May 26, 2008 at 10:33 pmThe story of one Internet empire: from porn to puppies
In this, a little even reminiscent of a detective story, we will talk about the very, that is, the real prodigal son of Internet commerce. He proved himself to the world of e-commerce as a bright businessman-innovator, whose activities are associated with the transformation of the Internet into the global market space of the future.
Richard Gordon and Wataru Takahashi
And there is some truth to this. Despite the fact that the name of 62-year-old Mr. Richard Gordon doesn’t mean anything to most users of the World Wide Web, he nevertheless played a significant role in the development of e-commerce. When Amazon.com and eBay were just taking their first timid steps, companies created by Mr. Gordon in the very beginning of the 90s already laid the foundation for electronic transactions using credit cards - the development that formed the basis of the first generation electronic commercial projects.
And if, as the Broadway show “Avenue Q” claims, the Internet was created for porn, it is very natural that the first customers of Mr. Gordon were the producers of adult entertainment.
At a time when huge amounts of money were earned and promoted online in the 90s, Mr. Gordon made his fortune on commissions from accompanying the sales process of a number of sites, from small highly specialized sellers to large ones like ClubLove, which published sexy photos of Pamela Anderson ( Pamela Anderson) and Tommy Lee.
Currently, his payment services company continues to work in the sex entertainment segment. According to information from both former and current employees who are aware of the agreements, one of the companies he owns or manages, Processing Solutions, is facilitating the credit card transaction process for DTI (Digital Talk International) web sites.
DTI is located on the Caribbean island of Curacao and manages, from Los Angeles, an extensive and profitable network of adult sites focused on the Japanese market.
Along with the evolution of electronic commerce, Mr. Gordon himself developed on the network. Despite the fact that the early period of his career was connected with operations with credit cards and the provision of services to producers of pornographic Internet products, recently he has rushed to a slightly different business - Christian charity organizations.
Until last week, his design company, Bold New World, located in Los Angeles, had a lucrative contract to develop sites for the American Bible Society, a 192-year-old charity based in Manhattan whose mission is to make the Bible accessible to every person in the world.
Bold New World has also created a website for the charitable organization SPCA International, which fights against animal abuse by helping members of the armed forces bring homeless dogs from Iraq. This charitable organization has provoked an active debate among animal rights advocates, as it does not have its own animal shelter and is not affiliated with any of the oldest and recognized organizations for combating animal cruelty.
Although Mr. Gordon has combined completely incompatible aspirations such as pornography, the Bible and the prevention of animal abuse, combining the worldwide payment power of credit cards and the respectability of excellent sites, knowledgeable people say that his business is still closely connected with DTI.
There is no official data on the porn industry, but those who have studied this segment are of the opinion that DTI is the main player in the pornography market. “DTI is a global leader in adult services companies,” said MJ McMahon, owner of the AVN Online news website, which covers this topic.
Mr. Gordon's lawyer, Miles Woodlief, states that: “neither Mr. Gordon nor his companies are involved in the porn business.” For his part, Mr. Gordon presents his career in a more favorable light.
“I am an inventor, a creative genius and a pioneer,” he claims in a statement sent to his press by the secretary. “For the past 30 years, I have been working with thousands of different people around the world. And most of them, including senators, governors, presidents of the United States, governors, and people who made themselves billionaires, to whom I personally reported about my mistakes earlier, admire me. ”
Dozens of former and working employees and business partners of Mr. Gordon say that no matter what his business is now, anyway, the organization of transactions for porn sites has long been his main activity. Many talk about this anonymously, fearing prosecution for publicly disclosing his activities.
These people characterize the DTI, which is owned and managed by Watary Takahashi, a Japanese billionaire who has worked with Mr. Gordon on various projects for at least 10 years, as one of the most profitable and regular customers of his business organization with by credit cards.
DTI are dozens of sites that offer customers everything for a fee, from online video sessions with porn artists to outright manga cartoons. According to some former and current employees associated with the finances of the company, sites bring a monthly income of about $ 15 million. Content for most of these sites is produced in Los Angeles, and then sent to Japan, where there is strict legislation in relation to the manufacture of such products.
