We think (i.e. this is our OPINION) that with the recent "heat" that is Ken "Whit" Whitman's recent summons, he's trying to dissuade his 1,688 Pencil Dice/RPG Pencil Dice backers, who gave him a combined total of $46,784 from similarly taking legal action.
If you go back to the comments from the A Walk in the Dark Blog you'll see this gem, a response to this question "3) Is there a plan to get the Pencil Dice produced and out to backers?"
"with the sucess of my store i have been able to afford two heat foil machines so i can prodyce them myself. I have placed an order from the machines coming from china,"The spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors have been retained. This was posted on February 14th.....two months ago. We've seen nothing since until this Marcus King post:
"My friend, Ken Whitman and I, goofing around while working on the PencilDice Kickstarter"
On the surface this looks legit, BUT......he's holding up two pencil bags of different color. A picture of multiple bags of one color or, even better, the TWO heat foil machines, would go a long way in convincing someone that there is in fact progress being made on the two Pencil Dice Kickstarters.
If you look at the Kickstarter graphic the lettering is at the end of the roll, where in the Facebook post picture the lettering seems to be on the back of the roll. We suspect, after looking at the leather pencil dice bags shown on the campaigns, that the lettering was added in Photoshop there and Ken "Whit" Whitman is holding two samples from his intended supplier (from before/during the original Kickstarter campaign).
Please Kenny, prove us wrong and we'll make some corrections.
Marcus King and Ken Whitman.
ReplyDeleteThere is something I am missing here and don't understand:
1: Why would Marcus King be willing to help Ken Whitman?
I could understand that maybe Marcus King is a long time friend of Whitman and King feels he 'owes' Whitman, but even with decades of friendship between them, I simply can not see that one would allow a person like Whitman alone in a store with thousands of dollars of King's inventory, or even worse, let Whitman handle money in the business.
Is Whitman fronting for King on some kind of 'dodge', related to the comic store and its inventory or maybe something else?
2: Why hasn't Ken Whitman started stealing from Marcus King?
As far as I can tell, Whitman has burned and/or stolen from every single person that he has ever come into contact with since at least the mid 1990s. There appears to be no exceptions, except Marcus King, so far, but why?
This is of course pre supposing that Whitman has not started stealing from King and we just don't know it yet. Whitman did seem to get upset when I texted him and asked him 'when are you going to start stealing from Marcus King'? a few weeks ago.
Is Marcus King 100% owner of the comic store(s) or is/was there someone else that shares ownership of the comic store(s) going back to 2012?
ReplyDeleteZap! Pow! A new location for Games and Comics
http://www.sentinel-echo.com/news/zap-pow-a-new-location-for-games-and-comics/article_a35d8a4c-8424-11e7-9df6-cb248ea375dd.html
Article mentions, "King himself came to Kentucky in 2012 and opened up Games and Comics quickly thereafter with a partner. "
So, who is (was?) this partner?
Why are they never named and why does the partner never seem to say anything about what is going on?
Is Whitman 'the partner' that Marcus King is referring to from 2012 for the ownership of the comic book stores and would that explain why Marcus King is helping Whitman?
ReplyDeleteI know if I was an owner in the store with Marcus King and someone like Whitman was brought in contact with the money coming into the store, I would throw a fit and wonder what was going on, including fearing that the store Whitman was at was about to be stripped of all inventory in the middle of the night.
One possibility is that maybe somehow Whitman is really the partner going back to 2012 and owns part of the comic book stores.
An argument that would support such an idea is that the partner's name never seems to be mentioned anywhere. That would explain why Marcus King 'lets' Whitman run the second store; King has to since Whitman owns part of the company.
An argument against the idea is that Whitman filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy 11/20/2013 and no where in the filing was there anything about ownership in a comic store. Of course, Whitman could have just kept it out of any such filing, maybe Marcus King never knew about the filing. It is even possible that Marcus King still does not know about that filing or King did know and helped hid Whitman's value in the comic stores.
One idea is that Whitman was the partner mentioned going back to 2012, and King agreed to never mention Whitman in order to hide Whitman's equity in the store from the bankruptcy court in the filing. If true, that could explain why King never seems to name who his partner is. The problem with such an idea is that Whitman would need to 'keep his mouth shut' about owning part of a comic book store, and anyone who knows Whitman over the years know that Whitman loves to boast about 'how successful' Whitman is at any and all opportunities. Being part owner in 'successful' comic book stores would certainly be a good prop to build on for other things.
Another idea is that there is mention about Whitman buying the second comic store mid 2017, and Marcus King posts about how happy he is to get himself and his partner out of $31,000 in lease payments.
Marcus King has a $200k Job just for YOU! (and MAYBE Kenny never actually bought a store...):
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2017/08/marcus-king-has-200k-job-just-for-you.html
Within this posting is a photo of the Facebook post claiming that the sale of the second store is going to get Marcus King's partner out of $31,000 in lease payments. That would explain why the terms were 'zero down', since it looks like it was not even covering its lease payments each month.
A question I would have about this, is that normally, most landlords would NOT release the original lease holder, but maybe Whitman worked his magic and convinced the original lease to be signed over to him, which begs the question as to why Whitman would agree to take over a lease on a money losing store? So Whitman could be in even more debt or is Whitman volunteering to do a 'bust out' on Marcus King's behalf? Or is the takeover of the lease by Whitman just part of a plan to dump liabilities from Marcus King onto Whitman and keep it so Whitman shows no income or assets to collect from but King would hold the assets for both of them?
In this theory, Whitman taking over the lease could be a payback for King keeping Whitman's ownership in the comic store secret during the 11/20/2013 filing, and would explain why Marcus King and Ken Whitman work together. They have done so much shifting back and forth of assets and liabilities plus hid things from the bankruptcy court and others, that both of them would be in serious trouble if the whole thing fell apart for whatever reason and it got found out.
As an additional note, Whitman gives the impression that d20 Entertainment LLC was operating for a period of time before doing the Kickstarter projects, but no where in the Chap 7 filing is there anything about d20 Entertainment LLC, so either d20 Entertainment was not doing anything and/or didn't exist in any form, even a fake company, on the filing date, even as prop to make the cons sound more legit or Whitman committed perjury in the filing. It is interesting that Whitman's Chapter 7 filing was 11/20/2013 and only 18 days later Whitman starts the KDOT Kickstarter project, with getting his hands on the $70K another 59 days later (funded Feb 5, 2014)!
ReplyDeleteI think a deposition and/or written interrogatories would be interesting from King to see what is going on, and if King somehow had a part in the whole scheme of Whitman's, plus whatever else 'is really going on'.
Kenneth E Whitman, Jr. (13-34600) United States Bankruptcy Court, W.D. Kentucky
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6363304/kenneth-e-whitman-jr/
The only interesting document is docket #1, the initial filing. It has all of the schedules.
Is this the comic store that was "re-selling" the resin, Traveller spaceships to other people, that Whitman had already sold to others, thereby DOUBLING his profits?
ReplyDeleteThe know about the issue, since I personally called them about it, and informed the people working there about what Ken Whitman was doing, e.g. attempting to re-sell items to others, that he'd already been paid for in advance, and then never shipped to those customers.
Who needs "Pencil Dice" anyway?
Doesn't everyone own pencils, and dice?
If not, you can get 8 x six-sided dice at the Dollar Store for $1.00. They sell pencils too.