Complaint Review: American Liquor Alliance FullLiquor.com Global Wine And Spirits RSVP Fine Wine And Spirits Rogue

This message is intended as a public warning to anyone considering doing business with or investing in American Liquor Alliance, LLC (ALA), Keith A. Lawes (Keith Lawes) and/or Andrew H. Tasker (Andrew Tasker or Andy Tasker). The statements contained here are opinion and you are advised to draw your own conclusions after performing due diligence on the company and the opinions expressed here. This message pertains to both ALA and all sister companies operating at its 140 Fountain Parkway, Ste. 220, St. Petersburg, FL 33716 address and under the direction of Mr. Lawes:

American Liquor Alliance, LLC (ALA)
Rogue, LLC
RSVP Wine and Spirits, LLC
Global Wine and Spirits, LLC
FullLiquor.com
Global Financial Investments, LLC
Stone Commerce, LLC
Next Level Advantage, LLC
Next Level Management Services Organization, LLC
Next Level Staffing, LLC
Next Level Strategies, LLC

American Liquor Alliance, LLC (ALA) has repeatedly made false statements to employees and creditors regarding payment of monies due. The history of ALA's officers, Mr. Lawes and Mr. Tasker, is highly questionable. The business is on the brink of bankruptcy but is continuing to hang on and make repeated promises they can't deliver on.

Payroll

Employees were notified Thursday, October 23, 2008 that the paycheck they should be receiving the following day (Friday, October 24, 2008) was unavailable. Mr. Lawes and Mr. Tasker, in conjuction with Kerry Roberts, Vice President of Human Resources, proceeded to notify all employees that they would simply be receiving a paper check rather than their usual direct deposit. Not thinking anything of it, employees went on working diligently and productively. However, when the paper checks were printed and handed out, Ms. Roberts notified all employees to hold them and not cash them as the checks were no good and would bounce.

This went on for another week when, finally, employees were told the true story: the company was broke and couldn't pay them. A story was contrived that mentioned the poor economy, no investment activity and no cash flow. While the situation was dire and grim, Mr. Lawes and Mr. Tasker made it out to seem that there were investors on the hook that were just itching to write that million dollar check to breathe life back into the company; this turned out to be another false statement. Know that during this time, and more than likely still today, Mr. Lawes and Mr. Tasker continue to drive around in their brand new Hummer automobiles living in their million dollar homes while they have a starving workforce of past and present employees.

Employees were continually lied to concerning when they would receive their money and this continues to go on even today (January 2009). For almost four months now, no one has been paid. The majority of the staff has chosen to leave, despite pleads and false promises from Mr. Lawes and Mr. Tasker asking them to stay and stick it out. A once thriving company of 40 has now been reduced to very few employees. Of the remaining employees, none appear to have received compensation for their time and efforts since October 2008.

History of Not Paying Employees

Mr. Tasker, prior to joining the ALA organization, founded Next Level (Next Level Advantage, Next Level Management Services Organization, Next Level Staffing, Next Level Strategies). Next Level was founded as a Human Resources outsourcing firm that primarily served clients in the northern Ohio market. Prior to opening Next Level, Mr. Tasker was President and CEO of The Business Office (TBO), another outsourcing firm for Human Resources and professional services. While running The Business Office, a very similar payroll situation occurred. Please see the below news article from the Akron Beacon Journal in Akron, OH. The full text article is available with a simple Google search.
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Mar. 17--Executives of a Beachwood staffing firm that abruptly folded earlier this year are trying to bring a new company to the market, even as some employees of the former company remain unpaid.

TBO Co., a temporary staffing firm with offices in Bedford and Akron as well as in western Pennsylvania and New York, closed its doors in February after months of financial chaos, leaving many of its employees holding bounced checks.

In January, Ken Weinberger, former vice president of marketing for TBO, formed Next Level Staffing LLC with Andrew Tasker, former CEO and a partner at TBO.

Weinberger, who had no ownership interest in TBO, said he will be the sole proprietor of Next Level, and it is not yet known what Tasker's role will be with the new venture. Neither man is collecting an income from the new company, they said.

But the arrangement has outraged former employees and executives of TBO, who said they wonder how the company's leadership can just walk away from such a mess and start over.

The new company has no liability to TBO's employees or its other creditors, Weinberger and Tasker said.

Attorney Jeffrey T. Heintz, a managing partner with Brouse McDowell, said there are few legal barriers to closing one company and opening another, as long as the second company doesn't use assets from the first without paying for them. Those assets can include everything from cash and client lists to office furniture and fixtures.

Weinberger said Next Level is not a successor company to TBO and has no plans to acquire the failed company's assets. He said the end of TBO was a disaster for everyone, including the executive team.

Weinberger, who said he is out $13,000 to $15,000 in pay, said he and Tasker went into their own pockets to help some employees.

Weinberger also said he hopes to hire laid-off TBO employees for Next Level.

He said he will try to reimburse them for their lost pay.

But, Tasker emphasized, any effort of that kind would be done by choice, not out of responsibility.

"We will do whatever we can to help everybody, but it has to be in the context of what we have available," Tasker said.

