Garner and the others have gone off to form their own little group and acquire the licenses?

Cent13

[Username17]

Hello all,

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Randall Bills and for the last several years I’ve been serving as Catalyst's Creative Manager.

As many of you have undoubtedly noticed, Catalyst has hit a few stumbling blocks under the weight of its dramatic growth over the last several years. As I’ve become the face of the current situation, I felt you all deserved a look at the current situation and some details regarding the steps Catalyst is taking to get all freelancer payments caught up so we can move forward.

If you’ve not yet seen the press release I posted last week to www.catalystgamelabs.com, feel free to take a moment to check it out. I wanted to provide some further details.

On Monday March 15th, the Catalyst team delivered our review of the business for 2009 to the pertinent parties. Over the last several years, Catalyst Game Labs has showed a dramatic growth in terms of demand, increased total revenues and strong sales with an increasing market share in the gaming industry. A huge portion of the credit for that goes to you, the freelancers. After all, without your passion and dedication, there would be no books, no games, no Catalyst.

That growth has not come without its obstacles, however, and by Q4 of 2009 the Catalyst Managers acknowledged that a co-mingling of funds between the personal and business had occurred involving the company’s primary shareholders, the Colemans. We immediately initiated an audit of the company's historical financial records, and designed a comprehensive plan to get Catalyst's production and payments back on schedule. This process took some three months of very long days, and was overseen by our Bookkeeper and Operations Manager, in conjunction with the Colemans.

With the completion of the audit it is clear that the breadth of what occurred was significant, and would require extensive changes to correct. A detailed plan was outlined for changing the organization of the company, as well as many procedures to establish a strong financial oversight and series of checks and balances to ensure this doesn’t happen again in the future. It also included a proposal for how the Colemans will begin paying back the money involved. All of those detailed findings and action plans were delivered to the pertinent parties on the 15th of March as a key step in our efforts to move forward with full disclosure and transparency. A series of discussions are currently underway on how best to proceed.

Last week, while in the process of drafting announcements for the public, as well as our vendors (distributors, printers and so on), licensors (i.e., Topps), Catalyst freelancers, and so on, some information was leaked to the public (and, as is the way of such things, immediately took on a life of its own). Obviously I was forced to deal with that leaking of information and am just now reaching a point where I can be drafting information to share with our freelancers.

There are several critical concerns (in no particular order) that Catalyst is moving to address ASAP.

• 1. Re-organizing and re-structuring to prevent this situation from occurring again.
  2. Finalizing a plan for how the Colemans can repay the money owed to Catalyst.
  3. Ensuring the continuity of license with Topps concerning Shadowrun and BattleTech.
  4. Finding additional sources of revenue in the short term to help start paying down various debts (including monies owed to all of you).
  5. Working with Posthuman (Eclipse Phase) and WildFire (CthulhuTech) to determine if they still wish to work alongside Catalyst. If they do not, we’ll make every effort to spin those games off to those respective companies in a way that will best ensure future growth.

We’re moving as fast as we can in an attempt to address those primary concerns (as well as many others). However, this process simply is taking time … and will continue to take time heading into the future.

Some of you have already expressed your inability to be patient with Catalyst as we try and find solutions, and I completely understand your frustration. That frustration was mirrored by several Catalyst full-time employees who felt they simply could not continue with Catalyst after all that has occurred, including Jennifer Harding (Office Manager and Bookkeeper), Dave Stansel (Operation Manager) and Adam Jury (Head of Graphic Design), all of whom have formally left the company. We’re already moving to try to find appropriate people to take on their work and responsibilities. Though I wish their decisions might have been different—as they’re incredibly valuable to what Catalyst has been able to accomplish—I cannot fault them for the choices they’ve made. I’ve worked with them in various capacities for a long time and consider them good friends. I wish them well and hope we’ll have a chance to work together again some time in the future.

During all of this, my decision-making process has been called into question. After all, how can I accept what’s happened? Why are the Colemans still involved at Catalyst if these events occurred? Usually I would have reservations about sharing such personal thoughts. However, since I’m asking for each of you to decide if you’re willing to allow Catalyst some time to address this situation, I feel it only appropriate to give you my thought process so each of you can make up your own mind.

