Quote:
Originally Posted by will76
If it was just AFF/Cams they would be fine, and would have remained profitable. They would have been in a decline, especially with AFF as that has peaked but it still would have made good money.
The problem is that AFF/Cams is now weighted down tremendously by penthouse. Do some research on penthouse. They have been trying to leach on to something to save them for years. They tried it with ibill and and sunk ibill faster than the titanic. They will be doing the same to AFF/Cams.
Lars had the best deal of them all with Cams.com, while AFF was grossing hundreds of millions, it was on the way down and becoming involved with lawsuits. Then you have Penthouse, why would anyone want to partner up with them. I suspect Lars got suckered into a deal with AFF for some reason, AFF shorly after wanted to unload before their sales started tanking and the lawsuits started coming in but they couldn't find a buyer. Along comes penthouse which is going bankrupt trying to find something profitable to leach onto for a last ditched IPO so they could line their pockets. They convince AFF/Cams to sell to them, mainly for the stock options that will come to fruition once they package it all up nice and neat and do an IPO.... which looks like it will never happen.
That's my take/guess on it. I think the biggest loser is Lars. At the end of the day he would probably have made a lot more money if he would have held on to cams.com. It could have been the #1 cam site and still growing right now. AFF was on the down turn, now they don't have any controll, Stanton and Bell run the show and all they care about is the IPO, if that doesn't happen I am sure they have some angle they can do with liquidiation or something to still get their pockets filled.
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To me the whole Penthouse/AFF deal, and subsequent IPO attempt/charade, smelled to high heavens from the get go...
Legendary Lars is a loser alright, but not in the sense that you intimated, since he has been a scammer of sorts since way back. Perhaps few remember his Napster-like music sharing business which pre-dated his cam company (and the ensuing legal action, etc).
Adult Friend Finder has been sued by the government for shady business practices, and that is prior to the Penthouse takeover, under Andrew Conru's stewardship.
Who was the company at the forefront of subsidizing the tube sites that have hurt the adult industry the most since their inception. If you are sensing a trend here, you got it!
I'm guessing that all of the principals (Lars Mapstead, Andrew Conru, Marc Bell, Daniel Staton), have already made out like raped apes even though the company now known as Friend Finder Network (FFN) is drowning in debt.
This is due, in my opinion, primarily because of their selfish avarice, huge egos, and insatiable greed.
Even if FFN ultimately goes bankrupt, the aforementioned individuals will still have made out like bandits, since I'm guessing that they surely ensured that they were paid a King's ransom while tanking their business into the ground, courtesy of the investors that they con(vinc)ed to invest into a company that was rotten to the core.
While I will feel bad for all of the unwitting investors should FFN ultimately go under, I will not shed a tear if the ringleaders end up losing everything over lawsuits, and even if they should end up in jail.
ADG