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Mr. Rhythm Hits The Screen

Andre Williams ladies and gents - premiering at SXSW on the 9th of March! Trailer here. Viva!

Sad News

Sheldon Brown. He gave so much wisdom and knowledge and humor to our clan, two wheels always down, rubber to the road, Roll on In Peace kind sir.
Remarks from:
Drunk Cyclist, Belgium Knee Warmers, Cycleicious, Urban Velo., Bike Radar, ...

Voce Update

In an email purported to be from a group of former Voce executives and employee's, we learn this:
"Voce was purchased in early January by SunCal Midwest, LLC, represented by Anthony Roselli, Brian Richards and Tom Malanca. The intent of the purchase was for SunCal Midwest to maintain and grow the core Voce business, using its connections with enterprise customers. As of the transaction, the company had working capital and tangible assets on hand, and a list of liabilities that were disclosed and agreed to. The new owners have thus far failed to meet their end of the deal, including paying employees and vendors. All prior executives of Voce have resigned or were shut out by the new owners after the sale. "
"In the meantime, former employees and advisers to the company are reviewing whether or not the matter should be turned over to the appropriate authorities. If you would like further information regarding our efforts, please e-mail this address and we will reach out to you on an individual basis." Bold emphasis is ours, for obvious reasons. Whether or not what? And why would I email back an unidentified person already in possession of my email address and who knows what else? The LA Times did a story, but prefer to focus on the loss of concierge service for some urbane sophisticates, rather than the seriousness of the potential crime. Meanwhile our own efforts reveal the following; SunCal, the company mentioned above, is based in Chicago, with an office in this historic building. Not much else known, but we're working on that through connections there. Porting the number over, the critical safety component of getting out of this mess, is still an ordeal dependent on setting up new service, getting a new phone and chip, etc. Locally, it seems prudent to file a complaint with the State Attorney General, but navigating that website is another timesucking venture. From all we can piece together today, the folks holding the money in this fiasco knew this was coming, got more customers on board, screwed vendors and employees, set about double billing and bilking the customers and then bailed out in their golden parachutes while the plane crashed and burned. We trust karma and fate will meet up with these folks eventually, but we'd sure like to see it sooner than later, in a Federal Court that actually prosecutes for the people, instead of the more likely scenario as we've seen in recent cases of corporate corruption. To criminals like this, Enron didn't send a warning, it showed them scams they hadn't thought of yet. The weekend wasn't all bad. At least there was some daylight left for a nice Sunday afternoon ride in the woods, Ghana advanced to the semi-finals in the Cup of Nations and apparently a lot of New Yorker's got all happy about something. Onward.

Voce Scam

Been dealing with this since Friday morning – what might be the biggest boiler-room-style con pulled off in years – a boutique wireless provider possibly scamming millions and leaving users with dead phones and potential ID cloning and theft. Here’s the rundown: Voce was a boutique cel plan marketed to upscale folks through Nieman Marcus department stores and Beverly Hills showrooms. The new media business world quickly picked up on the service as a perfect cellular small business package for freelancers and jetsetters alike. Articles on BoingBoing and EnGadget hyped this insider secret – the ‘designer’ phone company was great for the new media businessperson. And it was – great coverage worldwide (the phone was constantly roaming, pulling down the best signal at no roaming cost to the user), concierge service, and robust phones all for a package price with no add-ons or mark ups. On Feb. 1, all Voce customers’ phones had invalid SIM error messages and no phone service. Calls to the customer service hotline rang through or were busy; showrooms have been closed since January. No word on the status of sales desks at the Nieman Marcus locations. On the net, a growing presence of organized and pissed off users reveals the following information. Employees haven’t been paid for at least 1 month. Reported ‘new owners’ are described as unsavory characters. Voce has not paid subcontract vendors such as phone manufacturers, cable, network storage etc.. There is a very real danger that if a customer does not port their number over to a new service quickly, the manner in which Voce’s system was set up they could lock out the number, preventing you from keeping it but also opening up the possibility that not only your number but your cellular identity could easily be cloned, forged or stolen. This is serious dirty pool – not a simple bankruptcy from the way things are quickly shaping up in the wake of Friday’s news. Apparently the initial group of users for the service actually ‘bought in’ as small investors, paying up to 750.00 monthly(?) to be first. (they paid 750 to 500 initial fee) All customers who have checked in with a website set up to develop a class-action lawsuit were doubled billed for the last month of service. One First User writes that…

By our calculations if Voce had 10,000 subscribers and they double billed all of us they left with about $8,000,000.

