Issues with GDATW

[LMC]

At first I thought this thread would only make me lose faith in mankind, but after reading a bit more, it really did the opposite. Thank you guys!

Something that still angers me to this day is the fact that Dawn blatantly stole the idea of 'Green Day Across The World' from two younger GDCers who came up with the idea first. She came into their thread and started taking the entire thing over, even though they didn't want or ask for her 'help'. She ended up twisting the fuck out of it, of course, and made it into the massive money/attention grabbing scheme that it's become.

It was originally meant to be a simple day once a year on which Green Day fans were to celebrate the fact they liked Green Day by doing simple shit, like listening to Nimrod, or smoking a joint, or watching Bullet In A Bible, or hanging with fellow Green Day fans, or running around screaming Green Day lyrics in public, or trying to get #greenday trending on Twitter, or whatever.

In other words, it was supposed to be like Flag Day for Green Day fans, not Earth Day the second.

Yes, I agree. I actually met both of them in Copenhagen about a year ago, during a meetup for the World Stage cinema thingy. They made it very clear that it was originally their idea, and as you said, their intentions were merely to get fans together doing Green Day stuff. And personally I really like that idea. However, what became of the idea after Dawn's involvement didn't appeal to me at all. I'm sad that their good intentions turned into this, and even if Dawn herself had good intentions she pretty much ran them over with a bulldozer.

[Tripe]

Placenta, thanks for posting and giving such detail. That's probably the first laid out chain of events I've seen about what went on with the merchandise end of things and GDATW.

With regard to the signatures, it's probably sadly quite right that many of them are fakes. It's hard to tell if yours is one of those. Unquestionably, Billie Joe signed some items for Dawn after one of the AI on Broadway performances where she was permitted to wait in the exit hallway of the St. James - there are some photos out there of her getting at least one guitar signed and perhaps a few other things. But he did not sit down for hours and sign all those items she has had for sale over the time we have seen the GDATW sale going on. Mike and Tre were most definitely not there to provide their signatures at that time; I don't even think they were in town. Those signatures could have been obtained elsewhere, but given some of the other integrity issues with Dawn and the obvious poor quality of the signatures on some of the pieces, I would be very doubtful.

[Fuzz]

Placenta, thanks for posting here. It was actually your posts in the other thread that led us to really start questioning stuff in the first place, and one of the reasons we ended up closing the charity auction threads.

There's no doubt she was listing stuff that she didn't have in her possession (at least the item that you owned), and it's unknown whether anyone actually bought any items that were listed twice before the charity places were closed down. At first I thought maybe it was just an oversight on her part, and she used the same photo twice. That's when we first tried to reach Dawn to see if we could find out what was going on, but we didn't get a reply (and that's when the threads were closed so no-one would read the first few pages with all the links and still consider purchasing items). The different ebay accounts are also very suspicious. Had we known about problems with PayPal, we would have removed the stuff from here earlier, because that's one way to make a judgement as to whether something weird was going on. I'm also pretty certain it's against eBay's terms to ask people to pay outside of eBay for an auction they won through the site.

As for the authenticity of the items, as Tripe said, Dawn did have items signed, so it's hard to really know for sure.

[ConfirmPassword]

I thing I can't stop thinking about, is that if she have done something illegal we can go to the police right?

But she should know that. I mean we got her name

Will she think we wouldn't go to the police, or didn't think we would discover it? Or did she just not think about it? It just seems stupid to do something like that, when people got her name.

Or am I completely wrong?

The whole thing seems so strange

[November's Storms]

Surely, with so much work going into this when it was being planned and run, someone had more contact with Dawn than just facebook or an email address. I can't see how she has completely vanished off the radar.

[placenta]

Personally, I have no problems in accepting that the vinyl I purchased most probably has a fake signature. This is a risk one have to take when buying a signed item. What I do have a problem with, is the fact that money paid by myself and others are paid to go to a good cause, but has been scammed away for something else. Knowing what I know now, I would have given the money directly to the NRDC instead.

I do have a additional note to the whole story. On the 4th of september this year I recieved an email from Dawn (without having communicated with her aside from the auctions). This e-mail is around 4 pages long, and contains her entire "story".

A quote from the e-mail: "...I got to go back to New York City each time that he played St. Jimmy again and I brought a bunch of the items that I have had in my collection and he signed them I had a replica of blue and he signed it also and he told me you know he had no problem with autographing things to help raise money for Green Day across the world so each time I went back I brought some items and items, he even got Tre and Mike to sign some of the items"

The e-mail also mentions the party that was thrown in New York, where it seems like money from the auctions was being used for plaques and awards instead of going towards the charity itself:

"...also at the end of February I went back as he was Play St. Jimmy again and I threw a party it was, the GDC meet up but I use the party to bring awareness to Green Day Across The World I also balked at some trophies and awards and some really cool plaques and ribbons and medals I bought awards for the cast and crew and for the director and some of the fans to I wanted to make it really find and I called it the first annual Idiot awards, but really in the sky as it was to wait raise awareness for Green Day Across The World."

