Persona 5 zine cheated out of $20,000 by former lead organizer

Last night, the creative team behind a highly anticipated Fan-Made individual 5 anthology zine announced that its project manager confessed to spending CAD$27,600 (approx. $21,300 USD) of the zine’s funds for “personal use”. The money was originally intended for printing and shipping unofficial art and merchandise to customers. One of the fanzine’s artists claimed that the main organizer, known as Ree, used the embezzled funds to gamble Genshin Impact.

show time is an unofficial zine featuring the characters Joker and Crow from the popular Atlus RPG individual 5. In response to the alleged embezzlement, the project’s five remaining employees removed Ree from the moderation team (meaning “management team” in the zine world). However, they said that like everyone else, they cannot take legal action show time

Pre-order funds were processed through Rees’ personal account, and the team never signed deals with her. The mods intend to hold a fundraiser to fulfill pending pre-orders.

my box turned to the staff of show timewho declined to comment. my box Also contacted Ree but was unable to receive a response at the time of publication.

The fanzine claims Ree lied to her team members and fake screenshots for months, hiding evidence of financial embezzlement. However, the project had been in trouble for some time.

In January, show time tweeted that his dispatch moderator had infected coronavirusbut the Comments below the tweet pointed out that customers hadn’t received a transparent notification of the zine’s shipping status for months.

May 2nd, Ree withdrawn from shipping orders, but retained sole control of the project’s finances. The graphic designer Aryl took note of customers’ concerns about the financial situation of the zine and show time published its financial table one day later. As of May 15, the project had nearly $90,000 CAD (approx.$600).

After the alleged embezzlement was raised yesterday, Zubatzo, one of the zine’s side artists, said tweeted that the moderators trusted Ree

because she had previously hosted five successful zine projects. In now-protected tweets, based on a message Ree sent to other moderators, she claimed that Ree spent the money Genshin Impact and Take away food.

my box was unable to independently verify these claims, however said Ree GamesRadar for which she spent the money genshin and things like stuffed animals, zines, and daily bills. In any case, the mention of the hit role-playing game triggered by HoYoverse significant discussion about the Dangers of Gacha Games. Some Twitter users have pointed out that it is mathematically unlikely to spend the entire amount misappropriated on it genshinand others have blamed the general unprofessionalism

and lack of recourse in zine projects.

Here’s what we do know: Fan-produced zine projects like show time are risky creative ventures. IP law means that Businesses can choose to sue artists who create Fan Content, particularly where that content is sold or otherwise generates revenue. The risk is even higher for queer artists who want to create LGBTQ content with official characters.

The legally gray environment of fan communities can encourage creative expression, but it also means that creators do not usually sign enforceable contracts commonality. And customers have no easy recourse if their promised goods don’t ship for months. As such, we can view the show time The incident is in part an unfortunate result of how fandoms are forced by intellectual property media companies to essentially operate in the shadows.

According to his statement show timethe remaining moderators of spoke to a lawyer on June 22, but were told they could not take legal action against Ree. That show time Team pledged to produce a new financial sheet as they attempt to collect postage funds to fill remaining pre-orders.