I´ve been a victim of Fraud :(

Some thoughts...

Fraud is defined as “wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.” - Source: Google search :)

I´ve been a victim of fraud many times in my life. Even when I was a little child, but probably so have you.

As children, we sometimes tend to deceive in order to get what we want. A candy bar, a toy, an extra donut…

Unfortunately, some people don´t grow out of their childish selfishness. This can manifest in many different ways. For example, deceiving others to get what they want.

Recently, I´ve been a victim of fraud, again, in a concert. I performed at a newly formed festival where many well-known musicians from the scene were also invited to perform. Everything seemed right, the logistics, the venues, the dates, the contracts, the caché…

Two months have passed since that concert and nobody has ever heard a single word from the organizer or the society he created to promote this festival.

It seems that he asked for a bunch of subsidies from different regional governments and sponsorships from different companies, kept the money all for himself, and disappeared. Nobody has, or likely will ever see a dime from him, ever. A quick search on him on Google was disheartening; he has been reported to the police before for fraud and even spent some time in prison for it!

This is not the first time this has happened to me. And frankly, I´m not too upset about it. Not even if I hired musicians myself to perform with me on this gig, and now I´ll have to pay them from my own pocket, since I have the compromise and responsibility towards them. I also rented the car to get there, rented a rehearsal space, and of course, dedicated time to arrange and prepare the music for it, etc.

What can we do to prevent this?

Maybe not much.

I see two ways to stay out of this risk:

1) Always get paid beforehand. I remember when I used to play with a very famous singer. He demanded to be paid beforehand. Once, we were about to hit the stage and he hadn´t been paid yet. He refused to sing until he got paid. So the organizers had to do an immediate wire transfer. Only after that did we go to the stage. Of course, if you´re not very respected or famous, it´s not that easy to demand this since organizers probably won´t take you too seriously.

2) Organize and produce your own concerts. Self-production is infinitely more work. And a great risk. If it goes wrong you could loose a LOT of money. I´ve lost a lot of money before by doing this. BUT, if it comes out well, you might end up earning much more than if you were hired for a concert since you get to keep all earnings. And of course, you don´t depend on anybody to get paid, including con artists who might take your money and run.

Anyways, I just wanted to tell you a bit about this happening since I thought it might amuse you.

Now, perhaps you´d like to pre-save my coming single which will be released this Friday. It´s an old piece of mine that is an audience favorite, and I´ve reimagined it a bit. Pre-save it now (it helps me greatly for the algorithm) and listen to it on Friday as soon as it’s out :)

Here´s the link, click on it.

Have a great day!

Claudio.