As two newspapers have reported, Frischling turned himself in on an arrest warrant Thursday and is out on bond. (Though contrary to evidence in the public record, he denies he was ever arrested and denies he is out on bond and produces nothing to substantiate these claims.)
On his hilarious/pathetic/deranged new blog, iagfraud.blogspot.com, he has posted only two sections of the arrest warrant that lays out the case against him. Why doesn't he post the whole thing? It's going to be available online soon enough. What is he trying to hide?
Add to that, he's arguing about details that have jack shit to do with the crimes he's accused of committing! Is he going to show up in court and defend himself against larceny and forgery by arguing his title was "Director of Emerging Media" and not "Director of Emerging Social Media?" Oooh if the title does not fit, you must acquit!
However, then he posted the letter he received from IAG attorneys back in March that lays out their complaints against him. He made reference to receiving this letter at the time and is now stupidly sharing it:
The letter, voluntarily posted by Frischling in yet another bonehead move, and the news report fill in the pieces:
From the Norwich Bulletin newspaper:
"Police say Frischling was a consultant with Innovation Analysis Group and forged documents on a company invoice for personal gain."
From the letter:
"We are in the possession of clear evidence that at the completion of that contract, after IAG invoiced KLM for the work performed, you fraudulently redirected KLM to wire funds directly to a bank account controlled by you and/or your wife."
Now we can put two and two together. Frischling already wrote in March about some dispute with IAG over this KLM blog, which was only around for a few weeks, mysteriously. Frischling "forged documents on a company invoice" to get KLM to pay him the entire amount directly using IAG letterhead! This is felony forgery and larceny, plus wire fraud (a federal offense). This would not be difficult to track in any way and in fact is one of the stupidest things we've ever heard of! How stupid are you, Steven Frischling?
Naturally, Frischling does not mention this part at all. There is nothing on his new blog that admits what he did or defends it. However, you don't need to read between the lines to see that he is thinks he and he alone deserved the money:
"This dispute stemmed from a December 2009-January 2010 for a project I had created, pitched, built and executed for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. The original terms of the verbal contract were for a US$30,000 project, in which IAG would receive 10% to provide support. The project was eventually negotiated to US$22,000 and then executed, at which time Addison Schonland began stating he intended to take US$5,500 from the project.
During this project, where I have evidence of my creation of the concept, pitch and sole execution, Addison Schonland and IAG failed to provide any support, with the exception of an analytics platform with a cost of approximately US$20."
OK, so you say. This fails the stink test. If Frischling alone "created, pitched, built and executed" the project as he is stressing, then why was this other group of people involved at all? Why did they even deserve 10 percent? Is this group of people so desperate they are begging to ride Frischling's coattails to success at even 10 percent? Why did KLM think they should be paying an invoice sent by IAG in the first place? When you're talking about this kind of money, there must have been a contract. Frischling insists this was all a verbal contract but that's ridiculous. Does KLM do verbal contracts for five figures? Or did they in fact have a written contract with IAG?
Secondly, he is again being inconsistent. Back in March in his Facebook tirade (thoughtfully preserved on flight attendant Brad Sapit's blog here), Frischling claims he was going to give $3,000 (more than 10 percent) back to IAG (why, if they were not involved? Was it a charitable donation?) but that IAG demanded $5,000 and THEN demanded $7,000! Now he claims it was a yet another amount: $5,500!
Thirdly, even if Frischling felt he fairly deserved the majority of the $22,000, that is something sane professionals negotiate before they do the work! Can you imagine in your job or in any business partnership, if you simply altered a customer invoice to pay directly to you and not your company, because the project was "created, pitched, built and executed" by you and therefore you deserved all the money? You would be fired and hauled away in handcuffs! What kind of sociopath does this kind of thing and expects to get away with it?
How deranged is this freak?
Frischling apparently posted this on Facebook today: "I've got news for you folks ... anyone can accuse anyone of anything. Being accused means nothing without the evidence to support the accusation."
Isn't that exactly what he is doing? Where is the evidence that he is innocent of these charges? He is accusing IAG of fraud AND of being behind this blog and now he's accusing them of texting his 10-year-old daughter, but where is the evidence of ANY of that? (How would anyone get the cell phone number of a 10-year-old kid they are not related to? It makes no sense!)
Once again we state for the record and swear on a stack of Bibles, Torahs, Korans and Oprah Book Club selections: This blog is NOT associated with Addison Schonland or IAG in any way, shape or form. We have never, EVER met Addison Schonland or anyone involved with his business and we would like Frischling to produce an iota of evidence to the contrary. The sole and continuing purpose of this blog is to expose Steven Frischling aka flyingwithfish as a giant liar. That he is also apparently a criminal is a nice surprise for us... but is entirely his choice.
Oh he's also arguing the following two stupid (pointless) points about the attorney's letter:
The correspondence from Attorney Winick is posted below. Oddly, in the first decade of being admitted to the California Bar Association, Attorney Winick has twice been listed as "Inactive.” These periods of being listed "Inactive” were 27-December 2006 and 14-February-2007 and between 28-January-2008 and 23-October-2008.
...
Additionally, Attorney Winick's letter has glaring errors, such as the ownership of the KLM Project, which the airline acknowledges as being executed by Steven Frischling of Flying With Fish. The letter also refers to my wife ... I am not now, nor have I ever been, legally married.