And the main link in DTI sales and billing are the services provided by Mr. Gordon.
“Gordon organizes credit card transactions for every site Mr. Takahashi owns,” said Alex Becker, a former top manager at Stickam, a Los Angeles-based social network. "Mr. Takahashi is dependent on Richard, and they always work together."
According to Mr. Becker, Stickam, online video chat for teenagers is funded and managed by DTI. Scott Flacks, a former Stickam executive who quit this spring, says Gordon and Takahashi have close ties.
“There is trust between them that prevails over business,” he says.
Another employee, who worked for several years directly at DTI, claims that Mr. Gordon helped open the company’s accounts in at least two American banks and one German. The employee also confirms that Gordon receives monthly payments from DTI for assistance in resolving such issues. The employee reported this information anonymously, as signed a non-disclosure agreement with DTI.
“Richard is a problem solver,” this person says. "He is clearly an intermediary between banks and Takahashi, although you will not be able to find any papers confirming this."
In addition, Takahashi and Gordon seem to be helping each other to hire workers, litigate, and find the right political contacts. In February 2007, Takahashi, in honor of his wife's birthday, had a magnificent party at the Grand Cayman, where he spends some part of each year living in the Ritz-Carlton condominium.
According to the information of the four people who were present at the festival, about 100 guests, including Mr. Gordon and several of his colleagues, flew there from all over the world in private jets. Among those present was a representative of a large casino network in Las Vegas - Mr. Takahari is an avid player and frequent visitor to the city - as well as Stanton D. Anderson, a long-time member of the Republican Party and a consultant to the American Bible Society ) Mr. Anderson later declined to comment on this issue. Guests were offered a sea cruise in the Caribbean and a sumptuous dinner on the beach with an orchestra. When guests enjoyed lobster grills and other delicacies, the casino representative and Mr. Takahashi presented expensive gifts to the birthday girl, such as a Tiffany diamond tennis bracelet.
In 1979, six years after an honorary discharge from the naval forces, Gordon was arrested by the FBI. He was detained by the feds, hiding in his friend’s apartment in Washington. Four tickets for a Concord flight to Paris and back were found on a table in the lounge.
According to a 1981 Federal Appeals Court, the New York authorities investigated Mr. Gordon, who was then living outside Albany and managed insurance and financial companies, in misappropriating clients' funds. According to court materials, upon learning of the investigation, Gordon closed his business and left Albany, planning to leave for Europe.
In 1980, he was ultimately accused of fraud, transferring a stolen check between states and providing false information to a bank. He spent more than two years, out of seven assigned to him, in federal prison in Dunbary, Connecticut and Lompoc, California.
“About 30 years ago, as a zealous, energetic young businessman, I made a mistake. I was convicted and was serving a sentence, ”says Mr. Gordon about this period of his life. “Then, for almost three decades, I was a diligent and honest entrepreneur, inventor and businessman. I have created jobs and career opportunities for thousands of people. ”
According to business publications of the time, after moving to Los Angeles in 1983, he worked as a business consultant throughout the 1980s. It was then that Gordon came up with another thing: making payments by credit card by phone.
According to the reports of commercial newspapers, he began with the circulation of credit cards for 1-900 and other telephone services, mail orders and telemarkets. He was also among the first to engage in online transactions.
At that time, credit card issuers were horrified by the prospect of web transactions due to the indirect contact of transaction participants. In addition, most of the early e-commerce operators were from the so-called risk group, such as porn producers and gambling companies. Banks set higher rates on these transactions because people sometimes try to dispute the fact of making a purchase from their account, perhaps in order to justify themselves to their spouse.
At that time, other payment operators avoided high rates, Gordon saw in this perspective. In the 90s, his companies, including Electronic Card Systems, came up with how to reduce risk. Their method was to create a database of untrustworthy customers and then refuse inaccurate users when they re-enter the network for the purpose of making purchases.
