Here is the full text:
Hi Everyone,
Many of you prolly don't care... I apologize for this intrusion. Close
the email and move on! For those that do care about the subject of this
Email, then read on. I apologize for its length in advance... It's a
longer story and needs to be said so the club can protect itself for
years to come and get back what its lost...
As the president of the club for the past two years and a supporting
member for 16+ years I found some things that were very disturbing about
our current officers and it needs to be shared so that the club can
monitor and do the right thing. this is all to add context to the fake
news that I'm holding this site hostage. More on that below.
A few years ago adam our current 2021 treasurer, brett the previous pres
before me for 2 years, and another board member signed off on creating a
new website for the club. They ended up choosing a cousin of someone on
the BOD to “custom develop it” and then proceeded to spend 17 thousand
plus dollars of the club’s money on what turned out to be a site made in
Wordpress with Forum plugins hastily slapped on.
They basically flushed 17k… down the drain as the site was then
mothballed immediately after it went live as it was riddled with issues
and was universally considered to be trash. How do they even go live
with that? Where was the oversight?
Other massive problems from that were that they dumped 10+ years or more
of posts, data, pics, and users. You think losing 3 months is bad? Try
losing a decade+. They just purged all of that because WordPress
couldn’t handle that much data… even after purging over half of ARC
data, it still worked like poop. They even went live without a paypal
integration which is a basic component… and now we still don't have it.
Where did that money go? We could hire someone to spin up a WordPress
forum site for $50. We can get a forum hosted right now for free and
just pay hosting fees and they will even convert all the data for us for
FREE. Instead of creating a “custom” WordPress site they could’ve
easily used any of the hundreds of forum softwares out there already.
Why would a lil fish club need a custom forum software anyways? How is
a fish club so special that it really requires one? The club was dying
at the time and they were desperate… but all the fortune 500 companies
use existing forum software… why doesn’t ARC? Why not just use what
Reef2Reef uses or ReefCentral? Why dig a hole for the club that deep
for something so awful… They could’ve used that money for the members
and done giveaways or just gave away coral by the boatloads like I did.
It’s not hard. Seriously though… where did that money REALLY go? Why
are there no records of what it was spent on? Where’s the invoices?
I’ve asked for them and would never get them… Are they even real?
I would like to know where that money really went… adam, brett, and gang
signed off on it and presided over the new site and getting it built.
The trustees and BOD members at the time resided over that change and
had a fiduciary duty to look after the club and failed. Some of them
say they know nothing about IT so they didn't get involved... as a BOD
member you have a duty to get educated enough to make a reasonable
decision. You can't just play the dumb card.
All that money supposedly went to the cousin of someone on the BOD who
was the sole WordPress developer they hired. Keep in mind he had little
to NO experience in this which they knew going into it. Later… adam and
Brett said they had no idea he was the BOD members’ cousin to begin
with. Isn’t that important? Why no research into any obvious conflicts
of interest? All of this means that means the entire bod from before my
administration is responsible for that mess. One of our main issues,
is that I was the only new guy on board in 2019… and had nothing to do
with this mess they created. All they would do is circle jerk
themselves about how they had fixed the issue from the crappy site that
adam and brett developed… when they’re the reason we had to go through
that in the first place… This is considered corporate waste… and the
members of the bod that reside over that can be held accountable for
their breach of duty. There is no statute of limitations here… for
breaches of fiduciary duties by bod so action can still be taken to
recover.
17k is no small amount. That’s more than the club makes in an entire
year by far. If any organization pissed away 125% of their revenue for
a year on something obviously stupid there would be repercussions.
First the bod members would resign or be fired. Brett had the good
taste to do so and left, adam though started lying to folks and saying
he had NOTHING to do with it. He tried desperately to distance himself
from that whole debacle. We have his sign off on it on file though and
he was part of the bod the whole time. Brett even testified that he had
to remove adam from making changes to the site in WordPress cause adam
kept screwing it up, when he was trying to help during its development.
Other issues with adam that show he being unfit and biased against me is
when he appointed trustees in the club when he had no authority to do
so. He did that to impeach me in 2019, which failed. Ultimately this
guy has a vendetta against me and even though I’m retired from the club
he can’t get over it.
As for Shawn, I used to like the guy. He’s very amiable and tries super
hard to get along with everyone no matter what he actually thinks or
says about them behind their backs. That’s nice. The issue I have is
that he’s not trustworthy. This past year he was the club’s treasurer
and went to pure reef and low and behold they had a apex trident there
in stock that he was coveting. They were rarely in stock at the time
and he really wanted it and had spoken to me about that desire in the
past. The problem is that he used ARC’s credit card to purchase this
$700 piece of equipment.