First part, who cares? What does the guy's lawyer's period of inactivity have to do with anything in this case?
And the second part... this guy sure is special. How many times has Frischling made reference to his wife, even mentioning "my wife" in the March Facebook post still on Brad Sapit's blog? So is he now admitting he was lying? Click here to see a search results on Sportsshooter alone to see how many times Frischling has referred to his wife!
For the umpteenth time, we ask, what the hell is wrong with this guy? Is he a sociopath? A lunatic? Is he mentally challenged in any way?
We hope he will address that on his new blog.
he's a sociopath. I hope they lock him up and throw away the key.
ReplyDeleteI hope he defends himself! CourtTV needs to get on this case!
why in the hell would you post all these documents for all to see? What a retard. He makes things 10x worse for himself it would seem.
ReplyDeleteYou should send press releases to every reporter at those two papers and see if they would do a bigger story on all the past and current BS. would be interesting. Hell, all the work is done for them right on this blog!
His mug shot has got to be out there somewhere. Dig that sucker up!
ReplyDeleteIt all seems really clear now. IAG landed the work and Steven Frischling subcontracted as a IAG partner under the IAG brand to deliver the blog services. Somewhere along the way, Steven Frisching decided to stiff his partner and cut them out of the share.
ReplyDeleteWhat is disturbing is that in his blog postings, he is justifying his actions from a business standpoint, forgetting that he is under criminal charges for diverting the funds directly to himself. He could make all the justifications he wants, but that is not the point.
11:02 right and being a lunatic he thought he could get away with it because he "deserved" the money. If Fish isn't a sociopath I don't know who is.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand why this took a year to investigate. It seems open and shut to me. The only issue I can see is that maybe because KLM is in Holland they might have needed international warrants.
His latest FB post shows a screenshot of the KLM blog page:
ReplyDelete"How the heck can anyone make a legal claim to have ownership of this project aside from me? Seriously ..."
Could he possibly think that his is a defense for his actions?
^Yes, that is what he thinks! This is his entire defense and he's putting it all out in public. Obviously he is going to represent himself.
ReplyDeleteLooks like it will be a serious show.
If he tries to represent himself with that defense, he is toast. By justifying his reason for his actions was that he "deserved" the entire amount, he is in effect admitting that he diverted the funds.
ReplyDeleteHas he ever denied it?
ReplyDeletethis shows the dark side of social media. Here comes a guy with zero business experience, and zero knowledge of the airline industry beyond taking a few international flights, becomes a self-proclaimed expert in the industry and people believe him simply because he has accumulated a few thousand twitter followers and writes a blog based on recycled sources and what he reads on Wikipedia. Looks like he managed to fool IAG, but I am sure there are some others as well.
ReplyDelete12:18 and it shows how trusting people can be. Frischling constantly promotes himself and brags about his exploits and people assume he's credible.
ReplyDelete@Simpliflying aka Shashank Nigam was fully warned about Frischling yet chose to stick by him... same deal with Randy Petersen. Think their businesses will suffer?
ReplyDeleteRandy seems to have been unable to use discretion choosing bloggers in the past.
ReplyDeletedon't forget his wife/nonwife Susannah Seefeldt knew all about it. Remember her email "you're not getting the full $22k"?
ReplyDeleteThe court case should be a riot of laughs. I only hope that it's actually open to the public and that "character" witnesses are invited to participate. Sadly, the character in question is beyond delusional; psychopath doesn't even begin to come close to describing the abence of mental acuity with this guy.
ReplyDelete^I think there is no impact on Shashank or Randy. After all, they know their audiences don't want to fact check, otherwise how could they be so popular? Just look at the FreeFish people, they were perfectly happy to ignore the facts in front of them. This is a 140 character, sound bite world we live in.
ReplyDeleteFrischling took down his pathetic iagfraud blog. I guess he finally spoke to an attorney who probably told him that he was a retarded idiot for posting anything in his defense on the internet. too bad for him that we all have screenshots of the blog. he never really has understood that things on the internet last forever.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking as an attorney, that would be the first thing I'd advise. What a dipshit thing to do.
ReplyDeleteWe were victims of his fraudulent activities some two years back; he sent us some unsolicited emails on social media and then went on claim to that he was "consulting" for us. Then the airline went through another month of blackmails and threats that he would sue us for $1 million for using "his ideas".
ReplyDeleteHe gloated on Twitter and created a fake Twitter account where he posted fake tweets to confuse our tweeting passengers. He even wrote a blog post about the whole episode http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwithfish/2009/11/19/airline-executives-social-media-e-mail-reply-all-blunders/
Reading it, you can see the psychopath was thoroughly enjoying his antics. For someone who is not used to this cruel side of human beings, i was shocked beyond words at this behaviour and the embarrassment this had caused all the hardworking people with whom we had sat for hours and days and months to create a vibrant social media campaign for our airline. When I saw him take over the KLM project, i knew he would soon use these same tactics but I had seen enough of the devil, I wanted nothing to do with him. Besides, I thought the KLM people would read through his antics quick enough and discard him.
Let me also add that I warned IAG's Addison and Shashank Nigam, but it seems then, no one would believe me. After all, Steven was the Travel Strategist!
ReplyDelete