“Gordon was a pioneer,” said Jeffrey D. De Petro, who worked at Electronic Card Systems as a risk manager from 1995 to 1998. “We used various ways to monitor e-commerce transactions, and I think that predetermined the pros and cons of this industry.”
Mr. De Petro and five other former employees of the time say that the Canadian gambling network CryptoLogic was their major customer. They also confirm that Mr. Gordon was involved in organizing work with credit cards for ClubLove and other sites owned by the now defunct Internet Entertainment Group, which offered pornographic photos and videos for paying monthly memberships.
“In those days, he was everything for Internet pornography,” said Steven Peisner, one of the veterans of the payment card industry, who worked for Electronic Card Systems in 1997. “At that time, in order to do something with porn on the Internet, you had to contact Electronic Card Systems.”
Employees of that time recall the extravagant offices of the company, located on the fifth, sixth and seventh floors of the Luckman Building at Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The walls were decorated with elegant graphics, there were always fresh flowers in the lobby. Mr. Gordon had lavish parties for his workers at his Holliwood Hills home and drove to Bentley.
According to Mr. Peysner and other former employees, in the 90s Gordon created and managed many companies, but they were always connected and located in the same offices. In addition to Electronic Card Systems and its related Electronic Authorization Systems, he was involved in publishing, international telephony, and the interior design business.
According to a company press release in 1999, with the goal of maximizing the benefits of the gold rush on a worldwide network, Mr. Gordon unites most of these companies into a single CreditCard.com structure. But the company had financial problems. Former employees remember from time to time checks returned by banks, as well as the transfer of ownership of leased funds.
According to archival documents from the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in 1999, Mr. Gordon brought in new partners from Nashville, borrowing several million dollars from them, using his capital to secure the deal.
Documents related to the trial indicate that when Gordon was unable to repay his partners, they ousted him. Now the company is called iPayment and is located in Nashville.
“He played so many games that he ultimately outplayed himself,” says former CreditCard.com Technical Manager Masih Madani speaking of Gordon.
However, Gordon did not leave the company empty-handed. According to court documents, the new owners paid him $ 2 million to settle his lawsuit against them. Well, in the end, Gordon managed to save another valuable asset after this first of a kind Internet raiding - his relationship with Wataru Takahashi and DTI.
But there’s another person Richard Gordon should be grateful for help after the CreditCard.com bankruptcy - Paul Irwin, the head of the American Bible Society, who from 1996 to 2004 was the executive director of the Humane Society of the USA (Human Society of the United States).
Over two decades of animal rights advocacy, a dedicated advisor to the United Methodist Church, Dr. Irwin, has turned Human Society into the world's largest animal rights charity. But his tenure was also overshadowed by scandal.
In 1987, USA Today reported a $ 85,000 community expense for building a Dr. Irwin country house in Maine. Ten years later, by court order, the company paid $ 1 million to the Canadian branch of the Human Society for collecting donations in Canada and then transferring money to the United States.
Dr. Irwin began using Mr. Gordon's services near the end of his tenure at the head of the Community in April 2003. Tax reports show that the company paid $ 881,000 to Gordon's new company Exciting New Technologies.
In May 2003, according to a press release, Gordon hired Dr. Irwin's son, Christopher, as head of his company's development department. It was not possible to get comments on this from Mr. Irwin Jr. It is also not known how long he worked there.
In an interview, Dr. Irwin said Exciting New Technologies developed a “technology platform” that allowed Human Society to become the most powerful publicly supported animal rights charity out of all that assisted after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A representative of the company said that Dr. Irwin canceled the implementation of the software implementation project in 2004, and that the company purchased the technology from another company.
However, when Dr. Irwin left the Human Society and headed the American Bible Society, he again used the services of Mr. Gordon. Then Dr. Irwin said that society has many sites whose work needs to be streamlined.
Between July 2005 and June 2007, according to tax reports, the Christian charity paid Exciting New Technologies more than $ 5 million. The representative of the charitable organization said that in addition to design services, this money also includes e-mail marketing services and Bible digitization, which were carried out by subcontractors.
