Staff for a Nashville party-rental firm have been scrambling to fill a request for tents, tables, chairs, and linens for the upcoming Blended Pageant when the director of gross sales realized the wine-and-music occasion had not paid the opposite 50 % of their contract as required.

The gross sales boss, Alex Totin, referred to as the workplace of pageant CEO Sean Evans, and an accountant promptly forwarded a screenshot of a wire switch for $20,000. Drawback solved—or so Totin thought.

“We proceeded with the supply, picked all of it up on Monday, and realized the cash by no means went by a pair days later,” Totin tells The Each day Beast.

She tried calling Blended once more, however nobody answered. Emails started bouncing again as if the accounts had been disabled. She tried Evans’ private cell. “He was getting my messages. It was saying ‘Delivered,’” she Stated. However she by no means acquired him on the cellphone—or the cash.

Two months later, Totin’s expertise can solely be seen as a giant purple flag. After the Nashville pageant dates, all the enterprise imploded and Evans went incommunicado, forsaking a parade of stiffed contractors, out-of-luck distributors, and ticket holders ready for refunds.

To some, the Blended fiasco has shades of Fyre Pageant, the notorious luxurious occasion promoted by a equally brash and bold entrepreneur that left lots of of ticket-holders stranded within the Bahamas and in the end landed the organizer, Billy McFarland, in federal jail.

There is no such thing as a indication that Evans is beneath felony investigation

Nevertheless it appears seemingly the corporate will likely be going through some type of authorized motion. Occasions.com, which dealt with ticket gross sales, is refunding jilted festival-goers and can attempt to get its a refund from Blended, in accordance with the fest’s Instagram account, which is now managed by a third-party vendor.

And Evans’ firm is already on the hook for $23,000 in a default judgment on a lawsuit filed by a catering firm that claims it was stiffed after final 12 months’s Austin pageant. “My shoppers are actually good, hard-working individuals and we wished them to receives a commission for his or her providers and that sadly hasn’t occurred,” the caterer’s lawyer, Lindsay Karm, informed The Each day Beast this week.

An individual near Evans informed The Each day Beast that the impresario now has a authorized group “attempting to kind the entire thing out.” From the place is anybody’s guess—although a touch upon Blended’s Instagram claimed that Evans was “noticed getting right into a blue Tesla in San Diego this previous weekend.”

Evans, 42, is a California native who owned a series of cheerleading gyms earlier than he created an app referred to as My Wine Society and a wine subscription service referred to as MWS Loyalty Membership.

In a 2021 interview he described himself as a fan of a conservative writer Jordan Peterson, motivational speaker Les Brown, podcaster Joe Rogan and Twitter destroyer Elon Musk. “I like listening to Elon Musk due to his reasoning abilities,” he stated.

A couple of years in the past, Evans expanded his enterprise into the pageant house.

Blended was pitched as a melange of dwell music, meals, wine and craft cocktails, a wellness lounge, and VIP desk service. An iteration of the pageant passed off in 2019, and once more in 2021 with artists like Kaskade, The Chainsmokers, Nelly, and Lil Jon performing. VIP tickets may value greater than $200.

This 12 months’s sequence was set to rotate by Nashville, Austin, San Diego, and Tampa, beginning in September, however solely Nashville occurred earlier than Evans mysteriously introduced in an Oct. 5 electronic mail that he’d had a coronary heart assault and would solely be speaking by electronic mail. That was adopted 5 days later by an Instagram put up by a third-party contractor informing followers that Evans had been “absent” because the begin of the month and nobody knew what was happening.

That left Blended contributors like Malon Lemoins out of pocket.

“We paid them and by no means heard from them once more,” stated Lemoins, a managing accomplice at East Austin wine tasting room Blurred Vines, which paid “nicely over $1,000” to safe a sponsorship that might allow them to arrange a tent to advertise their rising enterprise.

“People invested fairly a bit greater than we did. It was a ‘take the cash first’ form of scenario.”

A kind of of us is his good friend Sammy Lam, who owns Wanderlust Wine Co., a faucet vineyard with two areas that paid over $10,000 for a “title sponsorship,” which might have splashed the corporate title on Blended advertising and marketing supplies and given them extra space beneath a 100-foot wine tent.