Later in the e-mail, after giving a long story on PayPal and a 501 3c-lisence:

"...and I need to raise this money quick so that Green Day Across The World can become an annual event and alsowe will be eligible for government grants and corporate sponsors so we won't have to go to the fans and raise money anymore but right now I do need to raise money I auctioned off a lot of my collection and I also gave away 50 prizes that we did a random drawing for people that were involved in the cleanup efforts, it was the kind of incentive to get everyone involved and then five prizes for the top five team leaders so I am trying to sell the stuff I do have left and I came across your ad when I was searching for something Green Day online and I saw the picture of all the Green Day stuff that you had and I don't know if you can to donate Green Day memorabillia, I know this is reaching I'm trying to ask anyone I can ask that if you have anything that you'd like to donate to help us get our 501 3C and help us become a legal nonprofit organization and help the environment and everything is all in honor of Green Day they've done so much for their fans and I want to get the fans together and give back a little of the magic that they've given us over the past two Decades."

In my response to the impressively long e-mail, I politely declined to donate any items - but promised to give a note if I had any duplicates that could be donated at a later stage. I never got any response.

We should probably not base this thread on assumptions, but I think it would be safe to assume that the same e-mail has been sent to others as well - and there is a possibility that someone might have donated items to this cause. Knowing what we now know with regards to where the money ends, it is safe to conclude with the fact that people have been ripped off if they have donated - as no money has gone towards the actual cause (or goal of the cause).

EDIT: ...and sorry for using strong words as "scammed" and "ripped off" - but I believe the words describes well what has happened.

[Fuzz]

Sadly one of the things people can't figure out is whether or not she actually donated money to the charity. She told Billie Joe she did, but a member here called the NRDC and they won't release information about non-public donations. The only person that actually knows the truth would be Dawn.

[Daughter.of.Rage.and.Love]

Surely, with so much work going into this when it was being planned and run, someone had more contact with Dawn than just facebook or an email address. I can't see how she has completely vanished off the radar.

Even when it was still being planned it was hard to get hold of her. She's asked for help on multiple occasions and I've offered her help multiple times, but if she replied at all (PM or email), it was all very vague.

And she did all the work, she hardly let anyone do something else (not even the people who came up with the idea in the first place, before she bulldozered over it, as LMC put it) and she made all the decisions.

I won't go into my grudges against how Dawn organized GDATW (I'm sure anyone who was actively involved in the thread will know what I'm talking about), but yes.

The e-mail also mentions the party that was thrown in New York, where it seems like money from the auctions was being used for plaques and awards instead of going towards the charity itself:

"...also at the end of February I went back as he was Play St. Jimmy again and I threw a party it was, the GDC meet up but I use the party to bring awareness to Green Day Across The World I also balked at some trophies and awards and some really cool plaques and ribbons and medals I bought awards for the cast and crew and for the director and some of the fans to I wanted to make it really find and I called it the first annual Idiot awards, but really in the sky as it was to wait raise awareness for Green Day Across The World."

That's funny, she told on GDC that she paid for the party out of her own pocket.

She mentioned that a lot, though, how she "had to pay" for everything...

Andres, I know this is not what you intended the thread to be for, but I'm not the only one who invested a lot of time into GDATW (if not money) and I think that while it may not matter to the image of GDA what exactly Dawn did besides the items on eBay and Amazon, the rest does matter to the people in GDC who want to talk about it. I'm a bit late in saying this, but I wanted to say it anyway.

[Nova-Caine]

The thing that bugs me the most is the whole 'Purple Heart' episode and Billie Joe being duped.

[farley drexel hatcher]

The thing that bugs me the most is the whole 'Purple Heart' episode and Billie Joe being duped.

Yeah, I don't like that either. I'm hoping he figured it out pretty quickly.

[Abbey.]

I have learned a valuable lesson from all this. The next time someone asks me for a charity donation, I will only give a check payable to the name of the organization.

[greendaytone]

The thing that saddened and confused me was that Dawn rarely seemed to be happy during all of this. Even after the party in NYC went like a dream for the most part, she was still upset and angry at the end of it.

There's so much we might not ever understand about this unless Dawn comes clean about the whole thing.

[Tripe]

I know what you mean, Tony. I was discussing the party earlier with Alex and he said the same thing. The first time I actually ever spoke to Dawn at any length was at that party and she just seemed so out of it. But not blitzed in a good way (like some others at that party LOL). It felt more like I was talking to a really old person that didn't get what I was saying.

