Just when you think there may be a fleck of decency and humanity left in the world, you’re met head-on with a sickening level of dishonesty and unscrupulous and uncouth behavior.
I hired Ilya Shapiro to assemble a Fundraiser to benefit the Youth Business Alliance, an organization that works hard to bring extracurricular programming on entrepreneurship and business to disadvantaged youth throughout South Central and East Los Angeles. As a Board Member of YBA and regular speaker in the high schools, I have seen firsthand how this nonprofit has changed lives and shapes the futures of high achieving but underserved young people. That said: this organization is near and dear to my heart.
That’s why, for my 30th birthday, I called upon Ilya Shapiro, a man I refused to see the bad in, in spite of a couple of existing Rip Off Reports. Before you say I should have walked away and NOT used Ilya upon seeing the previous reports—know that the person writing this review is someone who has extreme difficulty in seeing the bad in people. Furthermore, Ilya was also a personal friend, a person with whom I collaborated on more than one occasion. I trusted him, and was happy to pay him to assemble an event to celebrate my move into a new decade as well as to help YBA meet their year-end fundraising goal.
I hired Ilya to set up a VIP-filled event complete with a silent art auction, thinking that because he has connections (at least I thought he did) with two art galleries, this would be easy to pull off. I hired him at the end of November for the December 29 event. He said approximately thirty days would be fine to set this up. The event was to accomplish to main goals: #1 raise a large sum of money for YBA via the silent art auction and #2 serve as a publicity campaign for me (I am an entrepreneur who works in digital media). In addition to the silent art auction, I explained that I wanted to sell event tickets to friends, colleagues, and the public that would all go to benefit YBA. This part was a modest success (Thank G-d), because the Eventbrite website connected to my personal PayPal. Approximately twelve to fifteen tickets were purchased by friends, so about $300 was raised. This part required NO work on Ilya’s part beyond setting up the Eventbrite page and typing in my e-mail to connect to PayPal. I handled the outreach to all of my friends and family and obviously didn’t need to pay $700 to someone to get that done. His work was to revolve around the silent auction assemblage—and that didn’t happen.
The event was first to take place in La Galerie Montaigne on Melrose, then, was suddenly changed halfway into the month, as time is running out due to what Ilya described as “difficult Frenchies.” He moved it to the second gallery he supposedly has connection with on Sunset—“Art on Scene.” Then, not even a week before the event he pulled the plug on that venue saying the gallery owner had a family emergency. By this point I was becoming a bit suspicious but brushed it off in light of this time of year being a hectic one. Ilya assured me all would be fine because he would just move the event to Bar 20 on Sunset and they were fine with the art auction. He gave me a list of 30 or so confirmed VIPs. Mind you, a publicist doesn’t have to be personally connected to the VIPs, he simply released the event on PR Wire or Cision and people confirmed their attendance. One of the confirmed attendees who showed up was Kate Linder from Young & The Restless. Sadly I had to tell her what a fraud Ilya was. :/
The night of the event I was nervous and excited, but hopeful all would be well. I texted Ilya thanking him for his work as he had just sent me a confirmed VIP list and had also (night before) confirmed that the sponsor Peroni would have beers ready also. Well suddenly Ilya was OUT OF TOWN, and he said “I thought you knew??” He told me to look out for his assistant Justine (imaginary) and that a woman named Ashleigh (from Art on Scene I presume) would be arriving with the art for the auction. I did not expect Ilya to be out of town and that I’d deal with an assistant as that’s not what I paid for. When I arrived to the venue it was empty aside from a Getty photographer and someone from Startrackers and another publicist who represented a couple of the VIP guests. She said she had gotten Getty to come and was worried about the VIPs on the way as the venue was empty.
I texted Ilya to ask where his assistant was and Ashleigh as we needed to get the art auction set up. Suddenly the Bar 20 Events Manager comes over and says Ilya had told her he would be arriving on a flight tonight and had assured her he would be here. He also said that the event would be “just a few friends getting together” and was in no way a VIP big event. She said he had said NOTHING about a silent art auction and if he had, that would have been a $5,000 event.
My event was to take place at 7pm and by 7:30pm a few VIPs had arrived and I was having to smile and pretend everything was okay for Getty images. My friends began to arrive and the Executive Director of Youth Business Alliance was there as well. Neither Ilya’s assistant nor anyone from the gallery ever arrived. When I tried to call Ilya to find out what was going on he ignored my calls or said he was “getting on airplane.” A close friend of mine informed me he was likely in Los Angeles and lying to me. Of course I have no evidence of that, but whether he was in town or not does not negate from the fact he 100% went against the written agreement wherein he was to have a silent art auction to take place and Peroni.
This is what did not happen in short:
Ilya was not present at my event
There was no silent art auction---that’s what I paid for
No assistant showed up
Noone from the art gallery showed up with art
He lied to the Events Manager at Bar 20
He probably never even communicated to either gallery
Kate Linder of Young & The Restless showed up (big philanthropist) ready to auction art and I had to explain to her event was a disaster
VIPs who did show up (about five) looked at me like I was crazy
I looked bad to the ED of a nonprofit that is near and dear to my heart
Ilya completely did not perform his duties under the agreement
He has been avoiding all of my texts and calls
Avoid this guy like the plague. I will be seeking a refund and will take him to small claims court if I have to.
He lied to me and others. But the worst? He robbed the Youth Business Alliance of the opportunity to raise funds for disadvantaged youth. I had told my entire board about this event and was excited for its success. Obviously I was duped and this was the worst birthday ever.
Avoid Ilya Shapiro and Pendulum PR. He’s all smoke and mirrors and will take your money and run.