Camestros Felapton

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Digging a little further into the Day film finances

No conclusions or major revelations here, more just background notes in the event that the Day superhero movie finance scandal thing gains more legs.

The first stop is a document I have linked to before, Viral Film Media’s 2021 financial report: https://web.archive.org/web/20220502193055/https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1777060/000177706022000002/vfm_annual_report_2021.pdf

That document lists three directors,

Officers/directors listed in the previous financial report, https://www.galatiafilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/vfm_annual_report.pdf

  • Donald Amason: described as having “25 years of experience in engineering, operations, and organizational leadership”
  • Spencer Yee: a lawyer from New York http://www.yeeshih.com/#yeeshih

The relevant part of the report in terms of the recent news is on page 19:

“In June 2020, we entered into a non-binding term sheet with FundingNet Corp. in connection with a proposed $4.0 million loan facility to fund the balance of the budget of the film. In October 2020, we further entered into a Deposit Agreement with FundingNet pursuant to which we deposited $1,001,000 into an escrow account that would serve as collateral for the loan. We have determined not to move forward with the loan facility at this time and have requested return of the escrow funds”

In 2020 the company organised to borrow $4 million from a company called “FundingNet” which requested that $1 million be put into an escrow account as collateral. Based on Vox Day’s post, it is the escrow funds that have gone. Consistent with Day’s account VFM had asked for that money back from the escrow account in 2021. There’s an obvious question here about the group they were borrowing money from. They would be different from the people running the escrow account but I would imagine they would have wanted to know more about where that $1 million was being kept.

“FundingNet Corp” is not a great search term. The second hit I got was this same VFM financial report – which was weird. The first was a mention in LinkedIn. That led to a group called “Film Cabbage” https://www.filmcabbage.com/

“FilmCabbage is part of FundingNet, a privately owned and operated wealth lending program operating since 2005.  Since that time we have funded many billions of dollars in loans to select partners across various industries, including Real Estate Development, Technology, Infrastructure, Hotel and Resort Development, and a wide array of other business initiatives.

“FilmCabbage” is our entertainment financing division, developed to provide film professionals an attainable, affordable funding options for their projects.  We accomplish this by lending you our own private capital, or by underwriting your project in full with our assets, and by fully mitigating risk for all parties.”

I guess putting “FundingNet” in a report sounds better than “FilmCabbage”. In the About page it describes itself:

“In 2005 we developed our 4-1 private lending platform that revolutionized how projects could be funded.  Lending primarily to retail lenders, and originally focusing on the real estate development market, we have been able to bring remarkably low interest rates to the business of lending.”

https://www.filmcabbage.com/about-us

I assume “4-1” here refers to the ratio of what is leant to collateral. The email on the contact page is a Proton email and also lists “Cliff Endicott President, FilmCabbage, Vice President, FundingNet”.

Further digging on “FilmCabbage”, “FundingNet” and “Cliff Endicott” finally gets you to what appears to maybe the parent organisation…and if “FilmCabbage” was a name that didn’t inspire confidence, consider the name of the next website I get to: Iron 88.

“IRON88 Group is a Private Organization that specializes in the design and implementation of “bespoke” Lifestyle & Lending solutions. By virtue of having Associates located in more than 25 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, we are able to assist Members with all of your global needs.”

https://www.iron88group.com/about

Hey, sure that name sounds like it’s going to be a disturbing skinhead band but it appears to be the parent website for whatever FundingNet is. At the bottom of the About page is listed the management team which includes the President of FundingNet and the President of FilmCabbage.

And that’s as far as I went before the cat demanded breakfast.


camestrosfelapton

42 responses to “Digging a little further into the Day film finances”

  1. Maybe I’m just reading too much into things but ‘IRON88′ suggested some far-right connection to me, given the popularity of the ’88’ meme.

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    • It is certainly odd choice of name if you don’t want people to think your company sounds a bit far right. It’s almost too much really i.e. if there was a finance company that was secretly Nazi then they would have a more deniable name than “Iron88”. Or maybe it was some marketing person who just picked out popular terms in cryptocurrency spaces and went “gee 88 is a popular number for unknown reasons”

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          • Well, true.

            (There’s a classic G1 Transformers scene where Megatron is practically strangling Starscream after yet another failed power grab attempt: “You are either lying or stupid!” “I’m stupid, I’m stupid!” He actually was both, of course.)

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      • My observation is that many alt-right people think they are far cleverer than they really are and would think that a name like Iron88 was something that “the rubes” would not understand.

        Liked by 4 people

  3. The sub-Reddit that likes to troll Vox Day have an archived version of his “Darkstream” video where he explains what happens https://archive.org/details/vox945 [link to sub-reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/gammasecretkings/comments/y47jv0/darkstream_945_report_on_rebels_run_archiveorg/ ]

    All credit to me, I only feel asleep once while watching it. tl:dw Vox isn’t at fault according to Vox and he didn’t want to make that movie anyway he wanted to make a different movie, a comedy about Owen Benjamin running NASA. The guy who made all the stupid mistakes (according to Vox) was the producer (I assume that is Daniel McNicoll). It’s the escrow company guy who is being charged (that’s what I thought) but Day also regards the finance company (I assume FundingNet) as being dubious also.

    Day says that he wasn’t paid anything for the script (the business records says the script was a cost – so I don’t know, I took that to mean Vox had been paid for it ). Day or his lawyer friend were the ones who contacted the FBI.

    Liked by 1 person

    • So he thought the finance company was dodgy, but went ahead and let this other guy give them all the money?

      Soooooper geeeeenyus indeed.

