Gary Brown DBA Regulus Films DBA The Miami Studio was commissioned to do work for a reality pilot in exchange for a partnership with our company. After 3 weeks of various shooting Gary stepped out of the picture and began to demand money for continued work, after an agreement was already reached to work in exchange for a cut of the show we created. After paying him additionally for several months with no work being produced we questioned his dedication to completing the job, which was now in month 2 of editing a 5 minute segment.
At that point we paid the last invoice and said we better see some results in the next few days as we were leaving town. Gary refunded the invoice as he doesn't have the ability to accept credit card transactions and demanded that we pay him cash or check before we left town, which we were unable to do that day.
This is when things got ugly... Gary took it upon himself to steal all of our video equipment while we were away from another employee of ours J, which included a Cannon 5D, Cannon 7D, Various Lenses, Manfrotto Fluid Tripod, and various other accessories, totaling nearly $8,000. He held this equipment hostage and we were only notified when the other employee J came to retrieve the equipment to find it stolen, at which point Gary informed him he was keeping our equipment until his $500.00 invoice was paid, which we paid as soon as we received the new invoice from him.
I had another employee A go to Regulus Films office to retrieve the equipment and confront Gary, when he informed A that the equipment was now with his armed gun man who was ready to kill any of our employees who tried to retrieve the equipment. He then threatened us through phone calls and messages that he was going to have his armed gun man come to the office and kill some of our employees, we have 5 full time staff in our public office so I immediately called the police to try to get them to stop the situation as we were 3,500 miles away.
The police arrived too late as Gary and his armed gunman had already been in my office to threaten my employees brandishing a weapon. We filed a report with the police but they needed more concrete evidence of threats and violence to make any arrests. I had to close the office down for 3 days and put my employees with families out of work because of his threats and continued tirade, our female employees were terrified to come to work.
At this point through dozens of emails Gary finally agreed to return the stolen equipment to our employee J on 12/23 so he could continue to do his job. I returned from vacation on 1/5 to find that the main equipment had been returned, but we were still missing all of our memory cards, hard drives, and other camera accessories.
Now Gary had extorted us out of the last $500.00 in exchange for no work but our equipment back, and when confronted on 1/8 after doing inventory about all the missing equipment he informed us that he was not returning that property at all until he was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now at this date 1/10 he still has all our property, both hard goods and intellectual property which we own and paid him to produce and will not return the property.
Gary has cost me tens of thousands of dollars and irreparable damage to my company due to our inability to operate using our property and continue to have my employees do their jobs with the property he still owns. He threatens gun violence at the slightest business disagreement and steals equipment to extort money. The most unprofessional video producer and business owner I regret to say I did business with, please do not do business in any way with Gary Brown DBA Regulus Films DBA The Miami Studio.
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