Greetings to everyone. A few of you know me, some don't. I'm the owner of Vagabond Studios (formerly Vagabond Decals). I do mainly aircraft decals and such, so TheRPF isn't generally my audience, unfortunately.
I am one of Alex's unwitting victims. I was able to talk him into a discount because I do decals and detail parts (CAD modeling) for other vendors and offered to help him out with future projects. I was promised July. I was promised August, then October, then Thanksgiving, then New Year's, ad nauseum. In October, I realized that he'd bit off more than he could chew, and so I offered to draw the decals for Excelsior, so as to take something off his shoulders that I know how to do quite easily. All I ever got from Alex was a set of blueprints drawn up by Mark Breuer to draw against. I told Alex multiple times that I really needed hardware to size against, which he always managed to ignore. I even said photos would work, if he could print out the major markings I sent him and tape them to the master so I could see where things were off. Still got resistance. Now, seeing the pictures he's posted, I know why.
The back and forth continued until December, when Alex had his first major tantrum against Tony (Rangel), as I think everyone has seen via screen grabs. That started me wondering about Alex's stability as a person.
In March, I got a phone call from the legal department of Paramount Pictures regarding Alex and this kit. They wouldn't give me any details about what they knew, which was expected, but they did say they were investigating him. About the same time, on the Starship Modeler Facebook page, someone questioned the reality of the kit, and Alex took the opportunity to show of his incomparable customer service skills. In the middle of that blow up, he admitted that he didn't have a license, but it was "under negotiation." This information, coupled with the phone call, and a further post by Alex, calling out the incomparable Bill Krause, led me to decide to terminate my involvement with the project. I publicly made statements to that effect, and Alex took this as a personal affront. At the same time, Paul Peacock of Stellar Effects Modeling Solutions (lights) made his decision to exit the project, as well. Amusingly, Alex was too busy textually shouting at Tony (again) to notice Paul's rather lengthy and well-written post explaining his position.
I told Alex privately that even though I was exiting the project, formally, that I would sell him the decal art, minus anything that Paramount could consider copyrighted, and would make a couple of minor tweaks as a favor to him if necessary. Since that time, I have endured what is best described as the "Two Alex Problem." Increasingly, he has alternated between being friendly and enthusiastic to downright scary and unhinged. He's accused me of trying to sabotage his company, this project, the world at large and a whole host of other problems. (Right... I'm going to drop a few hundred to sabotage a kit I've wanted since I first saw her in Star Trek VI...) Much of what he's said is unprintable on this forum.
In the midst of all this, Alex created a second Facebook group chat for "team members" only. He's used this chat to say that the masters are "100% done!" and "pics are forthcoming!" and such. He's also used this group to browbeat any "team" member that has expressed concern or that he feels has slighted him, and he's also threatened legal action against me and a couple other folks, for advising others against buying in until the kit is ready to ship. Of course, he completely forgot that I've never once signed an NDA with him, EVER.
Yesterday afternoon (5/3/22), Alex reached out to me about the decals needing resizing, and that he would FINALLY give me the pics he promised me months ago to do so. Then when I said I would be able to do that for him later this week, he started going off on a VERY disturbing rant about me, about Tony, about Paul and others who've tried to help him out, or who had to bail on the project for health reasons. His diatribe included comparing himself to antebellum slaves on a Southern cotton plantation; he mentioned the Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau in comparison. He compared himself to Alexander the Great for taking on such a task as this kit. He even bragged about owning a firearm, and about his combat exploits in a way that I have NEVER heard any of the dozens of service members I've been around in my life use. Given his style of using speech recognition with grammar correction disabled, it was very difficult to follow, but that's the gist of it. Given the disturbing nature of his messages, and the fact that he'd made a Facebook post talking about hanging himself, I made the call yesterday to contact San Francisco PD to perform a goodwill checkup on him. I don't know what came of that goodwill checkup, because I made the decision to block all further comms with him.
Last night, Paul Peacock messaged me about something that I missed, but that he read in the screen grabs I took of Alex's messages: Alex made a statement to the effect of wanting to climb a tower with a gun and shoot various people. Given his unstable nature, I elected to treat it as a credible threat and informed the FBI.
There is a LOT more from his private messages to me, text messages and from the various group chats he's started to "inform" people, and I've taken screen grabs of everything. It's very unsettling to watch him come unravelled. I tend to agree with those that say he didn't start out intending to scam people, but as time wore on, things got out of hand, and it became a scam.
Like many, I REALLY wanted this kit to be real. I've placed a couple of orders through his store, and on items that he doesn't have to fabricate himself, I've had zero issues receiving my purchases. But items that he has to manage himself, there's a glaring lack of success. I truly hope that Alex gets the help he needs, and that everyone is able to recover their money, however unlikely that is. I also hope he learns from this and sticks to areas where he truly is talented.
And I don't blame you one bit: from reading though about this guy, he's a piece of work alright.