The comments section also reveals a post from an alleged former employee…

I’m posting on behalf of former employees of Voce. We are deeply concerned about the current state of the company and the impact it is having on the customers as well as its employees.
First things first, to port out of the “Voce Hybrid” network; you should provide the following information:
Carrier name: Voce Wholesale
Bill address: 27599 Riverview Center Blvd. Bonita Springs, FL 34134
Account number: 90210000
PIN (if requested): Not applicable
(We heard from the carrier that the ports were delayed yesterday due to volume, but numbers are being released.)
Regarding the double bills, it is best to contact your credit card company immediately and request a charge back, as it is rumored that the new owners charged cards for service to be provided in February.
Finally, a quick update on what has transpired: Voce was purchased in early January by SunCal Midwest, LLC, represented by Anthony Roselli, Brian Richards and Tom Malanca. The intent of the purchase was for SunCal Midwest to maintain and grow the core Voce business, using its connections with enterprise customers. The new owners have thus far failed to meet their end of the deal, including paying employees and vendors. The prior management of Voce resigned or was shut out by the new owners after the sale. We direct all questions to the current CEO/President of Voce, Brian Richards. He can be reached at brian@voce.com
We are deeply disappointed and sorry for your inconveniences.

Many are calling for fraud charges to be filed against the three owners, and the news media are now picking up the story, so it should be interesting what happens in the next few days. Nothin’ like having to choose between riding and fending off identity theft and fraud to make Stuporbowl Sunday an extra treat.

Kaz

Some time ago, HPT did some focused web surfing to get more info on what at the time was Tyler Hamilton's new team, Tinkoff. Lately, we've had the itch to do some digging again in light of Astana and High Road's bounce from La Giro because of lingering and sundry allegations. (See Puerto, CONI, et al.) We've been wondering why these suspicions and investigations only circle around riders, blood and doctors. Why not follow the money? Who owns these teams, these licenses? Michael Ball lets you know, in his Jeans Gone Wild way who he is but y'know, who's behind the Kazakh Railroad fer crissakes? Hey Johan, can you tell me that? Things like how Manolo Saiz was able to operate for so long in our sport when so much was known or suspected of him really get under our skin. Don't forget, he had Asanta first, before it was sold to the Kazakh consortium. Within which is an unconfirmed link to this guy, who's cycling history site we've referenced regularly over the years. Corruption fighters in the region have little light to shed on our quest. And, because of ADD, another seemingly random connection. We’ve become aware of the alarming increase in HGH and Roids in the anti-aging market, as seen in recent celeb allegations, so we're linking that in too. Ready? Here goes the theory - To their owners, elite cycling teams are like racehorses, or sailboats, or as someone eloquently put - a new yacht. It's a pissing match, a high stakes game, with politicians, Olympic leverage, marketing and more on the table. It's not nice to snap judgment, but it's difficult to not be suspect when complex, expensive doping systems occur on teams linked to places and things that seem plausibly janky. Like Kazakhstan. Or a major pharmaceutical company. HPT has also discussed at length issues of gambling, and the irony of Unibet’s demise in the face of so many teams across all sport that are sponsored by on-line gambling companies. Races are high dollar bids. It’s not hard to see where this is going. Teams owned and bet upon by a tough crowd of rich men. Add into the mix doctors, physiologists eager to cure one of the world’s incurable diseases, or make some breakthrough in blood-related medicines like oncology. Not saying that any of the known doctors of our sport are necessarily guilty, but when you see that uber rich celebs and Bellaire belles are turning to the same drugs as the ball players, cyclists, et all– HGH, steroids, etc. it’s not hard to imagine dollar signs, ego and glory spinning in the eyes of a high end doctor who gets a bunch of thoroughbred racers as test subjects for his quest to change modern medicine. And certainly drug companies benefit tremendously from our now retired savior, not to mention the teams who bear names of all manner prescription medicine. So if any or all of this is plausible – cycling linked repeatedly doctors and drugs companies wanting to further their efforts in developing truly lifesaving medicines, now abused by anyone who wants to look younger or go faster; a sport with connections to betting houses and potentially dangerous East European business consortiums, yet no investigation goes all the way to the top, follows the money trails. And who’d want to investigate potential ex-soviet military ‘businessmen’ anyway? Not us buddy; but there is some interesting material found in these meager links. Enough to make you think anyway.