"Unfortunately, money doesn't grow on trees." In a letter sent Feb. 4, Tasker informed employees that they were out of jobs, were not likely to be reimbursed for their bounced paychecks and would not be eligible for COBRA insurance coverage because the company's premium payments had lapsed. In the letter, Tasker cited an unexpected financial shortfall as the cause of the company's collapse.

Following that correspondence, the offices were shuttered, and all company telephone numbers were disconnected.

Then, rumors began to circulate that TBO executives had opened a new staffing firm. "I don't understand why there are no protections against something like this happening," said Anna Miller, a temporary worker who has filed a small claims suit against TBO in Akron Municipal Court seeking about $400 in unpaid wages. "It's not fair to us workers. Who wants to work and not get paid?" Tasker said he is not aware of any plans to file for bankruptcy protection for TBO Co. He said the only thing he and other members of management could have done differently to prevent this outcome would have been to begin a second round of capitalization a few months earlier.

"When you say, 'Gee, don't you wish you would have closed the company earlier?' the fact is, most of those people (employees) have been paid," Tasker said. "But there are a few left, and we'll have to get to those people. But we'll have to get to them when we can.

This is a moral responsibility, not a legal one." At its peak, TBO had annual revenue of nearly $10 million, employed about 70 corporate staff members and had more than 1,500 temporary employees on its books, Tasker said. He said, when the company's doors closed, it still owed its employees in Ohio a total of about $3,000 in wages. He said he does not know the figure for unmet payroll in Pennsylvania and New York.

In an interview this week, Tasker said the company failed because of circumstances beyond the nine partners' control. He declined to describe those circumstances. In November, TBO filed a lawsuit against Amherst, N.Y.-based Keynote Systems Corp., after a planned merger with that company failed.

Eric Fronczak, one of the eight other partners in TBO's ownership, served as vice president of Information Technology Services at the company's Buffalo office.

And, he said, the employees are right; they were treated poorly.

"Payroll checks were bouncing right around the holidays," he said.

"People couldn't buy food; they couldn't pay rent; they couldn't buy presents for their family.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever gone through in my professional life," Fronczak said.

To see more of the Akron Beacon Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.ohio.com/bj

(c) 2004, Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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The information contained in the above report is eerily familiar. Next Level is in the process of being dissolved while ALA remains the new company; it appears Mr. Tasker has started all over again with the same tricks. Employees of ALA, both current and former, are left holding checks that they cannot cash. Some employees have tried to cash their checks only to find out that they did in fact bounce. Insurance was canceled without notice for ALA employees, and COBRA is not available due to a lapse in insurance policy coverage. Payroll checks were bouncing right around the holidays in 2008. The situation ALA is in right now appears to be a carbon copy of what happened at The Business Office (TBO). Mr. Tasker has done it again, and gotten away with it.

Once Next Level had formed and began its operations, Mr. Tasker wrote several bounced payroll checks in December 2006. These checks were eventually made good. However, the April 6th, 2007 payroll cycle was a sign of trouble. Employees would go two to six weeks without receiving a paycheck and in some cases were behind several hundred hours in back wages owed to them. Despite pay not being received, W2's received for the 2007 work performed included all hours worked. Therefore, employees were forced to file taxes on monies they had never received.

Insurance

ALA had a group health insurance plan with Anthem BlueCross BlueShield. Policy premiums were not paid in October 2008 and Anthem subsequently canceled all health insurance policies for ALA employees. ALA did not notify employees that their coverage had been canceled and thus several employees continued to use their insurance as if nothing was wrong. Employees received a letter in the mail in early December 2008 informing them that their insurance coverage had been canceled effective October 31, 2008. The entire month of November had been spent with employees believing they had insurance when in fact they did not. When employees have called the insurance company to inquire concerning continuation of benefits or coverage under COBRA, they are informed that none of those remedies are available since the company's insurance policy lapsed due to non-payment.

Department of Labor

The Department of Labor has been notified of the ongoing payroll and insurance issues and has an active investigation open into the company and its operations. Initially the investigation was classified as a limited investigation limited strictly to the payroll issues at hand. Realizing they couldn't meet the demands of the Department of Labor to pay employees, ALA formally requested a full investigation from the Department of Labor simply as a stall tactic. A full investigation can take up to six months to complete which will buy ALA enough time to continue to seek investors and remedy the situation with cash once it was made available from investors.

Unemployment

It is believed that several employees are still performing work for ALA while collecting unemployment benefits. This work has been classified as volunteer work to ensure uninterrupted unemployment compensation. Effectively, the government is paying ALA's payroll for the employees who are still working in the office (at least on an unemployment basis) at this time.

Conclusion

One has to simply wonder: How long will this be allowed to go on? Mr. Tasker has done this to two businesses before and ultimately caused immense financial distress to countless lives and families along the way. Mr. Lawes is fully supporting Mr. Tasker and the business. How long will these two dishonest and corrupt businessmen be allowed to do this? One has to believe that they will simply bankrupt or close ALA and begin a new company to start this process all over again as they've done several times in the past.

Anonymous
St. Pete, Florida
U.S.A.