I got this email a few minutes ago.
Again I wish Jonathan the best and hope Abdel will never hurt anyone again. To be fair as of yesterday I have proof he had been trying to fix the issue with Christ the sculptor mentioned below. My reason for not creating an official partnership with Syco is due to the fact Abdel aka King of Hobbies is still connected to the company via Syco ME (Middle East). As soon as I found out about this situation ( yesterday) I contacted the moderators, this made me instantly loose ANY trust in the company, and made me halt any future relationship with it.
I cannot and WILL not in good conscience deal with anyone involved with Abdel.
He is a known con man and I will not stand for this.
He keeps to this day taking advantage of artists.
I am so sorry about this whole drama, and this experience has left me with a resolve to never trust anyone as easily as I did.
I have a strong sense of faith in people and honestly believed nothing but good would come from this situation, even the moderators of both Clubhouse and Statue forum believed this.
I feel let down, and extremely powerless to do anything other than to warn you all.
In any event I still feel Mr. Jonathan Martin is a good man trying to fix an issue that just became to big for him, he made mistakes, and now he is facing the consequences of something not even myself, or any of the moderators can handle. My issue with this is, why were we not made aware of the fact Abdel was a partner all along? The reason why we started talking to Mr. Martin via skype was due to the fact we were led to believe Abdel was no longer connected to Syco, otherwise things would have turned out completely different 2-3 weeks ago.
As an artist you must be careful not to fall for empty promises, always get everything in writing. As a company and I know companies are reading this, be fair to the very people helping you develop your product.
Artists, NEVER sign a contract based on 100% royalties, this is the biggest sign of a deal that can and most likely WILL go wrong.
If anyone ever needs advice as to how to protect yourself when dealing with companies I will gladly answer any questions. my email is :
ericksosa@mac.com
I myself was in the middle of creating a contract as to protect myself from any situation such as this, sadly as information kept pouring in, I kept myself from striking an official deal with Syco.
I did not profit one cent from this whole situation, and moderators were made aware of every step taken, until yesterday.
As many of you know due to the economy and companies slowing down in terms of production, many artists' schedules are either slowing down, or have come to a complete halt, this is a fact.
Many of my friends are going through this situation, the sad thing is I had already started a list of potential artists, mold makers, and painters that could have started working directly with Syco, with me NOT being a middle man, NOT profiting one cent form their labor, but with me overseeing that contracts were fair for both sides. I would have become an official Art Director, be paid a very minimum amount in exchange for a better deal down the road ( potentially a year later). I felt there was a good future in this endeavor, but we all know the truth now.
All of this could have been great in order to help create a stronger company in every aspect, a company that could grow and become an asset to the artistic community, me included, and thus benefit many, but as we know this will never be.
In any event I leave you with the email I have just received from Jonathan Martin, it is the least I can do, plus it exposes
Abdelsattar Bizri aka King of Hobbies as a fraud. As Syco's IP's have been banned yet again, Jonathan as asked me to post this. If this helps anyone become aware of this situation at least something good will have come out of this whole mess. Please feel free to re-post this everywhere.
Thank you,
-Erick
Quote:
Dear all,
First and foremost I would like to apologize to Erick, Charles and Dennis, once again, for the unfortunate events that led to this situation.
Three weeks ago everything blew up on the forums with the individual known as Abdel making statements and trying to get people to sculpt for him on a royalty only basis. All of this was done without my knowledge, without my approval and without my consent.
As I stated before: I don't go on the forums (very rarely). However, when I was informed about this situation I immediately got involved and took action. I was just as shocked as you were with his misguided statements and offers. You can imagine my anger and frustration.
At that point Abdel was a partner in Syco Collectibles ME (Middle East). After reading everything that was going on I told him that we are out! I told him it must all come to an end and that we were done. We then began the process to severe all ties with him as soon as it was possible.
Over the last three weeks I have been trying to sort out the best way to close down the ME company or pass it all over to Abdel and immediately release all our shares in the company.
As this situation progressed over the course of these weeks, I learned of more specific things that I had absolutely no knowledge about. Firstly with the sculptor Christ, who Abdel told me about in November last year. Christ was going to do a Spiderman for us and although I was against it at the time (as we have our own in house sculptor), I agreed. I agreed as Abdel told me it was on a commission only basis. I told him that I wanted to have a contract with Christ and make sure he was happy with it, and in the end I wrote the contract and we all signed it.
From then on Abdel was in charge of dealing with him. Sadly, it was only when everything blew up on the Forums with Abdel that I contacted Christ and asked him if he was happy and if I could at least pay for the materials for the sculpt. Then he told me that he would rather have a payment for the sculpt than royalties. I agreed to this and I asked him to let me know what he thought was fair so we could discuss it.
I told Christ that I would make sure that we could come to an agreement and to deal with me only and not Abdel. It was only on Saturday morning that I found out that Abdel had commissioned Christ to sculpt a Ryu and Ken, which he never paid for.
I also only just found out from Erick, on Saturday, that Abdel had also asked someone else to sculpt a Venom Statue… As you can image, this situation had gotten out of control before I even knew what was actually going on. I was not aware of any of this, at all.
I told Abdel from the very start that we had no capital to hire any more sculptors to work for us at this time. I told him that everything would be done in house until things took off and we could afford it. This was my final ruling, but, he gave himself the liberty to lie and go over me, my Company, and do things without even consulting me or informing me about it.
I am the first to admit that I have been very naive in this situation and only have myself to blame for these events.
As I write this, we are putting everything in place to split all ties with Abdel and Syco Collectibles ME (which will have its name changed and an announcement will be made as to their new name). All shares to the company will be passed over to him. Myself and Syco Collectibles (Syco Consumer Products Ltd) will have absolutely NOTHING to do with Syco ME or with Abdel. Not now, not ever again.
One again, I can only apologize for my actions. For the last three weeks I have sincerely been looking for the best way to part ways and sever all ties with Abdel and ourselves. I have been doing this with the best interest at heart and trying to avoid any further issues with the Syco Collectibles Name and/or the licenses that are held.
We are going to have a complete severance with this individual and this will be done as immediately as it can be done. No one else can possibly want this more than I do.
I can only ask you to give us the time to prove to you that every word of my statement is truthful and sincere. We also aim to regain the trust of those who have lost it in us because we do care about you. We have made that very clear since day one. Finally, we can most certainly confirm that there will be no losses of any kind or any negative effect in our costumers and their existing orders.
Sincerely and all the best,
Jonathan
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