Here are a few extra innings:
"38 Studios points finger at R.I.; State broke its pact, official says" by Todd Wallack | Globe Staff, June 16, 2012
Former Red Sox star Curt Schilling’s bankrupt video game company claimed it had a “fully negotiated deal and agreement” to receive additional funding from Rhode Island, but the state refused to honor the deal and damaged the company, according to documents obtained through public records requests.
In a strongly worded letter to the state film office, William Thomas, the president of 38 Studios LLC, chastised Rhode Island officials for withholding millions of dollars in film tax credits available to video game makers. He suggested in the letter May 25 that the state had promised to give the company as much as $8.7 million in tax credits after 38 Studios made a $1.1 million payment it owed the state May 17.
But the state refused to release the credits. Thomas also complained that state officials stopped talking after the company made the payment.
“We went from a position of working together in good faith to a position where all communication was shut off,” Thomas wrote in the letter. “The intentional delay in issuing the credits has caused severe damages to the company, its employees, and the state of Rhode Island.”
The letter is not the only time that 38 Studios has blamed Rhode Island for the company’s demise. Schilling told the Providence Journal two weeks ago that Governor Lincoln Chafee sabotaged the company by refusing the tax credits and disclosing the company’s financial troubles, spooking potential partners. Chafee has denied harming the company.
38 Studios filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last week, clearing the way to liquidate the company after it failed to attract new funding. Schilling declined to comment this week. A public relations firm representing the company did not respond to a request for comment....
It is unclear how much the tax credits would have helped 38 Studios. The company had already sold most, if not all the tax credits it requested, and owed millions of dollars to creditors. In its bankruptcy filing, 38 Studios reported it owed more than $150 million and had less than $22 million in assets.
And now taxpayers are on the hook.
The companies that bought 38 Studios’ tax credits — even though they had not been granted — could lose their money. The company struck a deal to sell the credits to Preservation Credit Fund LLC, a company run by Providence tax broker Michael Corso, and Row 1 Productions LLC, a Beverly Hills company that finances films.
Oh, so Rhode Island is going to get rolled just like the us up here.
Corso’s company used the anticipated tax credits as part of the collateral to obtain a loan from Bank Rhode Island, a Providence bank acquired by Brookline Bancorp. on Jan. 1. Karen Schwartzman, a spokeswoman for the bank, said the bank has financed tax credits “on occasion,” but said she couldn’t talk about specific transactions or customers.
Un-f***ing-believable.
You know who will be bailing out that loan, don't you, taxpayers?
Schilling may be personally liable for some of the losses. Corso’s companies used another key piece of collateral to gain its loan from Bank Rhode Island in January — a personal guarantee from Schilling.
I do feel bad for Curt. Nothing hurts worse in AmeriKa than a failed business venture. He did try to do what we are told entrepreneurs are supposed to do. It's AmeriKan capitalism, where if you aren't a Wall Street bank or war-profiteering "defense" corporation you are subject to the whims of the "market.'
--more--"
Also see: Curt Schilling sued for $2.4 million by bank
I'm on your side there, Curt.
"38 Studios troubled for months" by Todd Wallack | Globe Staff, June 23, 2012
Former Red Sox star Curt Schilling told a sports talk show Friday that his video game company collapsed suddenly, but public records and interviews show the Rhode Island venture was struggling for months before its troubles climaxed in May.
Another epic collapse, 'eh?
Schilling’s firm, 38 Studios, was frantically trying to raise cash early this year, prompting it to strike a deal in January to sell millions of film tax credits it had yet to receive from Rhode Island. The company also stopped making payments to major vendors. It stopped paying health insurance premiums to Blue Cross and Blue Shield in March while Atlas Van Lines was owed money for several months after moving employees.
Another reason the story broke public. Big Schill stiffed Big Health Care.
“This didn’t happen all at once,” said Nathan F. Coco, a bankruptcy lawyer at McDermott Will & Emery LLP in Chicago. “It’s clear they were suffering financial distress over some period of time.”
Schilling declined to talk to the Globe Friday. He wins me over there!
But in a lengthy interview on radio station WEEI, Schilling said, “It all happened so fast. It’s been kind of a surreal 60 days, 75 days.”
The firm’s financial problems became public on May 14, when Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee said the state was trying to find ways to keep 38 Studies solvent after it missed a $1.1 million payment it owed the state. Ten days later, 38 Studios laid off all its roughly 400 employees, and two weeks after that, the video game company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, clearing the way to liquidate the firm.
Chafee has since ordered a forensic audit to sort through the financial remains of 38 Studios, which has left the state on hook for the $75 million loan guarantee used to lure the company to Providence from Massachusetts last year. Federal and state law enforcement agencies have launched an investigation into whether there was any criminal wrongdoing.
