Scapegoated
New member
Hi there,
I have had an 18 year long successful career destroyed by a con artist and I'm not sure what to do. The details of this case are vast, but in a nutshell here is what happened:
I live in a right to work state in the entertainment industry. In our particular field, there is one large company that basically has a monopoly over the entire industry. I worked for said company as a staff specialist for about a decade, then left on my own accord, but I still freelance for them. To fill my old position this large company hired some guy from LA. From day 1 it was obvious to all of us specialists that the guy was a complete fraud. The problem is, the only people who are able to tell the difference between legitimate professionals and frauds are us specialists, and there are very few of us. All of us expressed our concerns to our superiors, and every one of us was threatened to never work again if we said anything bad about this new guy. This includes 2 veterans; one with 36 years working for the company, and the other with 26.
The new guy is young, good looking, charismatic, and is a master at getting people on his side of things. Of course right off the bat he starts making catastrophic mistakes, ruining projects and loosing clients. Every time he would make a mistake he would simply blame one of us and state that we didn't know what we were doing because we weren't from LA. We tried to explain that we have done our job very successfully for many decades, but that still did absolutely nothing to help our case. In fact, it just made people hate us even more. They started to look at us as disgruntled angry old guys who have either lost their ability to work or have been doing it wrong for decades. The insanity of this is just infuriating because our results are very definable, but we were still constantly thrown under the bus and blamed for his mistakes.
This split up our entire community. There are those that are on the side of the con man and those that aren't. Colleagues that have worked together on thousands of projects now hate each other and won't collaborate anymore. The big company that hired this guy also believes him, and is convinced that the people in our state have no clue what we are doing. They are so mad that they intend to move all operations out of our state. Again, they are so flattered by this guys charisma that none of our decades of success account for anything.
Out of necessity, I took a particularly miserable freelance job in which I was constantly having to fix this guys mistakes, which were catastrophic. I did manage to fix most of them and the project wound up getting finished, but it was a nightmare. I found out later that the client was furious about all of the mistakes, and that I had been blamed for all of them. The large company blacklisted me from working without even informing me. I was told by fellow colleagues that I am never allowed to work for that company in any context again. I have tried to contact them to ask what it is that I am accused of, and they refuse to even speak with me. This was nearly a year ago now. I still work at other places around town that are in the same industry, and so I work with a lot of the same people that still work for this large company. I am constantly being told that I need to stop "messing up" projects at the large company because I am giving everyone else a bad reputation. When I inquire as to what exactly it is that I have "messed up" I am never given an answer. This is particularly frustrating since I haven't even worked there for nearly a year due to my apparent ban.
It has become so bad that now most people around town think its ok to just not pay me at all for my work. Some of these are people I considered good friends, and are people that I have done excellent work for for nearly 2 decades. I know some of these people are acting this way because they are afraid that they too will be banned from working. They have families to support and simply cannot afford to put their own careers in jeopardy.
There are those of us who do speak up still against him however. Apparently he has had over a dozen official complaints filed against him with the large company. I'm guessing the pressure got to him because he left the company a little while ago. So he has done his damage and is off to the next town to do the exact same thing to that community. Meanwhile, our communities reputation has been obliterated. We have all been pitted against each other, and the large company that generates the majority of the work for us intends to move out of state.
This guy has taken credit for everything good that has ever come out of our state, and has blamed us for all of his blunders. This has also helped launch him into celebrity status. He is now known globally as one of the most legendary specialists alive today. He is constantly being interview and filmed and endorsed by various companies. Some even think of him as some sort of philanthropist who was willing to come to our small town and teach us rednecks how the "real pros" do things.
As I stated earlier, the only people who would be able to tell wether or not a person is a legitimate pro in this field are the very few of us specialists. However, all of our reputations have been obliterated, so I doubt anything we say would have any weight. Aside from holding a mock project in which we force him to try and do a job by himself in front of a court of law, I cannot think of a way to honestly prove he is a fraud. Other specialists who have not had their careers destroyed by this guy would have to come observe, but I doubt any of them would be willing to say anything bad about him after seeing what he has done to us.
I feel totally hopeless. This not only has ended my career as well as hundreds of other people's in my community, but it has ruined my physical health, mental health, and my relationships with colleagues, friends, and family. The financial strain is also astronomical; I am 34 years old and am now entirely reliant on my parents.
I know this is a vague overview of things, and I can go into much more detail if needed. I would like to go after the large company, which is worth many billions of dollars. One of my worries is that if I go after them they will once again use me as a scapegoat, and claim that I was responsible for them leaving our state. These people are renowned for shirking responsibility and finding "little people" to blame things on.
This guys resume is incredibly impressive, and I know for a fact that all of the projects he claims to have done here are outright lies. The problem is proving that. . . I'm positive most of his supposed accomplishments are outright lies. I intend to track down other people involved with projects that he has taken credit for in the past to see if I can find sympathetic people who have the guts to stand up to him. The other thing we have going for us is decades of successful work, and the fact that these problems didn't start happening until he came to work in our town. I'm not sure that will be enough though. . .
My question is where do I even start with this? I'm mad at this con man, but I'm absolutely furious with the large company for hiring him in the first place and for not listening to any of us. Can anyone point me in a direction? I'm thinking I can go after them for Slander / Defamation, in which case they will be forced to tell me what "mistakes" I made that warranted destroying my career. Then I can defend myself by proving I wasn't even around for most of these things.
Sorry for the novel. . . This has me so depressed I just don't know what to do. Any help / advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your time!
