- Report: #1094117
Complaint Review: GRACIE BARRA TEMECULA - temecula California
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GRACIE BARRA TEMECULA
temecula, 92562 California, USA
Web:
www.gbtemecula.com
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GRACIE BARRA TEMECULA Danissa Colombana, Brian Colombana, Jiu Jitsu, bjj, Pedro Rodrigues, Gracie Barra DANISSA COLOMBANA AND BRIAN COLOMBANA ARE TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THEIR INSTRUCTORS AND STUDENTS FROM GRACIE BARRA TEMECULA JIU JITSU temecula California
Danissa and Brian Colombana, the owners of Gracie Barra Temecula Jiu Jitsu have been taking advantage of their instructors and students. Besides that they are evading taxes, I personaly found out that they are not declaring any income and that way they are incurring in tax fraud.
The worse part is what they have been doing to all coaches and instructors that have been passing by that school, they hire them and promess the world and then they take advantage of them. Here is a list of the last instructors and what happened to each one of them:
- Mikey Gomez, they offered him 50% of the business but after opening the door they stopped funding the business and stopped paying their employees, therefore the instructor in charge had to take over all functions inside the school not being payed for that and barely making money to survive, he ended taking them to court and he won
- Forced to get another instructor but without any support from the headquarters due to their lack of good conduct, they hired a lower rank instructor so that they could pay him a ridiculous paycheck under the promess of him being only helping the black belt in charge (that never was hired), so the young kid ended in the same situation that Mikey, having to do the work of 3 people alone. NICE DETAIL: this kid was in the US under an ILEGAL situation, so the owners kept paying him under the acceptable because they knew he had no chance to tell something to anyone
- After a while they hire a professor from Portugal called Pedro Rodrigues, and making them a lot of promesses they end up along the following year, firing the all team, and leaving him again alone doing cleaning, program managing, new students registration, and advertisement, by himself. This professor had a big family but even like that they kept taking advantadge of him because he was under a sponsorship visa that only allowed him to work for them, so he had no choice but to keep doing those multiple tasks without any support from the owners and being underpayed.
He ended up leaving the school and all students were left alone with one of them teaching the classes, most of them obviously left to other schools and the professor was left to his destiny.
The owners in the end of all this, had the guts to come to this web site and fake a claim on professor Pedro Rodrigues saying that he stole money from his students, without even having the frontality of identifying them selfs they tryed to destroi the professor's reputation.
I, as a old time student from this school, and a good friend of Professor Pedro Rodrigues, decided to expose this situation right after seing the claim they wrote here about him.
To finish my post I just want to say that Professor Pedro Rodrigues is a great teacher, I had the pleasure of having his guidance and also had my two sons, he changed my life for the better and never for even once he was incorrect to any of his students.
So BEWARE of Danissa Colombana and Brian Colombana, they tryed to destroi the reputation and carrer of some of the finnest professors I have ever known Mikey Gomez, Kyron Gracie and Pedro Rodrigues.
Just to finish I want to show that all of this doesnt come out of the blue, here are some claims filed to Brian Colombana, check them out - in this website write BRIAN COLOMBANA in the search engine.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Brian
Irvine,California,
OK Pedro Rodrigues/Gracie Barra Seixal Portugal
#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Mon, November 04, 2013
So there's no confusion Pedro, this rebuttal is being written in its entirety by Brian Colombana. I DID NOT write the previous post you refer too. If anyone has any questions about the statements below, please feel free to call or email me as I have texts, emails, statements, and witness declarations to prove everything written below.
Based on the grammatical errors and the general lack of command for the English language, the author of this post must be none other than Pedro Rodrigues, owner of Gracie Barra Seixal Portugal and former instructor for our gym. First of all, as Pedro gets all of his tax advice from Walmart tax preparers, I'm going to completely disregard his statements about taxes. His tax preparer didn't even know that a family member with a TIN number could be declared as a dependent, enough said.
Based on the grammatical errors and the general lack of command for the English language, the author of this post must be none other than Pedro Rodrigues, owner of Gracie Barra Seixal Portugal and former instructor for our gym. First of all, as Pedro gets all of his tax advice from Walmart tax preparers, I'm going to completely disregard his statements about taxes. His tax preparer didn't even know that a family member with a TIN number could be declared as a dependent, enough said.
We would not be the first person to argue that Pedro Rodrigues of Gracie Barra Seixal Portugal is a swindler and cheat. In fact, an internet search shows that he did the exact same thing to an investor in England. Coerced them to invest money in his ideas and visions and pay to move Pedro and his family to another county; then quit and disappeared. Here is the link to that forum entitled "Beware Pedro Rodrigues!!! Gracie Barra Seixal Portugal": http://www.cagewarriors.com/forums/showthread.php?66915-Beware-PEDRO-RODRIGUES!!!-GRACIE-BARRA-SEIXAL-PORTUGAL. Or just type "Pedro Rodrigues Seixal Portugal" into a search engine. Pedro still owes those investors money so he disappeared on them and fled Britain, basically the exact same thing he did to us.