Lam stated he was impressed by final 12 months’s pageant on the Lengthy Heart—a picturesque venue with a sprawling garden overlooking Girl Chicken Lake and the glimmering downtown skyline—and was satisfied his enterprise needs to be part of this budding experiment.

”[This was] one of many few festivals breaking by the hurdle of bringing individuals collectively in a post-COVID world. Everybody that was concerned final 12 months was excited to hitch in once more,” Lam stated.

Lam says the failed pageant was all of the extra disheartening as a result of he and his associates skipped established, money-making occasions like Austin Metropolis Limits and the increasing Meals & Wine Pageant in favor of Blended.

“Meals & Wine is extra company. Blended nearly gave small companies a chance to have a preventing probability within the large world,” he stated.

One other particular person burned by Blended is DJ and former Bachelorette contestant Blake Horstmann, who was employed for this 12 months’s Austin and Tampa dates. “We have been a facet stage act who’s at the moment owed by the pageant nonetheless,” says Horstmann’s supervisor, Erik Bradley, including that he didn’t blame the event-booking group Evans was utilizing for the occasion.

Lee Garrett, one other former Bachelorette contestant, was employed to host all of this 12 months’s dates.

“It is a shock to many people concerned left holding the invoice, canceled plans, and/or work schedule—artists, buyers and followers alike. My journey was already booked,” he informed The Each day Beast in an Instagram message. “Very unlucky.”

However not everybody in Evans’ orbit is as shocked by the collapse.

Investor Daniel Magy informed The Each day Beast he didn’t chunk when Evans requested him to place wherever from $250,000 to “a pair million bucks” into Blended and his different ventures final 12 months.

“I didn’t put money into something due to how he acted,” Magy says. “He couldn’t reply regular investor questions. We’re speaking fundamental shit for anybody.

“He informed me that I used to be questioning his integrity as an individual,” Magy added. “His response was to carry on his enterprise companions who have been barely extra subtle, however on the finish of the day, I don’t assume there was sufficient safety on this undertaking for an investor to really feel comfy.”

John Paul and Blane Townsend, founders of a Austin ticketing firm Geoji, stated Evans wished a $500,000 buy-in for the unique rights to function Blended’s ticket vendor

“The man simply appeared type of sketchy once we met him. We thought he felt a little bit too assured,” Townsend stated. Paul added, “As soon as individuals begin asking for method an excessive amount of cash up entrance, that’s if you begin getting that Fyre Pageant vibe.”

Lingering at the back of their minds was the reminiscence of promoters giving freely tickets to the 2021 pageant in Austin.

“He appeared to run it like a tech firm,” Townsend stated. “Needing a shit ton of funding and never anxious about revenue.”

Geoji took a move as a result of the buy-in would have required the small start-up to take out a enterprise mortgage.

“Me and Blane determined, ‘Hey, that’s not how we’re gonna do enterprise.’ That simply sounds actually sketchy. Particularly as a result of we knew all their festivals have been exterior. We thought, ‘What occurs if it rains?’”

Now Paul is relieved his firm by no means acquired concerned.

“I don’t know if the man is a fraudster or if the funds acquired jumbled,” he stated, “however we’re identical to, ‘What a bullet dodged.’”

In a 2021 interview with ideamensch.com—that includes a photograph of him in a crispy, shiny blue go well with with a gleaming white pocket sq.—Evans portrayed himself as a seasoned entrepreneur who had constructed My Wine Society right into a $16 million operation.

“My best success is the power to be taught from my errors and by no means making them once more,” he stated within the interview. “Profitable entrepreneurs would let you know that errors are straightforward to come back by and other people like to level them out if you make them. I don’t need individuals to level them out for me. I attempt to be taught the lesson and apply it so I by no means make the identical mistake twice.”

However that doesn’t ring true to a few of those that labored with Evans earlier than the Blended meltdown.

In 2005, Liz Lopez had owned a cheer health club in Vacaville, California, for just a few years when she was contacted by Evans, who informed her he was a choreographer who wished to work together with her health club. Lopez favored the concept of one other set of eyes her groups’ routines, and employed Evans.