According to Dr. Irwin, these costs are significant, but the organization simply needed quick progress on the network. “We were so far beyond the development of Internet technologies that we were forced to make such sacrifices. Next year you will see that the costs of this will be much less, and further they will continue to decrease. ”
However, Mr. Gordon's company payouts raised questions within the Bible community itself. One of the employees, on condition of anonymity to avoid the wrath of Dr. Irwin, said that tax reports only confirm what is well known within the community, and that excessive payments initially raised big questions.
The employee also said that "attempts have been made to clarify what exactly this money goes to."
Dr. Irwin said that he did not know anything about Mr. Gordon's connections with the porn industry. “I have no information about Richard Gordon’s connections with the world of pornography,” he said. “Know that if someone provides me with evidence of this, then Mr. Gordon will not be in the Bible community that day.”
After the community was asked about his relationship with Mr. Gordon’s company, it was stated that the “American Bible Community” and Richard Gordon decided to terminate all business relationships by mutual agreement. ” It was also added that an investigation into Mr. Gordon’s collaboration with the community will continue.
In March 2007, Dr. Irwin and Richard Gordon decided to tackle the real estate of the American Bible Community, located at 1865 Broadway, near the Columbus Circle in Manhattan. According to a source who wishes to remain anonymous, Dr. Irwin and Mr. Gordon met with the leaders of the Sonnenblick Goldman investment bank to discuss this issue. The meeting, ultimately, was unsuccessful, partly due to Mr. Gordon’s unexpected demand for an investment bank to pay him $ 20 million in transaction fees. When Dr. Irwin was asked about this conversation, he only answered that "there was no agreement."
“Mr. Gordon is the last person I would like to deal with in relation to real estate transactions in New York,” said Dr. Irwin. “The American Bible Community has the opportunity to resort to first-class agents, and Mr. Gordon is not one of them.”
In March, more than a hundred activists from the Montreal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals gathered on Jean-Talon Road to protest after publications appeared in the press about possible financial abuses of the company's executive director Pierre Barnoti ( Pierre Barnoti). In April, the Canadian Financial Agency launched an investigation, after which the majority of the board members resigned.
The new leadership, in addition to clarifying the issue of how the company got into 4 million debts, is also trying to solve a small Internet riddle: what happened to the web address of the company SPCA.com.
Two years ago, the newly created organization called SPCA International began to use the Internet domain SPCA.com to raise money for the needs of animal rights.
Animal People has published an article reporting that Mr. Barnothy registered for SPCA International in May 2006 in Delaware. This allowed him to carry out financial transactions in the United States.
In order to increase the public’s presence on the Internet, Mr. Barnothy consulted with Paul Irwin, who later said in an interview that he had introduced Mr. Barnothy to Richard Gordon.
Gordon’s company developed and implemented the SPCA.com website. It is not clear how much Richard Gordon earned in collaboration with SPCA International. But the executive directors of petsupplies.com, a commercial partner of SPCA International, and Pet-together, said it was not financially working with SPCA International, but with another organization, the SPCA Foundation. According to registration data, the fund was registered last August by Mr. Woodlief, a lawyer for Mr. Gordon.
As for SPCA International, it seems that Mr. Gordon has no special interests here.
But, nevertheless, society continues to implement quite significant projects. Last year, for example, a program was created called Operation Baghdad Puppies, whose goal is to save stray dogs in Iraq. The program is actively promoted on SPCA.com.
The site ranks first in a Google or Yahoo search for “SPCA,” ahead of even the 142-year-old American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. ASPCA declined to comment on this topic, but it is known that SPCA.com is annoying for many activists who say that the new organization is simply exploiting the consonant good name of more respected charities.
Last month, Stickam, an online social video network led by Mr. Takahari DTI, released a press release announcing a new partnership - the social network is now the exclusive online web provider for Operation Baghdad Puppies Project SPCA International.
A fairly mundane and understandable message informing about the cooperation of two at first glance incompatible organizations.
But for those who know the people behind these two companies, and are also aware of their long and fruitful cooperation, it is clear that Richard Gordon and Wataru Takahashi have found a new way to work together.
