How a zine scammer tried to steal $20,000 from two fandoms
those who’ve been following me for over a month probably know the story of the hallowzine, a bnha fanzine that was centering around halloween, and how the zine was suddenly canceled and the curator did not give out refunds until i and others made posts about the situation and people began demanding their money back. if you don’t know about this, that’s fine, i’ll give a summary of what happened further down.
hallowzine was eventually refunded in full, from what i know. however, as more time went on, more things started happening behind the scenes and unfortunately, the hole just gets deeper and darker.
i’ve come to the knowledge that the same curator of the bnha hallowzine currently has over $12,000 from a project she ghosted from a different fandom, and is refusing to answer messages or issue refunds.
in order to get the full scale of things, let me tell you about the people and projects involved.
the ‘curator’ is named is michaela. she had two blogs– gutgemacht and astraldefender. astraldefender was deleted after michaela ghosted the projects she stole over 12k from. gutgemacht has search turned off and can only be accessed from the tumblr dashboard. guthemacht has not been updated since the bnhahallowzine happened and has its ask box turned off. messaging is only turned on for blogs she follows. in short, it’s completely impossible to reach her on tumblr. her twitter is also locked. she was using the hallowzine email, but has stopped responding to anything there, too. she was the curator on hallowzine, the vld occult zine, and the this and every other universe collection of zines. she is also a mod on the bnha-bday-zine, along with her roommate.
her roommate’s name is amy. you may remember her from the long post she wrote in response to me calling her out about her lies regarding the hallowzine, in which she insulted me, told me michaela had had panic attacks over being called a scammer, and that michaela had had to “use her christmas money” for refunds. according to others, amy has done some very shady zine things as well (you can find it in the replies of the above post). amy is the curator on the bnha-bday-zine and also helped michaela out on various projects. amy’s blog was inthearmsofathief, but since she was asked to help recover the 12k funds and talk to michaela, amy has deleted her tumblr and the url now redirects to a porn site.
there’s a few projects in question, spanning two fandoms. @bnha-hallowzine was the project that i was part of. here’s some posts about what happened: the first post, discrepancies with finances, my response to michaela’s final post. the other projects in question and from the voltron fandom. i’m going to preface this by saying that i know absolutely nothing about voltron or its fandom. i only know about these projects due to michaela. the projects are @vld-occult-zine and @vld-au-zinecollection, the latter of which was a collection of 5 different zines, which michaela put herself as the curator of.
after the news from hallowzine broke, michaela ghosted the other projects.
she had all the money from them, due to putting herself as the head mod/curator of them. every single penny that was given to the projects was under her sole control. like hallowzine, she did not allow her other mods to control any bit of it. all finances went directly to her, and in the end, they’ve gone into her pocket.
i wasn’t part of the vld zines, but i’m in contact with some people who were. they’ve written a couple posts about the situation, which you can find here, here, and here. the same thing happened in these zines that happened in hallowzine, but then it got worse. michaela, the curator, ghosted. she stopped responding. she was vague about anything that was asked about in the rare times she would respond, and when contributors and people on the project demanded answers and proof that she was doing something, she suddenly dropped the project completely and left, taking all the money with her. in the case of these two zines, this was over $12,000. and like with the hallowzine, michaela did not inform her customers and left the contributors and former mods to pick up the pieces of a project she broke and stole from.
but, like i said, it gets worse. contributors went to amy and begged for help. amy, being michaela’s roommate, assured them that she’d talk to michaela. after a few days with no further answers, amy then blocked the people she told she’d help, and deactivated her tumblr with no explanation. she has responded to a couple emails about the situation, but has not done anything other than telling people it’s being ‘handled’. she also blocks anyone who asks her too much about it. at this point, she is actively helping michaela scam people.
no one has been able to get through to either of them. contributors have done the same thing i was doing with hallowzine–encourage the buyers they can reach to file chargebacks through their credit card company and paypal/stripe, if possible.
in her response to me during the hallowzine fallout, amy made every excuse for michaela. she told me that michaela couldn’t respond to people desperately trying to reach her because she was “celebrating the anniversary of her surgery” and that she didn’t “owe anyone time/a response” despite the fact that michaela had over $6,000 from hallowzine and had completely ghosted. at first, i sort of believed her–michaela was just stupid and irresponsible and, for some reason, put her celebration over the thousands of dollars she’d taken, but then she ghosted the vld zines and has been gone with $12,000+ for over two weeks now. there’s no excuse or explanation for that, in my opinion.
the first message i got from michaela after she ghosted was when my first post gained traction. i never called her a scammer in it, but that was the conclusion people drew from it. the very first message i got from michaela after almost 2 days of hearing NOTHING from her when she had every single cent hallowzine made, was her telling me that she was upset over being called a scammer. no mention of refunds or anything (those were in later messages). nope, she was just mad about being called a scammer, and others have told me that being called a scammer has been her main concern. she also apparently thought i was being mean to her by writing that post even though she hadn’t said anything about the project being dropped to buyers.
my conclusion after all this? michaela is a scammer, and amy is aiding her in pulling off this scam. neither of them have any business running any projects ever again.
last time, the only thing that got refunds going and got michaela to do anything was publicly exposing her, so i ‘m trying that again in hopes that the $12,000+ can be refunded to the many, many buyers that supported her projects. i’m also writing this in hopes that i can reach some buyers of this project so they can get their money back.
if you bought any of the vld au zines or the vld occult zine, please either file a chargeback with your bank or with paypal. with banks, you call them and usually go through their fraud department. if you bought it with a visa/MC giftcard, call them and do the same. with paypal, file a dispute using these instructions. if you used stripe, this is their article on disputes, and you should contact them.
i wasnt part of the vld zines, but i’m sorry to anyone who was part of the project or bought any product, and i’m sorry you have to deal with this and with michaela. i just hope her and her roommate never run a project ever again.
