MetaNetwork Media Drama Continues to Unfold

After the announcement from SLCapEx CEO Bogart Beck, regarding the halt to trading of MetaNetwork Media (MNM) shares, the drama continued to unfold with a flurry of forum postings and resignations from company executives. While, SLCapEx officials generally remained silent, Mr. Beck responded to my request for a statement with, "Honestly, at this point there is nothing additional that I could add to the commentary." Several of the company's officials and board members, including Mr. Spad and Ms Juran had not responded to my in-world instant messages or e-mail requesting a statement.

In the mean time, the key figure in all of this, MNM CEO Jaison Spad had resurfaced to make a post in the SLCapEx forum announcing a Monday 11-August conference call for investors of the troubled and now tarnished company. In his post, Mr. Spad indicated that the meetings purpose was, "to answer virtual investor questions and move forward with the schedule investor buyback plan." Also bubbling up and over, was a rumor regarding the SL avatars of Mr. Spad and Ms Juran. The rumor, which had surfaced but remained unconfirmed was, that in SL, Mr. Spad and Ms Juran were indeed one and the same person and not the supposed RL brother and sister they claimed to be.

One of the first company officials to resign was Fawkes Deerhunter who stated in his post that, "My reason for resigning is simple: I no longer believe that MNM will grow to become the venture I had expected or hoped for, and as such I must resign so that I can pursue other ventures."  His statement was met with some skepticism by fellow investors who questioned what he knew and when he knew it in his role as COO and General Counsel on the management team. In reply to these comments, Mr. Deerhunter said in a post, "With regard the allegations of wire fraud against MNM, it would be wholly improper for me to comment on the substance of those allegations. However, whatever alleged scheme may or may not have existed, I was never personally involved. First, I was not involved in the company until more than one month after the IPO, and second, I was never involved in the handling of MNM's funds and accounts."

Also resigning was Arianna Barbarossa, SL COO and Director of Virtual Operations RL. In Ms Barbarossa's forum posting announcing her resignation she confirmed the allegations regarding Mr. Spad and Ms Juran SL identity were included in materials presented to SLCapEx saying: "Within the last 24hrs, it was disclosed and confirmed that the CEO of MNM in both RL and SL was not honest in his dealings with the stockholders and the employees of MNM. It came to my attention that Mr. Jamar Freeze was both Cadence Juran and Jaison Spad in SL. This information has been given to management at Capex. This is disheartening to me, as I built trust and what I believed to be an honest business relationship with Ms. Juran. I, as many of the staff, put our hearts and much of our time and energies into trying to make MNM work. We believed and worked hard with Ms. Juran. We were never made to be under the impression that Mr. Freeze was anyone else in SL than Jaison Spad, Cadences RL brother."  When questioned regarding where the funds were taken once they were cashed out from SL, Ms Barbarossa said, "I was not privy to that information.  I assume the money was removed into a pay pal account."

I spoke with one of the remaining MNM executives, Isadora Fiddlestick shortly before the scheduled conference call, of which she would not be able to attend due to time zone differences. Ms Fiddlesticks expressed dismay at the current state of the company for which she had worked so hard. She and fellow executive Arianna Barbarossa were behind the development of a new show when troubles began a few months back. "This is very sudden to me, though I felt this for months. When we were trying to get another show up on air they TOOK really long … REALLY LONG … and I had a co host but she left all of a sudden so I was left to do everything with Arianna.   This is personally distressing for me as I expected Hodgepodge and MNM to soar. I joined MNM in January of this year when they bought Hodgepodge." Ms Fiddlesticks is expecting to release a statement as early as Tuesday, 12-August on her plans.