Complaint Review: Kirk Dyer Management

I was contacted by telephone by a man calling himself Kirk Dyer.  He said he was the road manager for an old rock and roll band called Cheap Trick, for 16 years.  I am an Elvis tribute artist and he told me that he could book me into corporate events and I would receive a minimum fee of $4000.00 and up for a 45 minute track show, meaning that we use recorded back tracks instead of a live band. 

He seemed very accomodating and I told him that I was almost 62 years old now and that these high priced clients may think that I was getting too old to do an Elvis tribute show.  He told me I would do just fine.  Now all I had to do was pay him a fee of $500.00, $250.00 when I signed a contract which was emailed to me, and then a like amount after the first show.  He demanded this fee and said it was mandatory.  He told me that I had to go to a drugstore and buy a Greendot Moneycard for the amount of $250.00 and when I had it, I was to call him on the phone and read him the serial number on the back so he could retrieve the funds. 

I had even told him when he first mentioned this fact that this is a huge red flag, but he told me that he could get hundreds of younger Elvis impersonators to do it in a flash. He said they would jump at the chance. 

I told him I would buy the money card and call in the serial number that night.  But I never went through with it. I did buy the card, but never gave him the numbers.  I remember thinking that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and it was.  

Please bear in mind that part of the scam is to make you rush into things and not think them through.

He told me that all expenses would be paid including all ground and air transportation, lodging, meals etc.  He said he would keep me working as much and as often as I wanted.  He said he had seen my website and was very impresse by my talent.  He sent me an email with 3 references which I checked out and they all turned out to be fake.  I challenged him on that and he said that I hadn't emailed these references and he was right, I didn't email them.  I knew he wouldn't give me a way to contact someone who would bad mouth him.  But I did google these contacts and found the phone numbers to be for businesses and not for entertainers.  I asked him how he would know if I had emailed these people or not. I told him that the only way he would know that is because they were his email accounts.  He was doubfounded to know that I had figured that out.  At least he seemed to be so over the phone.

Instead of giving him the serial numbers for the back of the money card, I emailed him and told him I had changed my mind and said " sorry".  He was on the phone with me in less than 15 minutes. He tried to sweet talk me around at first, but I told him that this whole thing smelled like a scam.  He had no website or any tangible evidence that he actually could get me any gigs.  He worked with his wife, at least he said it was his wife because she "typed her emails in pink".  She was the one who would be making all the travel and lodging reservations.  Maybe he has a wife or not. Maybe it was alll just him.  I told him that if I gave him the money what guarantee would I have that he would get me any work at all.  I had none.  He said he had a great reputation in this business, but he had almost no internet presence at all except for a couple of snapshots taken by some fans of the band Cheap Trick. 

He became furious with me and started to threaten me. Said I had signed a contract, which I had not!  Said that the people from the first show I was to do had already been told that I would be there and that they had spent money on the advertising of my name.  No one in Birmingham Al, ever heard of me and it wouldn't matter anyway.  These were to be all corporate events and you don't have to advertise to get a crowd at those. They are already there.  He said these people from the PGA would sue me for not showing up. I asked him for what? I didn't sign a contract!  He was beside himself and told me that I was "f**king with the wrong guy and he would get even with me.

This all began late last week and since the last conversation we had, I have been getting harassment calls from him.  All from different phone numbers with a widely varied  assortment of area codes.  I have heard that these crooks get these numbers free from Google Voice or other services. 

So now I have had to pay extra to my phone company to be able to block all of the phone numbers one by one as he uses them and that is quite annoying. 

No I did'n't get ripped off totally from this guy, but he is out there and is now looking for other entertainers to rip off. I guarantee it!!