I got an email from Dawn back when I was first selling the first miniature Blue ornaments on ebay, asking for the same thing she asked placenta - that I donate one to GDATW. I told her I didn't have any more complete at that time, but I would consider it for the future. By the time the GDC/GDATW party rolled around, I thought that was a good time to donate one, so I brought one to the party. I gave it to her there. I saw my friend Rita donate her poster to Dawn and later I saw Rita's poster on the GDATW ebay site. I never saw my miniature Blue up for sale, however. I figured it was a lost cause and chalked it up to life experience until Tony contacted me and told me he had the ornament. Not sure how that transpired, but the ornament got to Tony and GDA and as you probably saw, was auctioned properly via GDA eight months later with proceeds to the Red Cross. I never asked you how all that happened, Tony, but thank you.

[raven052]

Um, ok. Wow, I had no idea about any of this. All sounds kinda sad to me.

Anyway, I dunno if this is gonna be helpful or not, I mean, I hope so...

I did buy a couple of lower priced items (couple of CD singles of 'welcome to paradise' and 'basket case'). Then, a couple of days after the end of auction I got this e-mail: (put it in a spoiler as it's pretty long, but I don't wanna miss out something that may be relevant)

Paypal is trying to screw me. I have applied for my non profit 501 3c but there is a lot of red tape and it takes a while but i will have it done before 2011 is over so you can still write off on taxes. well paypal saw how many sales i was getting in a short time and me being a new seller so they started to investigate and found out that i dont have my non profit 501 3c and i didn't know i had to have that 501 3c to auction stuff off if u mentioned what it was for a fundraiser and i was raising money for NRDC in the ebay listing. so they are holding the pay pal money until i do send them a copy of it (501 3c) and they know it takes a while to get those its lots of red tape and money to get. they wont even let me ship your items using the. their online shipping method and take the money off the balance they are being jerks i had talked to people at paypal on several occasions for different reasons in past and they saw my ads and never said a word about i was doing something wrong. well anyway i dont have enough money to ship to all the winners out of my pocket. So I'm going to refund your money today and tomorrow i am going to Amazon.com and list your item you won for the exact same price you won it for and i'll send u some extra free green day stuff in your package for all the trouble. I could tell you all to send the money directly to me but i want my winners to feel safe and know you will get your items. and I'm doing it on amazon because i want all my ebay winners to feel safe and insured that they'll get their items. i check with

amazon.com and they have no problem me listing my stuff when i explained what happened they said that paypal try to cheat people a lot especially the sellers The items i shipped off already i'm just out of the money for that and i have to chalk it up to as a loss. but i started this to help the NRDC and to honor Green Day by doing this.and its from the fans not just me it everyone that bidded is honoring them and helping the NRDC. I don't want to loose all the money that we all raised for the NRDC so i'm hoping when i refund your money that tomorrow you will go to amazon.com and buy the item and once you do i will ship it right out to you and as i said i'll throw in some extra green day freebies for the trouble you've had to go through and i promise you'll get more than your money's worth. After all the winner pay and items are shipped i will post a picture of a cashiers check on the Green Day Across The World website http://www.greendayacrosstheworld.org made out to the NRDC and it will show the amount too. I hope when I refund everyone's money that you will go to Amazon and re-buy it again. Amazon isn't an auction place so i'll list it for it, so you don't have to worry about any bidding wars. I'd really hate to not be able to send the NRDC the money I had raised from the ebay auctions, just because paypal is being this way. they already are going to make me pay all these listing fees and stuff, its not fair. i'm trying to do a good thing here. Please email me back and let me know if that is ok with you and if there is a special time you want me to list it so we make sure no one else gets it. it may take more than a day to relist these on amazon.com but i should get them all up in a day if not 2 days at the most. Please help me finish Green Day Across The World 2011 on a good note. Next year we will have our 501 3c and be incorporated as a government certified non profit and we will be able to apply for government grants and do great things all over the world for the environment and not have to depend on auctions and donations to make Green Day Across The World successful and we will get to do big projects that really make a big impact in saving the world we live in. Again I apologize for all the hassel. please email me and let me know if that is ok with you and anything else you may want to say to me. it'll take a few days to list on amazon i will email you a link once its listed on amazon.com.

Anyway, so I did recieve my items, though the shipping was more expensive than originally stated, but whatever, kinda used to that. I mean, at the time it did just sound like a couple of little mess ups, which could happen to anyone. But as for the cheque she said she was gonna post on the website... Anyone seen that? I had a quick look, but I don't know exactly where I should be looking.

I hope this all gets sorted (or at least to some sort of reasonable degree )

[Chris P FaFu]

In regards to a lot of the signed items, I don't think all of it was real. I had someone direct me towards a few pieces that are no longer up for auction that are blatantly counterfeit signatures. It looks as though the same person signed all 3 names. Especially Mike's signature. It looks like whoever signed it was trying to mimic his current signatures with the x's. Yet it's apparently signed by Al Sobrante? I don't think so.