Original article: of An E-Commerce Empire, the From Porn to Puppies - the New York Times
translation is for BIW
Richard Gordon and Wataru Takahashi
And there is some truth to this. Despite the fact that the name of 62-year-old Mr. Richard Gordon doesn’t mean anything to most users of the World Wide Web, he nevertheless played a significant role in the development of e-commerce. When Amazon.com and eBay were just taking their first timid steps, companies created by Mr. Gordon in the very beginning of the 90s already laid the foundation for electronic transactions using credit cards - the development that formed the basis of the first generation electronic commercial projects.
And if, as the Broadway show “Avenue Q” claims, the Internet was created for porn, it is very natural that the first customers of Mr. Gordon were the producers of adult entertainment.
At a time when huge amounts of money were earned and promoted online in the 90s, Mr. Gordon made his fortune on commissions from accompanying the sales process of a number of sites, from small highly specialized sellers to large ones like ClubLove, which published sexy photos of Pamela Anderson ( Pamela Anderson) and Tommy Lee.
Currently, his payment services company continues to work in the sex entertainment segment. According to information from both former and current employees who are aware of the agreements, one of the companies he owns or manages, Processing Solutions, is facilitating the credit card transaction process for DTI (Digital Talk International) web sites.
DTI is located on the Caribbean island of Curacao and manages, from Los Angeles, an extensive and profitable network of adult sites focused on the Japanese market.
Along with the evolution of electronic commerce, Mr. Gordon himself developed on the network. Despite the fact that the early period of his career was connected with operations with credit cards and the provision of services to producers of pornographic Internet products, recently he has rushed to a slightly different business - Christian charity organizations.
Until last week, his design company, Bold New World, located in Los Angeles, had a lucrative contract to develop sites for the American Bible Society, a 192-year-old charity based in Manhattan whose mission is to make the Bible accessible to every person in the world.
Bold New World has also created a website for the charitable organization SPCA International, which fights against animal abuse by helping members of the armed forces bring homeless dogs from Iraq. This charitable organization has provoked an active debate among animal rights advocates, as it does not have its own animal shelter and is not affiliated with any of the oldest and recognized organizations for combating animal cruelty.
Although Mr. Gordon has combined completely incompatible aspirations such as pornography, the Bible and the prevention of animal abuse, combining the worldwide payment power of credit cards and the respectability of excellent sites, knowledgeable people say that his business is still closely connected with DTI.
There is no official data on the porn industry, but those who have studied this segment are of the opinion that DTI is the main player in the pornography market. “DTI is a global leader in adult services companies,” said MJ McMahon, owner of the AVN Online news website, which covers this topic.
Mr. Gordon's lawyer, Miles Woodlief, states that: “neither Mr. Gordon nor his companies are involved in the porn business.” For his part, Mr. Gordon presents his career in a more favorable light.
“I am an inventor, a creative genius and a pioneer,” he claims in a statement sent to his press by the secretary. “For the past 30 years, I have been working with thousands of different people around the world. And most of them, including senators, governors, presidents of the United States, governors, and people who made themselves billionaires, to whom I personally reported about my mistakes earlier, admire me. ”
Dozens of former and working employees and business partners of Mr. Gordon say that no matter what his business is now, anyway, the organization of transactions for porn sites has long been his main activity. Many talk about this anonymously, fearing prosecution for publicly disclosing his activities.
These people characterize the DTI, which is owned and managed by Watary Takahashi, a Japanese billionaire who has worked with Mr. Gordon on various projects for at least 10 years, as one of the most profitable and regular customers of his business organization with by credit cards.
DTI are dozens of sites that offer customers everything for a fee, from online video sessions with porn artists to outright manga cartoons. According to some former and current employees associated with the finances of the company, sites bring a monthly income of about $ 15 million. Content for most of these sites is produced in Los Angeles, and then sent to Japan, where there is strict legislation in relation to the manufacture of such products.
And the main link in DTI sales and billing are the services provided by Mr. Gordon.
