Complaint Review: L Wolfe Communications - Chicago Illinois

A Cautionary Warning To Small Businesses About the Public Relations Fraudster, Lisa A. Wolfe

If you are doing business or planning on doing business with Lisa A. Wolfe, a "public relations professional" in Chicago, do yourself a favor. Sit down and read this first. We're a group of teachers who have been grievously and unlawfully defrauded of $7,500 by this individual.

UPDATE 3/18/2014: Lisa has been branded with an F-grade by the Better Business Bureau in Illinois where her unregulated, scam PR operation is based out of; Lisa is a serious con woman and thief with not a single PR course unit, qualification or diploma to speak of (NOT the same as a journalism course at Gonzaga University). As of March 2014, L Wolfe Communciations has never been a member of any U.S. public relations organization, has never been a member of any U.S. authority, no industry group, no council; she sits on no national boards (that claim on her website is fabricated and an absolute lie), and The Public Relations Society of America has never heard of her: searches for her on their online database reveal no matches. The Illinois Attorney General's office has been asked to investigate Lisa A. Wolfe's malicious PR scam and bogus credentials. We believe Wolfe may have connections to jailed Fleishman-Hillard criminal and convicted Public Relations conman, Doug Dowie, who according to the LA Times in 2011 began serving a 3½-year sentence in federal prison for defrauding the State of California and Los Angeles taxpayers of $6 million.

BACKGROUND: In 2013, our children's educational toy project engaged Lisa A. Wolfe (pictured, left) to help us launch our first product at the New York Toy Fair in February 2014. She came recommended by a K-12 educational advisor. First impressions were good. Lisa is completely plausible, marketing herself as a kind, benign old lady and dog lover who was quick to reassure us she was "towards the end of her career" and not in it for the money. Lisa A. Wolfe has the perfect resume: Clients listed from Pearson, Microsoft and McGraw Hill -- some of the biggest names in the education world. Her website lists Bill Gates, Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino as personal business contacts - friends and personal mentors. We were thrilled to have someone seemingly so qualified and experienced brought on-board our team, which includes faculty from reputable U.S. universities.

Following lengthy discussions by phone, we agreed to pay an overall fee of $30-50k for the year, with an initial payment of $7,500 upfront -- something which is standard in the PR business, for the consultant to ask for a percentage upfront as a "deposit". In advance, and in good faith, we gave Lisa our money. However, on payment of the money by bank transfer, Lisa A. Wolfe provided no service whatsoever. Astonishingly, Lisa literally did nothing. She did absolutely no work, and even refused to add our name to her roster of paying clients. A month later, after prompting, she sent us the first draft of the press release she planned to distribute to journalists at Toy Fair, in which she unforgivably misrepresented our product -- to the extent that showed a callous and bad faith disregard for our project. Lisa clearly had no intention of fulfilling any of the paid-for services she promised, whatsoever, which Lisa's appalling F-grade Better Business Bureau warning clearly reflects.

-- Taking people's money for no service, is stealing. --

After expressing our concerns regarding Lisa's lack of service and seriously flawed draft release, Lisa wrote to us in an email dated January 7th, 2014, a little over a month after she had supposedly "started work", in which she stated in the first line that she had "absolutely made mistakes". In the same email, which is IP-tagged and sent from her main company server, she offered to refund our deposit money. We sacked Lisa A. Wolfe for failure to deliver proper service, and the refund we were promised has never materialized.

And so, here we are. Lisa A. Wolfe is a devious and malicious thief. Don't make the mistakes we did by trusting her. She has defrauded our children's company of $7,500 of our hard earned money, leaving us in financial hardship a month before our launch at Toy Fair 2014.

The Better Business Bureau (Click here) have now branded the thief and PR fraudster Lisa A. Wolfe with an F-grade listing, which is the worst rating available and reserved only for scam businesses. However it's too late for us who have unlawfully had money stolen from this Chicago-based con woman.