Ultimately, Lopez stated, Evans requested her if she was prepared to think about promoting her health club—and he or she wanted the cash.

“I believed, ‘Perhaps that is the chance I’ve been on the lookout for. I can concentrate on my youngsters and rebuilding my life as a single mother,’” Lopez informed The Each day Beast. “I ought to have seen all of the purple flags that have been there however I simply felt like I wanted an out.”

Lopez claimed Evans did pay her however she by no means acquired the complete quantity. “Any time I attempted to do something I used to be ignored, declined, or he wasn’t responding to my emails. I used to be informed I wasn’t allowed again on the premises or he would name the cops on me,” she stated.

As soon as Evans took over, she stated, a cheer group would give him the charges for an upcoming competitors, solely to point out up and be turned away as a result of the organizers had not been paid. After a few 12 months, the health club closed.

“I spent numerous years being actually harassed about it and actually indignant about it and I simply needed to type of let it go,” Lopez stated. “I simply need him to cease doing this to individuals.”

In 2013, Amy Giaquinto was working in Lopez’s cheer health club when Evans purchased it and satisfied her to remain as supervisor. She informed The Each day Beast that Evans could possibly be very persuasive.

“He’s extraordinarily charming and really manipulative,” she stated. “He was in a position to allure these 80 athletes into staying and paying him, and paying him much more than the prior health club. He can promote you the sky. He’s a sleazy automotive salesman like that. However he’s good at it.”

Giaquinto stated she was appalled by a few of what she noticed whereas working for Evans, together with checks being written to a individuals or corporations affiliated together with his different companies, a espresso firm and a consulting enterprise. “I do know I used to be sending out tons and many cash to individuals who had nothing to do with our cheer health club. That’s in the end what began my purple flags,” she stated.

Evans was increasing his cheer empire and by the next 12 months had three gyms—and was additionally borrowing cash from athletes’ households, in accordance with Giaquinto.

“Cheer will not be low-cost, so it attracts in households who’re well-off,” she stated. “He was asking these households to foot the payments for sure issues. If we wanted uniforms lined, he’d ask a member of the family for a mortgage. These have been his plans as a result of he and I might speak about it. He’d say, ‘Oh, perhaps I can hit up Wendy for some cash and I will pay her again subsequent month when everybody pays their dues.’”

“One household tried to stop, and he legit informed me to mail a test to them with out a stamp, so it will mail again to us, and we’d have extra time to pay him,” she recalled.

“There have been instances once we would journey, we’d have these large group dinners…. Out of the blue his enterprise card wouldn’t work, and I must pay for it. I did that a number of instances for these large group dinners that have been nicely over $1,000.”

In April 2016, Evans abruptly offered the gyms. “Then he created My Wine Society,” Giaquinto stated.

Jason Brandt, 32, was an early worker of My Wine Society, beginning there in 2017. He was a former cheer coach and knew Evans from that world and was glad to see that the enterprise appeared profitable, with buyers throwing cash in.

However cracks quickly started exhibiting.

“We have been scaling it after which his spending began to get attention-grabbing. We might have gaps in payroll, a little bit delay whereas he was ready on funding to come back in,” Brandt stated. “There have been issues that didn’t fairly appear proper”—for example workers being stored out of the corporate’s San Diego workplace house as a result of the lease had not been paid.

Brandt stated he and one other colleague expressed concern about My Wine Society’s funds, particularly when Evans started speaking about launching Blended Pageant. Not lengthy after, Brandt stated, he and his colleague have been fired.

“We have been asking too many questions,” Brandt stated. “Getting fired from there’s the most effective factor that ever occurred to me for certain… I’ve lived, I’ve discovered, and I’ve moved on from that dumpster fireplace.”

Nick Gustafson, 30, began working for My Wine Society in 2018, as a quasi-intern till Evans requested him to launch a brand new initiative he likened to “a Yelp for wineries.”

“I used to be supposed to construct this complete factor which I had no thought learn how to do,” Gustafson informed The Each day Beast.

Evans wished to cost wineries $10 or $15 monthly to be featured on the brand new app, Gustafson stated. They acquired just a few wineries to join a take a look at run, however after they wished to cancel or requested for a refund, Evans made it troublesome, Gustrafson claimed.

