Porn Valley- I spoke to Ed from Dane Productions Wednesday morning and he addressed the issue the company, as a distributor, has with Craig Valentine [pictured] and Club Summer Haze over disputed monies and the return of Club Summer Haze Product.
Dane records have shown an overpayment to Valentine. But, in the meantime Dane has been holding on to Valentine’s product, until the dispute has been resolved. Valentine has made repeated requests to have his product returned to him, with him paying the shipping costs.
“I’ve always paid him- every single month,” states Ed. “And we found out going through the whole thing that something was wrong, that’s why I replaced my old bookkeeper. We had a new girl come in to do our bookkeeping. And she found some major errors that he was paid a couple times more and a couple times on certain things, we sent him a new report showing that he now owes us money.”
Similar errors were found in reports involving other companies.
“Basically everyone else is cooperating with us 100%,” Ed insists. “We said to Craig and everyone else, we have a Quick Books report. You can bring your CPA in here. You can bring your financial person in here. They can look at it. I have nothing to hide.
“He [Valentine] wants his inventory back,” Ed goes on to say. “I said once we get this settled, your inventory can go back 100%. I have no reason to keep it. We’re not selling it. I think this thing has gotten a little convoluted. He’s the only person that’s basically not cooperating.”
“How did your bookkeeper screw up to this extent?”
“We’re on an accrual basis,” says Ed. “When we get money we pay them. Well she ended up a couple of times paying out on people we never got paid on. I looked at the report and figured out there’s something wrong, something wrong. That’s why I started looking to bring in another person to replace her.”
Ed says the bookkeeper who screwed up was named Elizabeth.
“Nice girl but she was doing certain things wrong and we found out what was wrong,” he says. “We went back and re-did all the reports. We showed people that. By example GVA West hasn’t paid for three or four months. She showed things that they paid and they didn’t pay. Every month up until last month or a month and a half ago, every month we always sent checks out with reports. If anyone was to sit and analyze reports they would have realized that something was wrong. But, going forward, everyone else is cooperating with us. People are now analyzing it. Somebody sent in their bookkeeper to look at reports.
“Craig is the only one right now that’s really causing all these problems,” Ed contends. Everyone else is saying can I bring my accountant in, can I bring my CPA in? Sure bring anyone you want in.”
How many other companies are involved in this?”
“I would say probably three, four companies, five companies at the most,” Ed replies.
“You said it was a girl named Elizabeth who was at fault?”
“Yes,” Ed responds.
“Valentine keeps saying this girl Dallas was the one.”
“Dallas hasn’t been here in, God, I would say, at least two or three years,” Ed replies. “I guarantee if we went back that far, I guarantee it would be a lot more money. We only went back for the last six, eight months. Maybe Dallas’ figures were all correct. I paid a lot of attention to it but we’re very short staffed. And when you hire people you rely on them doing a good job. I checked them over initially real good but then I saw that the figures were crazy and I started looking for someone else. I told her [Elizabeth] some things were wrong. Where Dallas comes in I have no idea in a million years.”
A company in Canada, OSK, also claims Dain, after their contract was over, was selling unauthorized product to VOD platforms.
“Last week I talked to OSK and the guy [Mark] made statements that his product is showing up on VOD with AEBN and other companies and that you guys are selling his product.”
“I can address that real fast,” says Ed. “I’ve answered him in an e-mail. When he called me and said please take it down, I called the people up and I asked them to please take it down immediately. What do you make on that stuff? Two cents, three cents, five cents? You don’t make a lot of money, so I did that. And he e-mailed me again and said my stuff’s still up there.
I said I’ll tell you what- he’s the people we contacted- contact them directly. You own the product. Get it out of my hands. That’s all I can do is ask them to take it down.”
“How would they get the product in the first place?”
“Because I was representing him [OSK],” says Ed. “My deal was I could send it any place I want. When I stopped representing them, that’s when he called and said please take it down. That’s what I did and I called the people. I said please remove this and remove that.
“It’s not on my site,” Ed points out. “I have a VOD site. But when we send it out to people, it’s awfully hard to control them. And you know these people, they don’t give you a full blown report. So what are we talking about? A dollar here, a dollar there? We’re not talking a lot of money. Obviously if you’re teling me three or four months later they didn’t take it down, they’re not listening to me. I have no reason to try and cheat anybody.”
“Valentine says you signed a contract not with your name but Dane – so you could later say if there was an issue, that it wasn’t a valid contract.”
“You sign a contract with Dane- that’s who the contract was signed by, Dane,” replies Ed. “Dane’s a corporation. We’re the ones who distribute it, it’s a Dane check that we write out. That’s all. Dane signs the checks. My checks were good enough to cash right away. He never said I gave him a bad check. Now there’s a problem and I said to him let’s resolve this thing. Send someone here and let’s reconcile it. That’s all I can do.”
Thinking from the top of his head, Ed seems to think Valentine owes him somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000.
“We’re not taking $50,000- give me money or let me take so much product and I’ll give you the rest back. I’m a reasonable guy. I don’t want to have these threats by him. It would be different if we never gave him a report or a check.