One of the biggest surprises of my life is that after I left Airleaf only one person ever asked me a single question about my former employer. I never heard from the police, the Attorney General, the Better Business Bureau or the FBI. The one person that did ask me questions was a reporter and here is the story he filed:
Feds investigating Airleaf, former employee says
By Ronald Hawkins | rhawkins@reportert.com
Saturday April 19, 2008
Martinsville
At least one former employee of the defunct Airleaf Publishing and Book Selling company has been questioned as a part of a federal investigation into the company’s practices, according to that former employee.
The potential criminal filings against the Martinsville-based, vanity publishing and marketing business would be in addition to the multiple civil actions filed against owner Carl Lau and the company he operated until late last year.
In an interview, former Airleaf vice president and sales person Dawn Rodgers said she was questioned on Good Friday by U.S. Postmaster General investigators regarding Airleaf. The investigation is being done in conjunction with the FBI, she said.
Martinsville Police Department Capt. Jeff Buskirk, who investigated Airleaf for local law enforcement authorities, said he’s turned over his materials to the FBI.
Bonnie Kaye, a Philadelphia-based author who started airleafvictims.com, said she’d contacted the FBI about Airleaf.
FBI special agent Wendy Osborne, however, said, “The FBI doesn’t confirm or deny investigations.”
An insider’s story
Former Airleaf VP Rodgers worked for two periods at Airleaf. In the first, she had been promoted to vice president of marketing before she left and in the second was a marketing sales person. She was one of the last employees to leave before Lau shut down the business.
Author Kaye said she believes Rodgers shares some of the blame with Lau.
“She was taking money under fraudulent pretenses,” Kay said. “She continued taking money after production shut down.”
Rodgers said she is as much of a victim as the Airleaf customers who didn’t receive the books or marketing services they were promised.
“If anyone’s a victim,” Rodgers said, “it’s me.”
Rodgers, who is currently unemployed, said Lau still owes her money.
“He owes everybody,” she said.
Lau didn’t respond to requests for comments on this story. In a previous interview, however, Lau said after co-founder and Airleaf Executive Vice President Brien Jones left, the business started heading downhill. Lau said Jones, who started his own vanity publishing business in Bloomington, tried to persuade former Airleaf customers not to do business with him.
Jones has said that’s not the case
Rodgers, who worked with Jones, said the business headed downhill after Jones left in January 2007, but the cause was the loss of Jones’ skills. The sole bad guy in the story, she said, is Lau.
“He didn’t have the integrity to run a good business,” Rodgers said. “I wish Carl would accept responsibility for what he did. …
“I don’t think Brien was one of the bad guys. He cared about the business. It went crazy after he left. …I’d like Carl to be held responsible.”
Rodgers said she believed in Lau until the end, when things began to rapidly unravel.
“I believed in what I did, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it,” Rodgers said. “We all did what we had to do. We cared more about the company than Carl.”
In an interview Thursday, Jones said since he started his own business he’s had 400 clients and there have been no complaints.
Investigation questioned
Jones questioned whether there is an investigation.
“No one has ever contacted me,” Jones said. “I would think at some point someone would have. …I would think I would be one of the first people they contacted.”
Rodgers said the investigators “didn’t go into much” about what charges there might be against Law.
The founders of Airleaf, which started as Bookman Publishing and Marketing, had good intentions when they started the business, Rodgers said. Most of the marketing promotions such as cruises and appearances at book shows and even pitches to Hollywood studios happened.
“I don’t believe either (Lau or Jones) started with the intent to defraud,” Rodgers said.
Martinsville resident Bob Denton is helping some authors receive their books. Denton left Airleaf a month before it closed, he said, but still manages the building and managed it before Lau acquired it. The building is for sale.
Denton worked for Lau for 4-1/2 years in sales, product shipping and receiving, he said. Since leaving, Denton started Mountain Valley Publishing, a publishing firm that he operates out of his home and has some of Airleaf’s former clients.
Denton said he left Airleaf because he knew if he sold a publishing package, the money wasn’t there to produce it. Denton agreed with Rodgers and Lau that the business started to decline after Jones left.
“At first, it was a good business,” Denton said. “It got a lot of people’s work published. I don’t think they intended to defraud anybody.
“They just ran out of money. Why? I don’t know. Carl made a lot of bad business decisions.”