I know from my personal conversations that he struggles with cash flow
at times since he is supporting his mother. That’s a nice thing that he
does but it still doesn’t excuse using the club’s card to buy something
for yourself. It’s a pure breach of fiduciary duty and shouldn’t ever
be done… by anyone. Of course there is no visibility into what the club
uses its money for. I could never see the credit card purchases frankly
and I was President.
Why was he even carrying the sole copy of the ARC credit card on him?
Who doesn’t look at their card when making a purchase of that degree?
$700 dollars plus tax? Big purchase. Everyone checks. If you don’t
see ATLANTA REEF CLUB on the card, it’s right there on the RECEIPT
you’re signing as well. He will prolly claim he just made a mistake…
but its hard to imagine any reasonable person believing that
contrivance. He paid it back but of course after he had funds to do so
and then fessed up to it.
I say these things because they need to be addressed. The membership
needs to know these guys are coming forward with accusations against me
with unclean hands and they are untrustworthy. Say hello to your 2021
President and Treasurer. Please keep an eye on these guys! There needs
to be financial oversight of the club. We've had issues with former BOD
stealing from the club...
As for me...
My mom died in late July, and at that time I resigned from ARC… not
publicly but effectively since I reprioritized my life towards my family
and friends. The BOD knew she was in and out for awhile and I shared
with a few when she didn't check out. I apologize for leaving you guys
like that but I hope you understand and I’ve already done my prison time
as your president frankly and suffered from haters for it as well. I
have three young amazing children and a great local family and circle of
friends and they deserve my time more than the club. I have multiple
businesses going, the least of which is our lil coral side gig that we
started a few months ago. I have been absent from the club since July
and only pop up when they need some IT help. It is patently clear I
have no interest in taking a role with anything. I am not holding the
club hostage, I have nothing to gain here. I'm the one that donated tons
of time and corals to the club to revitalize it. I’m actually the
opposite, I'm the guy that took charge of moving the club's site from a
hostaged private server and put it in the cloud on a modern hosting
site. That cost us NOTHING btw when we made that move. They do imports
for free and conversions from other databases for free. Imagine, the
club could be on a different forum software for FREE instead of
misappropriating 17k… or where did it all really go… We deserve to know.
I have been paying for the site out of my own pocket for half a year now
and have funded the club’s meetings as well in the past and I’m in a
good position where I don’t mind donating to the club. I gave the
server creds to these guys in October when I moved all of it out of my
private email address to the club’s credentials. It was comical to me
how they failed at logging in and continue to do so. If there was
anything pressing to be done, I would’ve had it handled and asked them
on occasion if there was anything that needed to be done which wasn’t
the case.
Since they still can’t login to cpanel… (The password is the same but
the login name is different btw) I have a new proposal after they
started this fiasco. As my last parting gift to ARC, I will go ahead
and propose to simply pay for the server fees for time eternal. I’ve
already been doing that anyways for most of 2020. Me donating a few
bucks to a club that helped me find my lost dog 14 years ago is well
worth it to me. Wish you guys could see that thread… It's one of the
main reasons I agreed to become your president... It meant a lot to me.
The thread was on ARC but of course the previous bods deleted that one
too when they purged 10 years of data. Anyways, if they need anything
done on the server side, they can submit a ticket and I’ll have my
firm’s IT guy process it and complete it in a timely manner.
IF that is not acceptable to them, then by all means go ahead and
restore from a backup from October. Remember, I gain ABSOLUTELY nothing
from doing this. There is nothing wrong with the site. I’m only losing
out and obviously taking hits from a lot of haters. But I really don’t
care what folks think, I never really have . I’m happy to do this to
ensure that ARC doesn’t go through the same shit it did 2.5 years ago
when our current treasurer and previous bod tried to blow arc up.
You guys figure out what you want to do and let me know.
Keep in mind they have complete Forum Admin Rights to make any change on
the ARC Forum Site. They ALWAYS have. The narrative they can't do
anything is FAKE news. The only thing they can’t do is upload banners
or logos and so forth… and take backups… that’s it. There’s literally
nothing else they need to do with the backend with any regularity. They
already have FTP access btw, but they don’t know how to use it. I’d be
happy to have my IT guy teach them… So they can manage uploads
themselves in which case they just can't take backups, but the cloud
servers already do that nightly anyways.
Anyways, I appreciate you if you made it to the end of this email.
It’s not something I’m proud of being a part of and I apologize for my
part in it. I also see myself as part of the problem, as I'm no saint
and don't back down from these guys. I am just moving on since I don't
have the time for this, but at the same time I want to make sure the
club is taken care of in the future. I worked hard to build it back up.
I’m willing to pay out of my pocket as I have my whole time with ARC to
try and keep it that way… I'd be happy to even sign a contract to make
sure we are good to go for the future and will share the required info
with multiple folks for safekeeping. At some point when I have more
time in my life I would like to come back and want the club to still be
here...
Thanks!
