This didn't happen to me. I am just passing this on from other forums, where there is a campaign to delete and suppress this info.

Original Post:


Guys i'm very worried I'm being blackmailed and extorted by the CEO of Venusian Arts. I'm contemplating going to the police. Basically I paid for a bootcamp and foolishy bought into their coach program and a 1-1 for a fine £9000 of which I've paid all but £1000. with a £10,000 loan which I'm now paying back.

Here is the correspondence. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Hi Chris,

Sadly I have not left messages, voicemails 6 times to get you to contact me to pay the £1000 you owe.

I am a reasonable man and could have worked out a payment plan or something - but can not tolerate what I effectively see as stealing! Yes, stealing. I view this as your actions indicate you have no intention of paying and you have taken a service, then not paid i.e. stealing.

I will be treating it as such. An ex Army friend of mine owns a Debt Collection Company, specialising in personal and Door collections. I am torn by having to resort to such actions because you were meant to be working towards joining our team.

some things you should consider.

1. the address I have on file I believe is your parent's address and how do you think they will feel having Debt Collectors turn up on their door in the evening?

2. You emails/texts I am advised are sufficient proof that you accept you owe the money and were struggling to pay - now you have just ignored my contact giving me grounds to use an efficient Personal Collection Service.

3. you will be liable for all agency costs I use to pursue the debt (Debt Collectors (£280 per day), Legal correspondence @£220 per hour for services used.

4. I will wait 7 days and if I have not heard from you the following will happen:

a. you will be removed from all our forums, team affiliations and there will be no-recourse on this thereafter as we must treat this instance as dishonest behaviour.

b. within 3 days from now a legal letter will be sent to you and your parents warning of imminent Debt Collector Visits, who will plan visits within 5 days to both your home and your place of work!

c. the Debt Collection Agency at optional request from us, will also send a notice to your employers regarding both the nature of the services you received and the refusal to make payment.

YOUR choice Chris! I am disappointed it has come to this.


19 Apr 2011, at 09:53, Christopher Flack wrote:

Sean

I think this has got a bit out of hand all you need to do is take me to a small claims court.

Do not threaten me anymore you don't even know where I work by all means send all the correspondence to my parents as you wish you will only cause me embarrassment.

I do not wish to speak to you further regarding this matter. You have stolen over £9,000 from me as far as I'm concerned.

Please remove me from your forums I want nothing further to do with your organisation and it's mercenaries.

I have attached a correspondence address I do not live at this address so please don't send your army there as you won't find me. I look forward to your summons from any county court.

From: discovery
Subject: Re: Final Request - FORMAL NOTIFICATION
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:54:25 +0100

amazing what details the Anglo Irish Bank will give out when you are to benefit from official visits - you might want to speak to them about giving out your forwarding address!

Shaun-Michael Adams aka Discovery
CEO & National Coaching Director
The Venusian Arts
+1 (213) 270 1191 (USA)
+44 (0) 788 555 3000 (UK cell/mobile)
+44 (0) 115 714 0865 (UK)
+61 (02) 8007 5552 (AUS)



On 19 Apr 2011, Christopher Flack

Anglo Irish Bank eh?
may I be so spineless and enquire where you acquired that information from?

I don't owe you a penny let's take this matter to court once and for all. I'll send you a summons first if that's what u want and you can counter sue I've done 3 law modules at university I know the system. I think we are both wasting our time.

Send my parents everything waste your time I think the only repricussion will be the pain from the financial loss.

What's your next move then?

5:20 PM (5 hours ago)
Christopher Flack
to me

show details 5:20 PM (5 hours ago)


Subject: Re: Final Request - FORMAL NOTIFICATION
From: discovery

Chris,

Your tone and attitude in Lying to me about the £1000 you owe me personally + £45 accommodation is beyond my wanting to pursue you in court - as it's personal - it will be personally collected - you had your chance. Oh and those collecting will be wanting reimbursed for their time and it's not coming out of my slice - do will let you plead your case to them face to face.

Suggestion - don't be all brave behind emails Chris - it won't last Long.



Right after my post on VA's Board here is what discovery came back with via text:
(I tried to attach two screenshot photos of the texts)

13/07/2011 06:06
Chris, what started out as you genuinely owing me some money personally - has now become an international stink - and because of yr direct actions (including false accusations, exaggerations etc) my reputation both personally and professionally has been tarnished. The offer was there to sort this out amicably, now everyone's else has taken the slander- libel - and it's gone global. Remember under slander rules - every claim you have made you must prove. So again, being reasonable I am offering this one last chance for you to retract your public statements or I am advised I must sue legally to clear all of the false accusations woven into ur claims (like you say "I stole £9000 from you") - totally false, but now all over the Internet which you are responsible for!. this is simply out of hand!

My response – 13/07/2011 08:01 (I was at work couldn’t give it my full attention)
Well I can't delete the post. I won't post it anywhere else if I can have my money back.

I was always for win win Chris, but now a whole team affected by what has been said and it is they, now pushing for the legal. The posts CAN be taken down, in fact because they contain comments about ME supposedly stealing £9000 from you, once you point out there are numerous inaccuracies THEY have to take it down or they get hit legally. re money back.. Don't forget it was you who owed money to Me for a personal program (nothing to do with VA or the coach program). Again all said and done, we are both now in damage limitation as now others are being affected financially. AND I do want you to be able to walk away peaceful in Your mind so there is no resentment fuelling further need to circulate the posts, personal details or accusations, so am sure as always in life there is a win win. But now time is against us and my colleagues wish to act and fund a legal case in UK as they fear it has spiralled out of control. I suggest we meet amicably and you have a sounding board to vent any frustrations at me and I will diligently listen, return my side and we can agree a way forward with a Gentlemen's shake of
the hand and an inner peace - the alternative. (already mentioned above). I trust as already mentioned there is a win win way forward.