The Scapegoat
I have had an 18 year long successful career destroyed by a con artist and I'm not sure what to do. The details of this case are vast, but in a nutshell here is what happened:
I live in a right to work state in the entertainment industry. In our particular field, there is one large company that basically has a monopoly over the entire industry. I worked for said company as a staff specialist for about a decade, then left on my own accord, but I still freelance for them. To fill my old position this large company hired some guy from LA. From day 1 it was obvious to all of us specialists that the guy was a complete fraud. The problem is, the only people who are able to tell the difference between legitimate professionals and frauds are us specialists, and there are very few of us. All of us expressed our concerns to our superiors, and every one of us was threatened to never work again if we said anything bad about this new guy. This includes 2 veterans; one with 36 years working for the company, and the other with 26.
The new guy is young, good looking, charismatic, and is a master at getting people on his side of things. Of course right off the bat he starts making catastrophic mistakes, ruining projects and loosing clients. Every time he would make a mistake he would simply blame one of us and state that we didn't know what we were doing because we weren't from LA. We tried to explain that we have done our job very successfully for many decades, but that still did absolutely nothing to help our case. In fact, it just made people hate us even more. They started to look at us as disgruntled angry old guys who have either lost their ability to work or have been doing it wrong for decades. The insanity of this is just infuriating because our results are very definable, but we were still constantly thrown under the bus and blamed for his mistakes.
This split up our entire community. There are those that are on the side of the con man and those that aren't. Colleagues that have worked together on thousands of projects now hate each other and won't collaborate anymore. The big company that hired this guy also believes him, and is convinced that the people in our state have no clue what we are doing. They are so mad that they intend to move all operations out of our state. Again, they are so flattered by this guys charisma that none of our decades of success account for anything.
Out of necessity, I took a particularly miserable freelance job in which I was constantly having to fix this guys mistakes, which were catastrophic. I did manage to fix most of them and the project wound up getting finished, but it was a nightmare. I found out later that the client was furious about all of the mistakes, and that I had been blamed for all of them. The large company blacklisted me from working without even informing me. I was told by fellow colleagues that I am never allowed to work for that company in any context again. I have tried to contact them to ask what it is that I am accused of, and they refuse to even speak with me. This was nearly a year ago now. I still work at other places around town that are in the same industry, and so I work with a lot of the same people that still work for this large company. I am constantly being told that I need to stop "messing up" projects at the large company because I am giving everyone else a bad reputation. When I inquire as to what exactly it is that I have "messed up" I am never given an answer. This is particularly frustrating since I haven't even worked there for nearly a year due to my apparent ban.
It has become so bad that now most people around town think its ok to just not pay me at all for my work. Some of these are people I considered good friends, and are people that I have done excellent work for for nearly 2 decades. I know some of these people are acting this way because they are afraid that they too will be banned from working. They have families to support and simply cannot afford to put their own careers in jeopardy.
There are those of us who do speak up still against him however. Apparently he has had over a dozen official complaints filed against him with the large company. I'm guessing the pressure got to him because he left the company a little while ago. So he has done his damage and is off to the next town to do the exact same thing to that community. Meanwhile, our communities reputation has been obliterated. We have all been pitted against each other, and the large company that generates the majority of the work for us intends to move out of state.
This guy has taken credit for everything good that has ever come out of our state, and has blamed us for all of his blunders. This has also helped launch him into celebrity status. He is now known globally as one of the most legendary specialists alive today. He is constantly being interview and filmed and endorsed by various companies. Some even think of him as some sort of philanthropist who was willing to come to our small town and teach us rednecks how the "real pros" do things.
As I stated earlier, the only people who would be able to tell wether or not a person is a legitimate pro in this field are the very few of us specialists. However, all of our reputations have been obliterated, so I doubt anything we say would have any weight. Aside from holding a mock project in which we force him to try and do a job by himself in front of a court of law, I cannot think of a way to honestly prove he is a fraud. Other specialists who have not had their careers destroyed by this guy would have to come observe, but I doubt any of them would be willing to say anything bad about him after seeing what he has done to us.
I feel totally hopeless. This not only has ended my career as well as hundreds of other people's in my community, but it has ruined my physical health, mental health, and my relationships with colleagues, friends, and family. The financial strain is also astronomical; I am 34 years old and am now entirely reliant on my parents.
I know this is a vague overview of things, and I can go into much more detail if needed. I would like to go after the large company, which is worth many billions of dollars. One of my worries is that if I go after them they will once again use me as a scapegoat, and claim that I was responsible for them leaving our state. These people are renowned for shirking responsibility and finding "little people" to blame things on.
This guys resume is incredibly impressive, and I know for a fact that all of the projects he claims to have done here are outright lies. The problem is proving that. . . I'm positive most of his supposed accomplishments are outright lies. I intend to track down other people involved with projects that he has taken credit for in the past to see if I can find sympathetic people who have the guts to stand up to him. The other thing we have going for us is decades of successful work, and the fact that these problems didn't start happening until he came to work in our town. I'm not sure that will be enough though. . .
My question is where do I even start with this? I'm mad at this con man, but I'm absolutely furious with the large company for hiring him in the first place and for not listening to any of us. Can anyone point me in a direction? I'm thinking I can go after them for Slander / Defamation, in which case they will be forced to tell me what "mistakes" I made that warranted destroying my career. Then I can defend myself by proving I wasn't even around for most of these things.
Sorry for the novel. . . This has me so depressed I just don't know what to do. Any help / advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your time!
The Scapegoat