Mikey Gomez has nothing to do with the business relationship we had with Pedro Rodrigues BJJ. Mikey Gomez was a great professor, probably better than Pedro Rodrigues. In fact, Pedro's complete lack of understanding is highlighted by his comments in the above post. He has his head so far up his greedy a*s that he can't see the forest through the trees. Mikey was offered 50% and at no point while he was working for us did we ever stop paying employees. Mikey decided to pursue MMA fighting and could no longer work with us. So we paid him $15,000 for his 50% interest. No one went to court so he never won. In fact, if Pedro Rodrigues ever comes out of hiding, we will sue him on that statement for libel. It may not take that long though because we have new information that he is working at another Gracie Barra gym. We know which one but we won't put them on blast. Pedro might though.
There was never a time that we didn't have the headquarters support. Are you claiming the "Gracie" we hired was a low ranking instructor? Not only has that instructor been teaching for years, he has integrity, something Pedro Rodrigues should look for. We were not aware of him being in the United States illegally. However, I can say that if Pedro Rodrigues is found in the United States, he is here ILLEGALLY as he fled the work VISA for which we paid $10,000 for him and his family to come here. Since we've reported the disappearance to the INS, he should be on a flight back to Portugal. However, as mentioned earlier, he is here illegally and will be put on a flight back to Portugal...soon.
Now regarding Pedro Rodrigues. He claims we took advantage of him. We flew him, his wife, and two kids to America, got them all VISA's, paid for their apartment, paid for their car, paid all their utilities and expenses including auto insurance, cable (premium package), internet, electricity, water, gas, and trash. We even paid his cell phone. On top of that, we paid him a salary of $2,000 per month. We were not once late paying him.
Why did we pay all that? Because that is what Pedro Rodrigues asked for in his contract. He says we abused him but we paid him exactly what HE ASKED FOR. After he got here, he tried to change the deal. Despite having a 3 year agreement, within a year of arriving, he adopts two pit bulls, gets his wife pregnant, and buys a minivan with a $512 per month payment. Then he decides the 2 bedroom 2 bathroom 1200 sf apartment we provided was too small so he tries to renegotiate with us for more money so he can move into a bigger home.
He proposed that we stop paying for all his housing expenses and just give him a salary of $3,400 per month (plus car, insurance, etc.) So we agreed. And just like before, a couple months later, he comes back asking for more money. For instance, on August 14, 2013 at 2:56 pm Pedro texted me, "Hi like I told you I'm getting 130 $ in cash from two kids. From there I'm gonna take 60 $ every month for my coach. Can I keep the rest for me?" Really?!?!?! Then he asked for a $600 per month raise because he was "400 bucks a month from having money to pay everything and live..." Maybe he shouldn't buy a car with a $512 monthly payment, when he already has a car that is paid for BY US. Or maybe he shouldn't go rent a bigger house when he has a perfectly fine condo paid for BY US. I gave him the $70 because I felt bad for his inability to budget or understand basic financial principles. However, we declined the $600 per month raise as we were still losing thousands of dollars per month as he had done nothing to grow the gym he was in charge of managing and promoting.
Then he tried to milk us on every program or event we held. He decided it would be a good idea to have a summer camp for kids. He told us that he wanted extra money for teaching the camp and that we would need to pay 2 assistant instructors. We agreed and we paid for him and the instructors. We later learned that he sought parent volunteers to help with the program and didn't even use paid assistants.
Then he tried to milk us on every program or event we held. He decided it would be a good idea to have a summer camp for kids. He told us that he wanted extra money for teaching the camp and that we would need to pay 2 assistant instructors. We agreed and we paid for him and the instructors. We later learned that he sought parent volunteers to help with the program and didn't even use paid assistants.
Pedro Rodrigues says we made him do everything but he never did one thing he wasn't required to do according to our contract. He rarely cleaned. He thought that as a black belt and as god's gift to jiu jitsu, he was too good to clean. So he would have students clean. He worked as the program director because after we hired and fired 3 others, he insisted that he could do a better job. So we let him and increased his salary. We actually had an assistant who could have worked with Pedro but Pedro didn't want us to keep him.
Unless you are willing to pay Pedro Rodrigues between $6,000 to $10,000 per month, stay away from him as a business partner and instructor. As god's gift to jiu jitsu, he thinks he deserves a salary commensurate with his god-like structure. He might offer to work for less but give it 2 months and he'll be asking for raises. Funny that he would work for Gracie Barra when he constantly complained that Brazilians were lazy and that Gracie Barra's headquarters was greedy and only cared about money and not the martial arts.
And best of all, here's how Pedro left the school. On September 5, 2013 at 3:34 pm, Pedro sent me a text stating, "Please don't forget that today is my payday. Here is the description: $1200 House Rent, $1100 professor (his bimonthly salary), $8 toilet paper, Total: $2,308 Thank you." The rent he referred to was the rental reimbursement we gave him monthly. The amount he requested covered the month of September, even though it was only the 5th. We actually got to a point where we had to pay him in advance because he was constantly running out of money.
After we paid him and the payment cleared, then on the same day, September 5, 2013 at 10:07 pm, Pedro Rodrigues sent me the following text quitting, "Brian, tomorrow will be my last day as Gracie Barra employee. I've just sent you a resignation letter to your email explaining everything and explaining a recovery plan to GB that I thought about. I'm sorry to leave like this but as you will understand by reading my email it will all make sense. Please let me know if there is something I can help between today and tomorrow and let me know if you still want me to teach tomorrow or not. I will leave the car keys and gym key on the desk tomorrow night." Thanks for walking out on us and your students Pedro, in the long run, I think you did us all a favor.
