Following on from Batched disabling withdrawals towards the end of 2022, founder and CEO Oscar Garcia held a webinar on February 10th.
Speaking to around 150 investors, Garcia laid out what he claims happened in the lead up to Batched’s collapse.
According to Garcia (right), COO Frank DiCrisi is the villain in Batched’s demise.
When I got sick and had my appendix that burst and I was hospitalized, the company was sold. October 2022.
Now I didn’t know this.
The company (Batched) was sold to a company called Savvy Wallet.
Now that’s what I’ve learned in the past, I would say, thirty days, of going through a lawsuit with our former COO, Mr. Frank DiCrisi.
Frank DiCrisi (right) owns Savvy Wallet. Based on legal filings, it is believed DiCrisi commingled Batched investor funds with the also collapsed Ponzi The Traders Domain.
What ended up happening is that in November, I found out certain things were transpiring.
And because, right after the appendix … I started getting some information that made me question, for the first time in my life, my partner.
I put my personal money into building this company. And I brought friends and family to invest into this company. Some of you guys did.
My brothers in laws invested into this company. They’re pretty much pissed, because over the last couple of days ago I told them what was going on.
Garcia puts down Batched’s collapse to ongoing “accounting errors”, which he claims Frank DiCrisi was in charge of.
Mistakes? Sure. Issues with technology? Sure. Now, what wasn’t good? Accounting mistakes.
And this is where the story gets interesting.
We’ve had accounting mistakes since almost the first thirty days.
We had a call with one of you guys, actually Mr. (Montrell?) Jackson, let me admit it.
And we had several calls with him. He was helping us to do things. Brandon Ivey got him on the phone for us.
Well, we met with him. He wanted to make sure … y’know, we made it. He wanted to make sure he tweaked us, and we made it.
Cathy does that a lot too. Peter Blackwell does that a lot too. These people wanted to make us. How can we fix this? How can we do better at this?
And he (Jackson) had both me and my partner, Frank DiCrisi, on a call where after three or four meetings, oh he was pissed.
And I believe on that call it was just me. Mr (Montrell?) Jackson cussed me out. Fuckin told me shit that I haven’t heard in a long time.
And you know what? I said, “You’re right. You’re right, we have to do better. We have to do better for the people.” I said, “I’m with you on that”.
But we didn’t do better. Administration kept on doing bad. Administration kept on messing up.
Administration kept on having issues with accounting, when all the data was there on the blockchain. And all the data was there on our databases
And you know what? That should have been a clue but we kept on going because I have to defend my partners.
I have to defend what they’re doing as I’m building the technology and going out there and being in your face, and telling you this, and telling you everyone’s heart is in the right place.
I believed that back then. I don’t now. But I believed that back then.
So I defended what was going on. And what ended up happening was, months later as the continuation of… I would say this, 80% of everybody got paid, got paid right. 20% has been a disaster.
And accounting hasn’t given us bank accounts and audits, to actually find out what happened to the other 20%.
And that is something that was pushed by Brandon, by Cathy, by Peter, by everyone, saying guys, “We need to get a fucking audit going. We gotta make sure that we know what happened, how do we fix it and how do we move forward.”
That was always the ideas [sic] as we were bringing in new companies to turn them into fintechs … and yet, it was always administration.
So what happened?
Well, the SEC sent us a letter asking us for our bank records and everything else, a little before June.
BehindMLM confirmed and reported on the SEC investigation into Batched and Garcia in January 2023.
So, what happens?
They (the SEC) started asking us questions. My partner at the time (DiCrisi) I guess, had enough and he had something else in mind.
And instead of us just making sure that we work together towards resolving these issues, he had something else in mind.
We have a company that has worked with us, I’m not going to mention names but if you look up the court case – names are all in there it’s public record.
Just a note here, I believe the lawsuit Garcia refers to was filed by DiCrisi in the OC Superior Court. Garcia might have filed a counterclaim against DiCrisi.
Unfortunately I don’t have access to the case filings so I can’t confirm. Nor can I verify the name of the company Batched was purportedly sold to.
And apparently he (DiCrisi) sold the company to them (the unnamed partner company). Without us knowing, without you knowing, without me knowing, without anyone knowing.
And in November, when I caught him doing other things, I sent him a cease and desist letter. And I asked him, “let’s figure this out, let’s end whatever we were doing peacefully”.
And we tried to do things peacefully. I told him my concerns, he came back with his, he offered something and we were working our way towards a peaceful resolution.
But after asking for bank accounts, again auditing everything that’s going on and not receiving them, and just getting stonewalled constantly, and asking him to fulfill what he was telling us what he was going to do on the settlement, he didn’t do it.