“Gordon organizes credit card transactions for every site Mr. Takahashi owns,” said Alex Becker, a former top manager at Stickam, a Los Angeles-based social network. "Mr. Takahashi is dependent on Richard, and they always work together."
According to Mr. Becker, Stickam, online video chat for teenagers is funded and managed by DTI. Scott Flacks, a former Stickam executive who quit this spring, says Gordon and Takahashi have close ties.
“There is trust between them that prevails over business,” he says.
Another employee, who worked for several years directly at DTI, claims that Mr. Gordon helped open the company’s accounts in at least two American banks and one German. The employee also confirms that Gordon receives monthly payments from DTI for assistance in resolving such issues. The employee reported this information anonymously, as signed a non-disclosure agreement with DTI.
“Richard is a problem solver,” this person says. "He is clearly an intermediary between banks and Takahashi, although you will not be able to find any papers confirming this."
In addition, Takahashi and Gordon seem to be helping each other to hire workers, litigate, and find the right political contacts. In February 2007, Takahashi, in honor of his wife's birthday, had a magnificent party at the Grand Cayman, where he spends some part of each year living in the Ritz-Carlton condominium.
According to the information of the four people who were present at the festival, about 100 guests, including Mr. Gordon and several of his colleagues, flew there from all over the world in private jets. Among those present was a representative of a large casino network in Las Vegas - Mr. Takahari is an avid player and frequent visitor to the city - as well as Stanton D. Anderson, a long-time member of the Republican Party and a consultant to the American Bible Society ) Mr. Anderson later declined to comment on this issue. Guests were offered a sea cruise in the Caribbean and a sumptuous dinner on the beach with an orchestra. When guests enjoyed lobster grills and other delicacies, the casino representative and Mr. Takahashi presented expensive gifts to the birthday girl, such as a Tiffany diamond tennis bracelet.
In 1979, six years after an honorary discharge from the naval forces, Gordon was arrested by the FBI. He was detained by the feds, hiding in his friend’s apartment in Washington. Four tickets for a Concord flight to Paris and back were found on a table in the lounge.
According to a 1981 Federal Appeals Court, the New York authorities investigated Mr. Gordon, who was then living outside Albany and managed insurance and financial companies, in misappropriating clients' funds. According to court materials, upon learning of the investigation, Gordon closed his business and left Albany, planning to leave for Europe.
In 1980, he was ultimately accused of fraud, transferring a stolen check between states and providing false information to a bank. He spent more than two years, out of seven assigned to him, in federal prison in Dunbary, Connecticut and Lompoc, California.
“About 30 years ago, as a zealous, energetic young businessman, I made a mistake. I was convicted and was serving a sentence, ”says Mr. Gordon about this period of his life. “Then, for almost three decades, I was a diligent and honest entrepreneur, inventor and businessman. I have created jobs and career opportunities for thousands of people. ”
According to business publications of the time, after moving to Los Angeles in 1983, he worked as a business consultant throughout the 1980s. It was then that Gordon came up with another thing: making payments by credit card by phone.
According to the reports of commercial newspapers, he began with the circulation of credit cards for 1-900 and other telephone services, mail orders and telemarkets. He was also among the first to engage in online transactions.
At that time, credit card issuers were horrified by the prospect of web transactions due to the indirect contact of transaction participants. In addition, most of the early e-commerce operators were from the so-called risk group, such as porn producers and gambling companies. Banks set higher rates on these transactions because people sometimes try to dispute the fact of making a purchase from their account, perhaps in order to justify themselves to their spouse.
At that time, other payment operators avoided high rates, Gordon saw in this perspective. In the 90s, his companies, including Electronic Card Systems, came up with how to reduce risk. Their method was to create a database of untrustworthy customers and then refuse inaccurate users when they re-enter the network for the purpose of making purchases.
“Gordon was a pioneer,” said Jeffrey D. De Petro, who worked at Electronic Card Systems as a risk manager from 1995 to 1998. “We used various ways to monitor e-commerce transactions, and I think that predetermined the pros and cons of this industry.”