      It still ultimately means Teddy’s the one who’s responsible for getting scammed out of the money. That’s gotta hurt Scammer, son of Scammer even more

      (Nelson from Simpsons gif)

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  4. whois iron88group.com

    Domain Name: IRON88GROUP.COM
    Registry Domain ID: 2588668844_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
    Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
    Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
    Updated Date: 2021-02-01T22:28:46Z
    Creation Date: 2021-02-01T22:28:45Z
    Registry Expiry Date: 2023-02-01T22:28:45Z

    [lines deleted]

    Registry Registrant ID: Not Available From Registry
    Registrant Name: Registration Private
    Registrant Organization: Domains By Proxy, LLC
    Registrant Street: DomainsByProxy.com
    Registrant Street: 2155 E Warner Rd
    Registrant City: Tempe
    Registrant State/Province: Arizona
    Registrant Postal Code: 85284
    Registrant Country: US
    Registrant Phone: +1.4806242599
    Registrant Phone Ext:
    Registrant Fax: +1.4806242598

    Hm. I actually don’t know enough about domain registration to figure out if that “DomainsByProxy” is super sketchy or not. But it probably is.

    Note:

    Creation Date: 2021-02-01T22:28:45Z

    Yet their “about” page says:

    Iron88 Group has been providing "bespoke", Private Financing to global projects for nearly twenty years.

    (emph mine)

    O RLY?

    Liked by 2 people

  5. So this is where conspiracy theorists congregate? 🤣 …… Do you really believe a Company name is set up to promote a “skinhead agenda”, yet there is absolutely nothing promoting white supremacy within the site?……. You really should think it through better.

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  7. I notice that the head of the Asia Pacific group, C. Tay, certainly appears to be East Asian/ethnic Chinese. And I wondered where the number “8” fit in with Chinese cultural superstitions (I remembered that “4” is considered unlucky, but no more than that).

    Well, WikiP:Chinese_numerology says:

    The number 8 (八, pinyin: bā; Cantonese Yale: baat) sounds like “發” (pinyin: fā; Cantonese Yale: faat; lit. ‘to prosper’). There is also a visual resemblance between 88 and 囍 (pinyin: shuāng xǐ; Cantonese Yale: sēung héi; lit. ‘double joy’), a popular decorative design composed of two stylized characters 喜 (pinyin: xǐ; Cantonese Yale: héi; lit. ‘joy’).

    And there are multiple examples on that WikiP page of 8 or 88 being used by East Asian companies/polities for various things (as well as 8 cropping up for unrelated reasons in various places).

    So this use of 88 may well be something like the fact that the swastika is used as a decorative/auspicious design element in Buddhist/Jain/Hindu religious contexts: not randomly chosen, but the result of a very different cultural heritage that long preceded a particular 20th century political movement.

    The “Iron” is less easy to explain. It may connect to the “metal” part of the five Chinese elements (water, fire, wood, earth, and metal) [see: WikiP:Wuxing_(Chinese_philosophy)], but I don’t know for sure.

    All of which does not mean that there isn’t something very sketchy about this particular group. But it could well be that the primary targets of their “Iron 88 Group” are not white supremacists, but rather those that follow Chinese cultural practices. Any white supremacists who also get sucked in are bonus extra.

    Liked by 3 people

    • I thought of the Chinese practice as well, but Chinese stuff in the US tends to be 8 or 888, so as not to be confused. Or just a ton of 8’s, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen 88 on a Chinese thing. (Our local grocery chain is 99)

      But that article is fun. Who knew that in China, Bruce Banner could say “Don’t 7456!” You wouldn’t like him then.

      The side bits of knowledge we learn here are fun.

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    • It’s a danger you just have to take as a nazi: are you giving your money to a company scamming nazis, or scamming superstitious Chinese?

      On a related note the stage name of one of my favourite ~pop artists is 9m88 (she’s Taiwanese).

      Liked by 1 person

      • On yet another related note, I also recently started listening to a whole lot of metal again and oh my, it is depressing having to do searches like “wolves in the throne room nsbm?” just to make sure they’re not secretly fash. (Wolves in the Throne Room are not fashy, nor are Ashenspire [they’re the exact opposite, pretty much] or Blackbraid.)

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    • Sommer makes a couple of errors I note or knows something we don’t: “On Nov. 5, 2020, Beale transferred the $1 million to Ohana to be held in escrow in advance of future film funding.” <- Beale, wasn't an officer of the film company, so wouldn't have been a position to make any transfer. While we can't trust his account of things in general, in this case his claim that it was film producer Daniel McNicoll who transfered the money makes more sense.

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      • Yeah, but the million bucks were donated on his request, because of his reputation among racist RWNJ.

        So, ya know, if you follow the chain of reasoning, he was the one who collected the money from the Dead Elk that went to the scammer.

        I dunno about you guys, but if I’m handing over $1M, I don’t just blithely give it away without some due diligence. Which obviously Teddy didn’t do. Just running a WHOIS like @Owlmirror did should throw up some flags (which actual genius computer programmers would do), not to mention “unbankable”.

        I think RWNJ are so busy reacting to things that don’t actually threaten them that their nervous system is all “that boy’s crying wolf again” and they can’t spot actual dangers (See also Covid conspiracies, Hunter’s laptop, and the non-existent pizza basement).

        Sets ’em up for affinity fraud really well.

        (From Wiki: Samuel Croxall [1690-1752] asks, referencing political alarmism, “when we are alarmed with imaginary dangers in respect of the public, till the cry grows quite stale and threadbare, how can it be expected we should know when to guard ourselves against real ones?”

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