• 1. Catalyst would not be enjoying its current level of success without Loren’s strategic thinking, or without the connections he’s forged in our industry. We started as a small, internet hobby company in 2003 and only officially formed Catalyst three years ago. Yet as of last Gen Con we “stole the show” and are considered one of the “up-and-coming big boys.” While Catalyst is far more than a single person and is very much a team effort (including all of you), Loren’s contributions have been crucial.
  2. Would Catalyst survive if the Colemans were no longer involved? Yes, I believe it would. However, I believe that despite the horrific mistakes made, we will heal faster by keeping Loren involved as part of Catalyst’s ongoing strategic thinking. Last week that belief received a huge chorus of support when we contacted and/or were contacted by numerous people in the industry, including three titans of the industry (I’m not at liberty to share their names to this large of a group without asking their permission). Each of those three were given a blunt (albeit very brief) synopsis of what occurred, and yet each still pledged their support to Loren and me in helping move forward (both in the incredible business savvy they possess that made them titans, but also in potential revenues to bring to the company). Furthermore, two of these people are intimately familiar with Topps and with their strong advice in our pocket we’ve already approached Topps. Without getting into details we told Topps of our financial issues and made our case that despite those mistakes we have been fantastic in protecting and expanding the BattleTech and Shadowrun brands and that we are still the best possible stewards of those brands. Topps liked our attitude and appreciated our bluntness and we’re setting up a face-to-face meeting in NY, following the GAMA Trade Show this week, to present a plan for how to move forward with securing those all-important licenses.
  3. I believe the best possible way to incentivize someone is to create a recipe for success. Excessively punishing and kicking someone to the curb does not incentivize anyone. Keeping someone involved in the process and invested in seeing Catalyst succeed so they can succeed is a far better path for all involved (and one I’ve seen succeed time and time again at all levels of business).
  4. I’m not the only one that has seen and believes in the points above. If all the mangers, employees and investors of Catalyst had lined up in opposition to my thoughts and opinions as outlined above, then I very much believe I would’ve backed away, feeling that my decisions were compromised. However, while some have left and/or decided they can no longer work with Catalyst, we still have a very strong team of investors, managers, employees and freelancers that supports the overall direction of trying to deal with what’s occurred while finding ways to move forward.
  5. Considering how long I’ve been involved, and how much blood, sweat and tears I’ve given for Catalyst, I’ve seen a lot of “How can Randall continue to work with Loren?” I’ve obviously known the Colemans for a very, very long time and been involved intimately with the company from the day the idea was born 8 years ago. And after reviewing everything and doing some massive soul searching, I’ve made a personal decision that this was a terrible, terrible series of mistakes; I bear my own weight of guilt in this in that I didn’t pay better attention to the various red flags raised over the years that something wasn’t right. More importantly, I see in the Colemans every indication I need to see in order to make forgiveness seem appropriate. This falls into a “very personal” category, but it’s key to my point of view and if you’re trying to understand my decisions, it’s important you know this. While I may not be the usual image of an LDS church member that comes to most people’s mind, my faith is a bedrock; it is the only reason I’ve survived the stress of the last several months and especially last week. But if I see a person genuinely sorrowful over a mistake (regardless of the size of those mistakes), and see that same person trying hard to make the mistakes right, I personally have to forgive them. Just as this as been the most difficult personal and professional crises of my career, it has been one of the most difficult for my faith, as the rage has had to give way to compassion and forgiveness. Please note, however, that this point is 100% a personal decision, one that deals with whether I can keep a personal relationship with the Colemans. If none of the other points above existed, then I would’ve asked Loren to completely step away from the company and he and I would’ve solved our issues in private. However, those very points are exactly why I’ve stated I believe the Colemans should still intimately be involved with the company (though a host of checks and balance are in the process of being put into place) and why I can set aside my own personal anger and disappointment to try and move forward in what I believe is the best possible way to save the company and to save the games we all love to work on.

I apologize for the length of the email and for the incredibly personal nature of it, but I felt it warranted. Ultimately each of you will need to ask yourselves whether you can still trust Catalyst to treat with you fairly and to pay the debts owed you, while ensuring that such debts do not pile up for the future. We’ve laid strong groundwork to do just that over the last week and GTS this week will give us the opportunity to further cements those plans.

We are also in the process of bringing on a new Bookkeeper who will continue the plan laid out by our previous Bookkeeper to send each of you a thorough audit of what our books show. This will allow us to ensure we’re not missing any work by anyone and will help us build a plan for how to start reducing the debt owed to each of you. However, the original plan called for that to go out by the end of March, but with the changing of the Bookkeeper that’s going to need to be middle to end of April.

I hope each of you will be willing to bear with us during this crisis and give us the chance to make this right. However, if you feel you cannot, I completely understand and of course wish you well. More importantly, even if you feel you cannot do future work for us, of course we still will work to pay the debts owed to you.

Thank you for your time and patience.


Randall N. Bills
Managing Developer
Catalyst Game Labs

Take home message: Randall Bills believes that he has a sign from a personal god that massive amounts of fraud is somehow OK because it will all work out somehow. We can all sit and ponder that for a moment, but basically it looks like Randall is not an incredibly rational person, and he would not be someone I would ask to judge character or make long range important decisions. Personal gods have a distinct tendency to advise people to hate the people the disciple already hates and trust the people the disciple already trusts.

Take home message two: Yes, it's that bad.