Mr. De Petro and five other former employees of the time say that the Canadian gambling network CryptoLogic was their major customer. They also confirm that Mr. Gordon was involved in organizing work with credit cards for ClubLove and other sites owned by the now defunct Internet Entertainment Group, which offered pornographic photos and videos for paying monthly memberships.
“In those days, he was everything for Internet pornography,” said Steven Peisner, one of the veterans of the payment card industry, who worked for Electronic Card Systems in 1997. “At that time, in order to do something with porn on the Internet, you had to contact Electronic Card Systems.”
Employees of that time recall the extravagant offices of the company, located on the fifth, sixth and seventh floors of the Luckman Building at Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The walls were decorated with elegant graphics, there were always fresh flowers in the lobby. Mr. Gordon had lavish parties for his workers at his Holliwood Hills home and drove to Bentley.
According to Mr. Peysner and other former employees, in the 90s Gordon created and managed many companies, but they were always connected and located in the same offices. In addition to Electronic Card Systems and its related Electronic Authorization Systems, he was involved in publishing, international telephony, and the interior design business.
According to a company press release in 1999, with the goal of maximizing the benefits of the gold rush on a worldwide network, Mr. Gordon unites most of these companies into a single CreditCard.com structure. But the company had financial problems. Former employees remember from time to time checks returned by banks, as well as the transfer of ownership of leased funds.
According to archival documents from the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in 1999, Mr. Gordon brought in new partners from Nashville, borrowing several million dollars from them, using his capital to secure the deal.
Documents related to the trial indicate that when Gordon was unable to repay his partners, they ousted him. Now the company is called iPayment and is located in Nashville.
“He played so many games that he ultimately outplayed himself,” says former CreditCard.com Technical Manager Masih Madani speaking of Gordon.
However, Gordon did not leave the company empty-handed. According to court documents, the new owners paid him $ 2 million to settle his lawsuit against them. Well, in the end, Gordon managed to save another valuable asset after this first of a kind Internet raiding - his relationship with Wataru Takahashi and DTI.
But there’s another person Richard Gordon should be grateful for help after the CreditCard.com bankruptcy - Paul Irwin, the head of the American Bible Society, who from 1996 to 2004 was the executive director of the Humane Society of the USA (Human Society of the United States).
Over two decades of animal rights advocacy, a dedicated advisor to the United Methodist Church, Dr. Irwin, has turned Human Society into the world's largest animal rights charity. But his tenure was also overshadowed by scandal.
In 1987, USA Today reported a $ 85,000 community expense for building a Dr. Irwin country house in Maine. Ten years later, by court order, the company paid $ 1 million to the Canadian branch of the Human Society for collecting donations in Canada and then transferring money to the United States.
Dr. Irwin began using Mr. Gordon's services near the end of his tenure at the head of the Community in April 2003. Tax reports show that the company paid $ 881,000 to Gordon's new company Exciting New Technologies.
In May 2003, according to a press release, Gordon hired Dr. Irwin's son, Christopher, as head of his company's development department. It was not possible to get comments on this from Mr. Irwin Jr. It is also not known how long he worked there.
In an interview, Dr. Irwin said Exciting New Technologies developed a “technology platform” that allowed Human Society to become the most powerful publicly supported animal rights charity out of all that assisted after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A representative of the company said that Dr. Irwin canceled the implementation of the software implementation project in 2004, and that the company purchased the technology from another company.
However, when Dr. Irwin left the Human Society and headed the American Bible Society, he again used the services of Mr. Gordon. Then Dr. Irwin said that society has many sites whose work needs to be streamlined.
Between July 2005 and June 2007, according to tax reports, the Christian charity paid Exciting New Technologies more than $ 5 million. The representative of the charitable organization said that in addition to design services, this money also includes e-mail marketing services and Bible digitization, which were carried out by subcontractors.
