Complaint Review: Richter7 Advertising Agency - Salt Lake City Utah

The following article appeared on March 4, 2011 in the PlainviewOldBethpageHerald, based in Mineola, New York.  It reflects the same content published in Adweek magazine, a leading ad industry trade journal, in their February 21, 2011 issue.

"Plainview resident Gilbert Solnin was recently arrested by U.S. Postal Inspectors for allegedly defrauding dozens of advertising and marketing agencies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. According to federal court documents, Solnin allegedly defrauded companies from all over the United States out of approximately $400,000 while claiming to represent beverage companies that he was not in fact affiliated with.

“On about and between December 1, 2007 and February 11,2011, both dates being approximate and inclusive, within the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, the defendant Gilbert Solnin did knowingly and intentionally devise a scheme and artifice to defraud and obtain money by means of false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises and, for the purpose of executing this scheme and artifice, did knowingly and intentionally place and cause to be placed in a post office and authorized depository for mail matter, matters and things to be sent and delivered by the United States Postal Service and private and commercial interstate carriers,” stated Eric Oram, postal inspector, in an affidavit dated Feb. 11.

Gil Solnin, a consultant based in New York, approached our advertising agency in April 2010, purporting to represent major companies and products for which he was anxious to have our firm exclusively represent.

Our firm was required to pay $5000 upon signing an agreement that would commit that business to our care.  We paid that fee in good faith, only to later discover Gil Solnin
had made the same arrangements, for the same fee, to deliver the same pieces of business to a number of another ad agencies.  Some of these ad agencies have posted their similar, disturbing experience on our original Ripoff Report filing and on other similar websites.  

It became readily apparent that Gil Solnin was reaping payment from multiple ad agencies to which he had, by contract, promised the very same pieces of business.  We are certain Gil Solnin has not been truthful with us and has accepted payments under false pretenses.

Gil Solnin claims we have committed online libel.  We have simply reported the facts -- the same facts that other ad agencies have likewise reported.

"Who is Howard?"

There are other people involved in this but not paying attention would be expected from this agency.

Scott Rockwood and Dave Newbold, the partners of Richter7, are not doing this as a "public service" as they claim. They are doing it out of some sort of unprofessional revenge.

In doing so they conveniently left out a few things that might interest clients and potential clients:

1. By withholding certain elements they are committing on-line libel which should concern any client and speaks volumes about their lack of ethical standards.

2. After committing to absolute confidentiality, they recklessly breached it anyway which means contracts and NDA's do not mean anything.

3. They left out the fact that there was a clause in their contract that would have remedied any risk after a brief time. Rather than stay with the agreement, they chose to breach it.

4. They were not the ones to terminate the contract. It was terminated by the contractor after it was discovered that they did breach in more than one way.

5. In taking this illegal action they have also recklessly included other parties who will now be able to take their own action against Richter7.

There is a legal process for resolving contract disputes if there are any. What should be most disturbing is that, rather than take a legal and professional course of contract disputes,  Richter7 chose to take an illegal and unethical path by abusing their professional capabilities and knowledge of the Internet to maliciously libel an individual and interfere in his and other people's busineses.

Their actions are now resulting in legal action against Richter7 and will directly affect their partners. Richter7 without warning or any discussion chose to dig themselves a hole and instead of trying to rectufy it, they have chosen to keep digging themselves deeper.

To use the term Scott Rockwood used, this is a public service to clients and potential clients of Richter7. And all future responses to this matter are going to be done by attorneys and in court.

I am the CEO of Richter7, based in Salt Lake City, Utah. This is my response to the story posted by Howard in which he accuses us of wrongfully revealing what he claims was confidential information between us and a business consultant. 

Who is Howard? I've done no business with Howard. Our Advertising Agency has had no contact with Howard. I don't know this person. However, the business consultant that Howard is speaking for (and with whom he contends we had breached an agreement), is Mr. Gilbert Solnin. 

Indeed Gilbert (Gil) Solnin and Richter7 had a contract. In this contract Gil Solnin had committed to Richter7 several pieces of advertising business.  We subsequently learned that these same pieces of business had been contractually promised to another agency prior to us. Yet Gil Solnin had failed to deliver this particular advertising business (or any other advertising business) to that agency. We also learned that Gil Solnin had yet another contract with another advertising agency in which he had again committed those same pieces of advertising business. 

We did the math. Seeing it was impossible for Gil Solnin to deliver these same pieces of advertising business to all the advertising agencies with whom Solnin had contractually promised them, we realized our contract with Solnin had been fraudulently induced and was without value to us. 

We then severed our relationship with Solnin and requested a refund of fees our agency had paid to Solnin to that point. Gil Solnin failed to respond to our refund request. And failed to provide any explanation for his misrepresentations to us or the other agencies. 

Consequently, we have posted our experience with Gil Solnin, online, as a public service to the business community. If you did not see the original posting of our story, I invite you to perform a search for "Gil Solnin" here at RipoffReport.com. You will also find our "Gil Solnin" story at (((Redacted))) 

Thank you for reading our rebuttal to Mr. Howard.



CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report.

I was informed of the irresponsible and reckless behavior by Richter7 and needed to respond. I have never witnessed such immature and unprofessional behavior by any ad agency or any company in my career. If a company has a problem with another company they are in contract with then the way to resolve it is legally, through attorneys. How a client could consider working with people like this is beyond me. It should give any company pause as to the emotional state and risk factor of people like this when trusting their business to them.