“They might electronic mail me saying, ‘We do not need to be a part of this anymore,’ and in my head I stated, ‘I do not blame you,’” Gustafson stated. “I couldn’t cancel it from my finish. I might inform him, ‘Hey, it’s important to do it.’ I do not understand how lengthy it took him to really do it, I do know [the wineries] acquired charged greater than they wished to.”

Gustafson stated he additionally struggled to receives a commission.

“He wouldn’t pay till he acquired a brand new spherical of sponsorship cash or cash from any particular person he suckered into funding no matter this was,” Gustafson stated.

Towards the tip of his time at My Wine Society, Gustafson stated, Evans simply stopped paying him by money despatched by Venmo and provided firm inventory and fairness as an alternative.

“I ought to’ve seen it as extra of a purple flag, however I didn’t have one other job on the time so I needed to go together with this. I by no means noticed a cent of inventory or something resembling no matter he was speaking about,” he stated.

Gustafson stopped working at My Wine Society when the “Yelp for wineries” app didn’t get off the bottom, however in August 2019, Evans contacted him to assist arrange the primary Blended Pageant in San Diego.

He stated he agreed to truck some video games and different objects to the venue, however when he arrived, Evans handed him walkie-talkies and put him accountable for safety on the entrance gate with none coaching or warning.

“Anytime there was a difficulty with the ticketing or something, everybody’s coming to me,” he stated. “I’m attempting to radio Sean on this factor however he’s busy kissing ass within the fucking VIP sales space the entire time.”

Regardless of the chaos, Gustafson stated, the occasion was an general success. For his hassle he acquired all of $200.

“He’s one of the egocentric individuals I’ve met, he’s utterly immature and was out of his league for all of it. He wished to be the massive canine and have all eyes on him so he may throw an enormous occasion for his associates. That’s what he did for the primary Blended Pageant,” Gustafson stated.

One other former worker who labored for Evans at My Wine Society stated that they had a key organizing position, however after that first San Diego pageant, they needed to rent a lawyer to get months of again pay.

“We couldn’t come up with him, we couldn’t textual content him, we couldn’t name him. He was simply gone, there was no communication,” they stated—noting that months later, the cash simply merely confirmed up of their checking account.

Even so, they stated, Evans’ vanishing act this fall was a head-scratcher.

“I don’t understand how you go from reserving the Chainsmokers to carry out to unexpectedly you owe $6 million {dollars} and nobody is aware of the place you might be,” they stated. “The place is the punishment?”

A number of individuals concerned with the pageant in Nashville in September stated it was clear issues have been breaking down.

“We knew it was gonna be a shit present once we acquired on web site and realized how disorganized it was,” stated Totin, the occasion provider who by no means acquired the steadiness of her invoice. “However the setup nonetheless occurred. The occasion nonetheless occurred. You may simply type of inform that it wasn’t gonna finish nicely.”

Garrett, the Bachelorette contestant and pageant host, stated the weekend devolved into a tragic scene when a sudden thunderstorm halted festivities halfway by Sunday, sending crowds scrambling again to their vehicles.

That night time’s headliner and the pageant’s greatest draw, The Chainsmokers, have been relegated to a 200-capacity venue referred to as Soiled Little Secret, an upscale bar situated inside a lodge a few five-minute stroll from the park. Solely these with VIP tickets have been invited.

“I noticed photos of individuals exterior [Dirty Little Secret] on Printers Alley attempting to climb into home windows early on,” Garrett stated. “The road was packed earlier than they opened the doorways.”

What occurred between then and Evans’ disappearing act just a few weeks later stays unclear. The Each day Beast tried to succeed in Evans repeatedly by cellphone and electronic mail, however by no means acquired a solution.

The particular person near Evans, who didn’t need to be named, stated the entrepreneur went to the emergency room in October as a result of he thought he was having a coronary heart assault, however it was truly an nervousness assault.

“He’s clearly wired about all of this,” they stated.

The post Contained in the Wine Pageant Meltdown That Has Individuals Yelling ‘Fyre!’ first appeared on Raw News.