…A few minutes ago
Well could you define sounding board? I have posted on PUA hate to make it unambiguous that you did not steal from me. I have no interest in slander or defamation of one another. I apologise for the threats earlier I will hold off sending it to Love Systems or RSD I doubt they would care either way. I do however intend to go on posting on until I have some form of refund as I think it is a bit unfair to spend £8416 and be left with nothing on my end except a few blog postings on pua hate. I would reiterate I have tried and asked for the posts to be removed in the past...heads up this has all been posted on pua hate as a defensive measure I have tried to be objective. I hope we can bring this to a swift deserved close. I would rather discuss this over text and not meet up (no offense)


So a number of things:
1.The mod on this site has to come back saying they would be happy to face any legal action Discovery is going to bring forth i.e slander, just a head's up. Otherwise there is no point me writing this if its all going to the recycle bin shortly. The only thing he seems to mention is this £9000 business.

2I want to make this unambiguous DISCOVERY DID NOT STEAL FROM ME. I gave the money willingly. £9000 consisting of £5666 for a Coaching program £1750 for a bootcamp and £1000 for a one on one. I was meant to pay £2000 for an extremely cheap one to one. I spent £8416 in total but I rounded it up to £9000 cos I also spent a lot of money on the camp tickets to Vegas one on one Avatar creation. Expenses in Vegas, cost of several strip clubs etc etc so I looked on it as £9000 infact it is £8000 if we want to round to the nearest thousand. Still a lot of money I am still paying off a £10,000 loan from my bank. My quarrel with Venusian arts is the fact that one of their representatives tried to manipulate me in an extremely malicious manner. As a result of this I consider my investment in VA to be the most foolish act of my lifetime. Discovery initiated the threats after I refused to pay the additional £1000 I most certainly will not do in light of his multitude of reactions.

3 think the fact it was deleted (as I predicted) so swiftly is demonstration that discovery did send the e-mails so no one can dispute the legitimacy of this thread. It shows they are not an open forum happy to detail information from unhappy customers.

I suggest you sue them back, the guy was just bluffing and threatening you.

1.One key point to remember, debt collection CANNOT discuss the loan or money you owe to anyone else beside you, it's against the law to do so, unless your parents are cosigners.
2.He intentionally used the word "ex army" and "door collection", that is very unprofessional and can be used as evidence for threatening.
3.He mentioned voicemails, note any legal business process need to be written on the paper to use as proof in court. As long as he did NOT send you any paper regarding the 1000 lbs that you owe, his excuse that leaving you 6 voicemails is invalid.

Bottom line, stop bantering with this bullshit, tell them to send the legal document to your lawyer and take them to court. I don't know about the county you live in but in US, any crime involves above $10000 worth is consider federal crime, and there will be serious consequences.

- I worked as paralegal for couple years -

wow

all of this for 1000 ?
i mean sure ur friend must pay, but the ceo doesnt need to get like that, hes acting like he not paying him the last 1000 is the biggest robbery ever, if i were the ceo i would have seen first why he dont want to pay ?

did he not like the service ?
was any member of the camp rude to him ?

u know that kind of questions, that is called customer service
hell even forgive the debt if i see that him really didnt liked the product/service
or if he signed a contract see the way to help him paying the rest little by little
but he is like omg u didnt pay me u are a robber and im taking u to the courts
come on

the money is clearly more important to him than any of his customres, he brought the bad reputation on himself by caring more for the money, what a shame, i havent read anything of their stuff but now i sure wont, i wont pay a buck to a company that clearly is in this just for the money, sure they are companys and must make profits to exist but not at the expense of ur customers, customer service is part of being a company, well for some obiously

tell ur friend i wish him good luck
if he signed a contract i hope he mans up and pay and learn his lesson about
careless companys
i hope not every company is like this one
peace out

Just to be clear the OP isn't Chris (the victim in this story). Basically the story is just starting to make the rounds even being posted on Ross's fraud page yesterday.

The funny thing is this is only part of the story. It even got to the point where Discovery thought the address he had for the guy was that of his parents, after which he threatened to show them in field footage and debrief or "what are your goals interviews."
This is the same guy (Discovery) that is trying to advertise in field videos as one of the benefits of attending a Venusian Arts bootcamp. Not to different from Scientology where they learn your worst secrets when you enter then try to use them against you when you leave.

We've all heard stories of shady things going on in the community but very rarely has it ever been this black and white. Personally I would never recommend taking a bootcamp but if you must, don't do business with Venusian Arts.

There are ethical companies out there. PUA Training, which owns this site, Love Systems, and RSD all spring to mind. They have different methods, so you disagree or agree with those, but all of them are big enough and have enough reputation to uphold that even if they WERE scamming assholes (which they don't seem to be) they're smart enough not to do this shit.

Venusian Arts is so desperate for money they don't care.

Some more details on this would be of use. Because while VA sent unprofessional and rude e-mails to the client in question without the lacking details its hard to say what is the best action to take. From the op it seems VA may be used for harassment, but the issue still remains that the person owns them 1,000 pounds. Granted I am assuming that all services where given/rendered and payment was not made in full.

List of missing details:

- Date of when money was due and when VA started to demand/ask for its money.
- Was all services rendered/given