In fact, he denied that he was even a part of us. He denied that he was my co-partner. He denied that he and I managed everything.
You guys know, you only deal with two people; Frank DiCrisi and Oscar Garcia. That’s it. We ran the company.
But he’s denying that he was even a part of Batched. And he says, “No, I’m a part of Batched Merchant Services”.
OK. I didn’t know he was gonna deny that, but he did.
So when we were trying to resolve things it didn’t work. But really what set me off was, Cathy was on a back and forth with him where he denied we had investors.
We have investors. There’s people that gave up money to make this company happen. And when you deny that, you are not here for them. You’re here for yourself.
I might be reading a little too inbetween the lines, but sounds like DiCrisi is trying to set up a plausible deniability defense against a pending SEC lawsuit.
And that was a major heartbreak. Coz if you guys know, I go to the Vatican with this gentleman. He’s a “churchy guy”.
That is not a godly type of thing when you deny something that’s so plain and obvious, that I have no idea how he has the balls to deny that. But apparently he did.
So the key issue here is, what do we do? How do we move forward?
This is where the OC Superior Court lawsuit comes in, which again I don’t have filing access to.
We’re in a lawsuit now. Apparently we (Batched) don’t have bank accounts. We’re insolvent right now as we speak.
Now the technology is going to stay up during the lawsuit but we have little control right now.
We’re gonna move it to another place. We’re gonna have to find a new administrational team or company that will buy us, so we can move forward.
We’ve already identified a couple of options.
But in order to move forward we cannot have what happened before continue. We cannot have people who clearly are the managers of the company deny that they’re even a part of us.
We cannot have that.
We need to restructure, reformat, as we’re going through the lawsuit.
We are going to fight our story. Because I shut down everything based on certain acts that I seen that made me believe that those acts were illegal.
I don’t mind the bad press out there about me. What I do mind is when someone literally lies and misappropriates (a) company’s assets, (a) company’s goodwill, (a) company’s investors, (a) company’s clients. That sets me off.
We have a responsibility, as managers, to do good to the people that are behind us. The people who invested into us. Our customers and everybody else.
And what’s going on it just bullshit.
Denials of being a part of us, and selling the company? Beyond bullshit.
It remains unclear how Frank DiCrisi squares up denying being a part of Batched but also being able to purportedly sell the company.
So, how do we move forward?
One, I’m gonna have to take a huge haircut. I have to sell everything. My name is gonna be slaughtered everywhere.
The SEC is investigating both of us and all of our companies. Batched is now in a lawsuit. everything.
Now I failed to stop the wrong people in helping us manage this. That’s on me.
How do I make it right? I don’t think I can guys. It’s not survivable.
What is survivable is we pivot. I want someone else to run this.
Garcia goes on to reiterate a buyout from a third-party company. He also floats the idea that Batched investors be involved.
I want to find a company that has the right management. Or even some of you guys to be part of the company that has the right management, so we can move forward.
I’m gonna sell my part of the technology. Uulala, Batched, that we control is going to sell their part of the technology to this new entity.
And we’re already negotiating (that) they’ll honor everything that we’ve done. So that way nobody loses their place. We’re working towards that.
We’ve already identified a couple of companies that are building some blockchain technology that we’re talking to.
So if they decide to do this, they will honor this.
Garcia’s messaging is mixed. At times he sounds like he’s trying to come up with a plan. Then you have the above, where it sounds like a buyer is already in place and a buyout is already in motion.
We’re gonna have to go into a bankruptcy, where people can deduct losses off the bankruptcy. Where there’s secured debt and unsecured debt.
We’re working with an accounting team, that is literally going to be helping us to give people the ability to write off the secured debt and the unsecured debt.
We’re working towards that. We’re learning about what the process is.
Pending regulatory intervention, Batched entering bankruptcy puts a huge question mark on victim fund recovery.
Now if we continue with this lawsuit and we prevail in the future, with a settlement? There could be settlement agreements, you know that will play into this. That we can count on. That we will distribute.
Those are our only options. There’s nothing else.
Speaking directly to victims of Uulala and Batched, Garcia stated;
Now I know what you’re going to say; “Oscar, I put my tax dollars in here. I put my house money in here. I put my…”
I lost a house. I know your pain. That’s why we have to fight.
So now you know. Now you know. You can’t say I didn’t tell you. You can’t say I wasn’t honest. You can’t say I didn’t tell you everything. I’ve done it.
And I will continue that.
BehindMLM maintains that through Uulala and Batched, at the very least Garcia and DiCrisi committed securities fraud through their node validation investment scheme.
Pending the outcome of the SEC’s investigation, total Uulala and Batched investors, along with how much they collectively lost, remains unknown.