I was ripped of by Epic Model Management or Epic Models New York or whatever they call themselves now. I went to New York from Canada and with rent paid in advance for a dirty single room with no kitchen with three of us crammed in. We did almost nothing and what little I did, I didnt get paid for.By the time I gave up I had spent over $10,000 on this mess.
This is a very small agency run by Darlene Josephine and her two sons Jonathon and Julian out of their apartments. The Park Avenue address is an office space that they rent by the hour and get mail from. These people are disorganized at best and not at all honest pretty much everything I was told turned out to be a lie.
I spent a bunch of money improving my portfolio that took forever to be delivered (the other photographers called the new shots amateurish). Im pretty sure the touchups were done on Darlenes macbook despite that I was charged hundreds of dollars to have it professionally done. I printed my own comp cards myself on my own printer with the layout supplied by Epic and went to the first few casting without a portfolio. I was only sent to castings after my mother agency complained and then the castings were just ones that were open to anyone from the general public probably off of model mayhem. I went to 5 castings over two months.
I did get work in Couture Fashion week but only after the organizer saw me at another casting the phone number listed on the comp cards was out of service! The final straw came when I was told by Epic that the Couture Fashion show was not paid despite the signed voucher they insisted it was promotional. I sent an email to the show organizer and she confirmed that it was paid and the organizer even arranged to have my mother agency paid directly bypassing Epic meaning I did actually get paid.
So I left the left the apartment and forfeited my rent and damage deposit (they were really mad that I left). They first insisted that they would not return the damage deposit but when we pointed out that it was illegal they said they would but couldnt afford to right now! They are so broke that they cant refund my damage deposit! So Im now opening a case file with the Attorney General Bureau of Consumer Fraud since they deal with this.
I dont know why there are not more complaints about Epic. The other models in the model housing were having the same experience. I know directly of three other models that were in pretty much the identical situation. One of them left on good terms but the end result was the same as the rest of us she didnt get paid for any work, lost the rent paid up front and didnt get the damage deposit returned. Shes quitting modeling for good so maybe she just turned her back on the whole thing.
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