Picture Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Each day Beast/Fb
The CEO of the failed Blended Competition claims he’s not a fraud and that his occasion’s Instagram web page was “hijacked,” as dozens of distributors and artists stay unpaid after his disappearance.
The wine and music competition was set to rotate by means of 4 cities this yr, however it solely made it to Nashville earlier than Sean Evans went off the grid, declining to reply texts and emails and at one level saying he’d had a “coronary heart assault.”
In an e-mail to workers on Nov. 14, Evans pushed again towards claims that he made off with the cash collected from wineries, sponsors, and followers in addition to the cash nonetheless owed to artists, a few of whom had already made journey plans for this yr’s deliberate dates in Austin, San Diego, and Tampa.
“I've under no circumstances acted fraudulently nor have I benefited in any method from the catastrophe, fairly the alternative,” he mentioned in an e-mail to staff and contractors obtained by Web page Six.
Evans added that his competition’s “social media accounts had been, and nonetheless are, illegally hijacked… seemingly as an try to border me as a fraud within the media.”
He blamed “one, or maybe even a number of people [who have] determined to make use of their desperation to justify committing doubtlessly legal acts towards the corporate. Their decisions have sadly resulted in alienating one of many potential patrons who would have offered funding that will have resulted in a constructive final result for everybody.”
Earlier this month, The Each day Beast spoke to a few of Evans’ earlier enterprise associates and contractors, together with some who had been stiffed by the canceled Blended dates. They revealed a historical past of unkept guarantees and untidy funds. A former enterprise affiliate who as soon as offered Evans a cheer fitness center in California mentioned that cheer groups would present as much as competitions solely to be turned away, presumably as a result of Evans hadn’t paid the organizers. One former worker referred to as him “charming and manipulative.”
For the Blended Competition, a vineyard in Austin mentioned they paid $10,000 for a top-tier “title sponsorship.” They nonetheless haven’t heard from anybody linked to Blended as of Monday morning.
The competition’s Instagram web page is run by a third-party contractor. On Nov. 2, the account knowledgeable ticket patrons that Evans had been “absent” as of Oct. 1 and that the competition couldn’t go on with out him. The submit included an e-mail from Evans informing staff that his firms had been “dissolving and ceasing enterprise” whereas they search for a purchaser. He additionally instructed them to chorus from speaking to anybody in regards to the competition “as you would doubtlessly implicate or current your self or the corporate within the fallacious method.”
Blended’s ticket vendor, Occasions.com, has begun issuing refunds for ticket holders. Costs ranged from $50 to greater than $200 for VIP, a number of potential competition goers instructed The Each day Beast.
Evans’ whereabouts are nonetheless unknown. A remark from Blended’s Instagram posted two weeks in the past claimed the competition organizer was “noticed getting right into a blue Tesla in San Diego this previous weekend.” Web page Six stories that he was not too long ago noticed on the Wonderfront Competition in San Diego, which ended on Nov. 20.
Evans didn't reply to a number of cellphone calls from The Each day Beast. The Austin Police Division and the FBI didn't instantly reply to questions from The Each day Beast about doable investigations into Evans or the competition.