Related: R.I. labor officials halt probe of Curt Schilling’s firm
The first signs of trouble appeared years ago, as Schilling tried unsuccessfully to raise money from venture capitalists, who dismissed the investment as too risky.
That forced Schilling to rely primarily on his own fortune and credit in addition to support from Rhode Island....
By January 2012, Schilling was frantically trying to raise cash, selling millions of dollars in film tax credits 38 Studios hoped to get from the state, but hadn’t received, to a company controlled by Michael Corso, a Rhode Island film tax credit broker....
Even workers were kept in the dark....
Jeff Horal, an artist, said most employees did not learn of the problems until they first saw news stories about the situation. And many did not discover the company had missed its May 15 payroll until they checked their bank accounts.
“We didn’t really know anything,” said Horal, who is hunting for a new job....
--more--"
Someone still looking into it:
"Martha Coakley asked to investigate 38 Studios’ relocation firm" by Todd Wallack | Globe Staff, June 16, 2012
A lawyer representing five former employees of Curt Schilling’s bankrupt video game company asked Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley on Friday to investigate the firm’s relocation company for violating the state’s consumer protection law and sticking workers with a second mortgage.
To encourage workers to relocate when Schilling moved his 38 Studios to Rhode Island from Massachusetts, the company made a deal to help the employees sell their homes and pay the mortgages until they did, according to the relocation firm, MoveTrek Mobility LLC of Rockland. After 38 Studios filed for bankruptcy, the workers learned they may still be responsible for those mortgages....
Hey, at least the banks are going to make out, and I've reached a point where all I care about is are things good for the Wall Street banks? If Wall Street is happy, we all should be, and if they are not, we should all just work like the dickens to make sure they get happy.
--more--"
Oh, she'll look into, but at the end of the day she will throw up her hands and make a deal. No state or federal official takes on banks these days. Well, excepting Ron Paul.
"Schilling says he invested more than $50m in 38 Studios" by Todd Wallack | Globe Staff, June 23, 2012
Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling said Friday that he poured the money he had saved from his celebrated baseball career into his Rhode Island video game company.
Now that money is gone....
“I put everything in my name in this company,” Schilling said in a radio interview on the Dennis & Callahan sports talk radio show on WEEI. “I believed in it. I believed in what we had built. I never took a penny from the company.”Schilling, who earned $114 million during his baseball career, said he was not looking for sympathy, but was “tapped out” and didn’t have any money left to keep the company afloat.
Maybe ESPN can give you more hours.
He said he told his family last month that “the money that I had earned and saved playing baseball was probably all gone, and that it was my fault.”
He stuck with his sick wife, so I don't see why she won't stick with him now.
Schilling, a video game fan who founded the company six years ago, said he personally invested more than $50 million in 38 Studios, in addition to $5 million to $10 million from other wealthy investors and a $75 million loan guarantee it received from the state of Rhode Island.
Schilling, who was not paid for the radio appearance, acknowledged that workers didn’t have any advance warning about the company’s financial troubles. The company reported that employees, who were not paid in May, were owed more than $2 million in back wages. Many are also stuck with relocation costs 38 Studios originally promised to cover.
“The employees got blindsided,” Schilling said. “They have every right to be upset. I always told everybody if something were going to happen, you’re going to have a month or two of lead time, and I bombed on that one in epic fashion.”
Schilling faulted Governor Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island for compounding the company’s problems.
He said the firm was on the verge of signing a deal with a major video game publisher worth as much as $38 million for a sequel to the first single-user game it released in February, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Schilling said the company did not see an infusion of cash from the first game because the initial sales went to repay an advance from the game publisher, Electronic Arts.
He said talks with the new game publisher collapsed after Chafee said last month that he was trying to find a way to keep the company solvent, the first public indication that 38 Studios was in financial trouble.
Schilling said he was puzzled by comments accusing him of being hypocritical for seeking loan guarantees and tax credits from Rhode Island, despite his political advocacy for smaller government. “I don’t have any problem with government helping entrepreneurs and businesses succeed,” Schilling said.
I'm consistent, Curt. I don't think a damn dime of taxpayer money should be shelled out to business when police, firefighters, and teachers are taking a shellacking. I'm sick of seeing gobs and gobs of taxpayer dough going for debt interest payments to banks and doled out for corporate welfare to going concern$.
--more--"
Next Day Update: 38 Studios had bankruptcy plan before R.I. governor spoke
UPDATE: Curt Schilling, wife defend 38 Studios over auditor report
Also see: Woonsocket schools takeover request under review
Peace rally planned after recent attacks
Ex-stripper testifies in R.I. police chief’s trial
Rhode Island police chief denies stealing money
UPDATE: R.I. police chief found guilty in theft case
Teen son of R.I. governor may face criminal charge
Gee, isn't that the second incident involving the kid?
Linc get the Globe to remove that from the kid's record, or... ?????
Membership has its privilege, 'eh?