Take home message three: while Catalyst has had huge piles of money taken out of it by the guy nominally running the store, and the second in command says that theft should not be punished and is trying to guide the company with a literal ouja board in his head - it's important to remember that Shadowrun is not Catalyst. CGL is just a company, and if they are trying to use Christianesque name-it-and-take-it sorcery to avoid criminal charges of fraud, that doesn't actually mean that anything is wrong with the game. The License still belongs to Topps, and in two months they can lease it to someone who isn't trying to transform criminally negligent red ink into black with prayer.

-Username17

[Red Archon]

His close personal ties with Loren Coleman really leads to wonder how many bucks he may have made himself from this little, unfortunate mistake that very accidentally led a single guy to happen to become in possession of the company's money.

[Mushroom Ninja]

3. I believe the best possible way to incentivize someone is to create a recipe for success. Excessively punishing and kicking someone to the curb does not incentivize anyone. Keeping someone involved in the process and invested in seeing Catalyst succeed so they can succeed is a far better path for all involved (and one I’ve seen succeed time and time again at all levels of business).

So pressing charges against someone who embezzled $850000 is now "Excessive punishment"? Mr. Bills certainly has an interesting sense of justice...

[dirkformica]

What happened at Dumpshock? The second thread about this mess got disappeared and there's some mentions of Frank, bannings, and, strangely, religion and evolution in thread 3.0.

[Surgo]

Big long quoted stuff posted here

Hahahaha, that's some hilarious bs. I especially like this part:

Catalyst would not be enjoying its current level of success without Loren’s strategic thinking, or without the connections he’s forged in our industry.

Yeah, and Catalyst wouldn't be collapsing and dying without him either. "Current level of success"?

[Ganbare Gincun]

Wow. Just.... wow.

[Username17]

What happened at Dumpshock? The second thread about this mess got disappeared and there's some mentions of Frank, bannings, and, strangely, religion and evolution in thread 3.0.

Remember how Bull hates me and I predicted that he would ban me imminently? Yeah, he did that, and I don't care.

Also he deleted the entire thread because it had that letter in it. The letter that is printed right here on this thread.

But the real joy of all of this is that there were supposedly four people working to get the ship flying right after all the theft by Loren Coleman and his wife: David Stansel, Jennifer Harding, and Mr. and Mrs. Coleman. Of those four, the two who didn't steal any money quit over ethical violations just five days after producing the plan - so I'm guessing that Loren Coleman elected to not got along with their plan.

Edit: Sorry, it's a "temporary" ban:

Your member account at Dumpshock Forums has been temporarily suspended.

Your account will not be functional until Aug 11 2037, 06:44 PM (depending on your timezone). This is an automated process and you do not need to do anything to expediate the unsuspension process.

-Username17

[ubernoob]

Wait, 17 years? That's hilarious.

[Akula]

Wait, 17 years? That's hilarious.

27 dude, 27. And yeah, that is the dumbest "temporary" ban I think I will ever have the pleasure of seeing.

[Username17]

Wait, 17 years? That's hilarious.

27 dude, 27. And yeah, that is the dumbest "temporary" ban I think I will ever have the pleasure of seeing.

Yes, it's a "temporary account suspension." They seriously have a moderator out there claiming in print that this does not constitute an account ban.

Having at first claimed that I was being banned for posting a private e-mail (which I didn't and isn't even against their terms of service), they then changed tactics and claimed that I was being banned because of the religious discussion:

4. Discussion of politics, religion, and sex are prohibited, except as they directly pertain to Shadowrun or another game.

And now they are in full damage control mode claiming that I am not even banned in the first place. Just, you know, suspended. For twenty seven years. For being religiously intolerant for suggesting that someone who carefully consulted with Mormon Jesus to conclude that punishing their best friend for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of other peoples' money was unnecessary - was an irrational and terrifying person to have in control of any organization. Especially one where the thief in question still had power.

But hey, I've said it before and I'll say it again: Dumpshock moderators are ass holes.

-Username17

[Username17]

Update: They just took me off suspension in order to make their statements true.

-Username17

[Murtak]

I'd bet actual money on that this wasn't a temporary ban. 2037 is the Unix epoch. The "suspension" was literally set to "until the end of time itself".

[mean_liar]

What an incredibly bizarre rationale.

My guess is that Coleman is the only person that can actually keep the company doors open by using the embezzled funds and if he goes, then the company goes.

[RobbyPants]

I'd bet actual money on that this wasn't a temporary ban. 2037 is the Unix epoch. The "suspension" was literally set to "until the end of time itself".

I thought the actual epoch was January 19 2038.

[Koumei]

Honestly, if all of those people caught fire and fell to their deaths, I would be at least a little bit happy.

Good words to hear from a future doctor.

[Murtak]

I just rechecked and the epoch is indeed in 2038. (Of course that just makes the number chosen even more bizarre.)

[RobbyPants]

I just rechecked and the epoch is indeed in 2038. (Of course that just makes the number chosen even more bizarre.)

Maybe it was a temporary ban almost until the end of time.