According to Dr. Irwin, these costs are significant, but the organization simply needed quick progress on the network. “We were so far beyond the development of Internet technologies that we were forced to make such sacrifices. Next year you will see that the costs of this will be much less, and further they will continue to decrease. ”
However, Mr. Gordon's company payouts raised questions within the Bible community itself. One of the employees, on condition of anonymity to avoid the wrath of Dr. Irwin, said that tax reports only confirm what is well known within the community, and that excessive payments initially raised big questions.
The employee also said that "attempts have been made to clarify what exactly this money goes to."
Dr. Irwin said that he did not know anything about Mr. Gordon's connections with the porn industry. “I have no information about Richard Gordon’s connections with the world of pornography,” he said. “Know that if someone provides me with evidence of this, then Mr. Gordon will not be in the Bible community that day.”
After the community was asked about his relationship with Mr. Gordon’s company, it was stated that the “American Bible Community” and Richard Gordon decided to terminate all business relationships by mutual agreement. ” It was also added that an investigation into Mr. Gordon’s collaboration with the community will continue.
In March 2007, Dr. Irwin and Richard Gordon decided to tackle the real estate of the American Bible Community, located at 1865 Broadway, near the Columbus Circle in Manhattan. According to a source who wishes to remain anonymous, Dr. Irwin and Mr. Gordon met with the leaders of the Sonnenblick Goldman investment bank to discuss this issue. The meeting, ultimately, was unsuccessful, partly due to Mr. Gordon’s unexpected demand for an investment bank to pay him $ 20 million in transaction fees. When Dr. Irwin was asked about this conversation, he only answered that "there was no agreement."
“Mr. Gordon is the last person I would like to deal with in relation to real estate transactions in New York,” said Dr. Irwin. “The American Bible Community has the opportunity to resort to first-class agents, and Mr. Gordon is not one of them.”
In March, more than a hundred activists from the Montreal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals gathered on Jean-Talon Road to protest after publications appeared in the press about possible financial abuses of the company's executive director Pierre Barnoti ( Pierre Barnoti). In April, the Canadian Financial Agency launched an investigation, after which the majority of the board members resigned.
The new leadership, in addition to clarifying the issue of how the company got into 4 million debts, is also trying to solve a small Internet riddle: what happened to the web address of the company SPCA.com.
Two years ago, the newly created organization called SPCA International began to use the Internet domain SPCA.com to raise money for the needs of animal rights.
Animal People has published an article reporting that Mr. Barnothy registered for SPCA International in May 2006 in Delaware. This allowed him to carry out financial transactions in the United States.
In order to increase the public’s presence on the Internet, Mr. Barnothy consulted with Paul Irwin, who later said in an interview that he had introduced Mr. Barnothy to Richard Gordon.
Gordon’s company developed and implemented the SPCA.com website. It is not clear how much Richard Gordon earned in collaboration with SPCA International. But the executive directors of petsupplies.com, a commercial partner of SPCA International, and Pet-together, said it was not financially working with SPCA International, but with another organization, the SPCA Foundation. According to registration data, the fund was registered last August by Mr. Woodlief, a lawyer for Mr. Gordon.
As for SPCA International, it seems that Mr. Gordon has no special interests here.
But, nevertheless, society continues to implement quite significant projects. Last year, for example, a program was created called Operation Baghdad Puppies, whose goal is to save stray dogs in Iraq. The program is actively promoted on SPCA.com.
The site ranks first in a Google or Yahoo search for “SPCA,” ahead of even the 142-year-old American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. ASPCA declined to comment on this topic, but it is known that SPCA.com is annoying for many activists who say that the new organization is simply exploiting the consonant good name of more respected charities.
Last month, Stickam, an online social video network led by Mr. Takahari DTI, released a press release announcing a new partnership - the social network is now the exclusive online web provider for Operation Baghdad Puppies Project SPCA International.
A fairly mundane and understandable message informing about the cooperation of two at first glance incompatible organizations.
But for those who know the people behind these two companies, and are also aware of their long and fruitful cooperation, it is clear that Richard Gordon and Wataru Takahashi have found a new way to work together.
Original article: of An E-Commerce Empire, the From Porn to Puppies - the New York Times
translation is for BIW