Examples:

1

2

3

yes... total fakes... all shaky looking...

Wait, there's seriously still people on GDC who trust and believe everything that Dawn has told them, regardless of what she's done ...? Jesus, people. Actions speak louder than words, and if you're turning a blind eye to everything this ridiculous woman has done, then I pity you greatly. Open your eyes and wake up!

A very early example: One of the first threads Dawn ever made on GDC was filled with outright lies. She stole images of random eBay DIY artists' creations and claimed that they were her own. 'After many trials and errors I think I finally got the knack of it,' and, 'Here are some samples of items I have made,' she stated in the original thread.

The proof is fairly easy to find. Most of the items shown in the stolen images are no longer sold on eBay, aside from this one seller who continues to make them, and has been since 2006. Dawn's older stolen images don't match the seller's new images exactly, but you can clearly see that the mannequin and the necklace the mannequin is wearing is identical.

And in case anyone wants to argue this fact: The eBay seller most certainly didn't steal the images from Dawn, as they wouldn't have such excellent feedback on eBay if this was the case. There's also no way Dawn would have the identical mannequin and necklace as the eBay seller. And if Dawn's intention was to simply purchase these eBay items and then resell them, then why did she go to such great lengths to pretend she made them herself ...?

The worst part is that Dawn continued to do this to try and 'raise money for GDATW' on her Amazon store, which prompted me to post a comment about it on the GDA news post at the time.

holy hell mallory... i so remember seeing those on ebay forever ago!!!!! by the original seller of course...

[GDM]

I got an email from Dawn back when I was first selling the first miniature Blue I figured it was a lost cause and chalked it up to life experience until Tony contacted me and told me he had the ornament. Not sure how that transpired, but the ornament got to Tony and GDA and as you probably saw, was auctioned properly via GDA eight months later with proceeds to the Red Cross. I never asked you how all that happened, Tony, but thank you.

See, this is the thing that gets me, she gave Tony the ornament, she threw a party and she did get some items signed and she did send some items out. Was it all just an elaborate scam? I just don't get it. Totally crazy.

The last time I talked with her by email she gave me another phone number and begged me to call her but I was sick and pissed about being lied to so I never called. I'm in an airport right now but when I get where I'm going, l'll send her a text or call.

[Chris P FaFu]

I am disappointed by the whole thing... being the "team leader" from detroit.. ha... I actually put together an event here... I will say... I had a complete blast doing so and loved meeting devan and addision and their moms!! And I too was one who sent in video for 'rage and love productions See The Light' of course my clip wasnt on it... I paid the 5 bucks for my copy... aired it at my event... eh. I was skeptical about all the details surrounding actual exchanging of monies... so i didnt buy or donate any... just paid whatever little cost to get my event going..With all the hype surrounding all these supposed treasures she had collected over the past 20 yrs... signed this and that.... imagine my excitement when I learned I actually was one of the 50 people to win the drawing!!!! after waiting like... 3 months... and I know I put myself at risk of sounding like an ungrateful ass because I am unsure of her health ... However.... what I recieved... I couldve printed online myself. That being said... I truly do hope those who lost money... even those who lent her money to go to a show... ahem.. get paid back... I will say this... I will still pick a day next year and get together with my local idiots to clean a park or something.... just on our own.... As far as all the lies... or... truths coming out... I believe in Karma.

[captain peroxide]

Yeah, I've never heard of PayPal trying to "cheat" anyone. It's pretty suspicious that the whole "getting eBay winners to pay on Amazon instead" part of this seemed to be a pattern.

[Tripe]

Who loaned her money to go to a show???!!!

[Chris P FaFu]

Who loaned her money to go to a show???!!!

one of my friends... unfortunate...

[IscoredWaddlesgoals]

I know this sounds really random, but the grammar in those emails is appalling. Was she so crackers that she just expected/hoped people would believe her and never find out what she's done ? I just think if you wanted to come across as a professional you'd try a lot harder.

[pasalaska]

I know this sounds really random, but the grammar in those emails is appalling. Was she so crackers that she just expected/hoped people would believe her and never find out what she's done ? I just think if you wanted to come across as a professional you'd try a lot harder.

That's what I was thinking too.

If you want to become a government-recognised organisation, you can't go around writing like that...

[Daughter.of.Rage.and.Love]

I know this sounds really random, but the grammar in those emails is appalling. Was she so crackers that she just expected/hoped people would believe her and never find out what she's done ? I just think if you wanted to come across as a professional you'd try a lot harder.

She wrote like that everywhere, often worse, I think it's just how she types.

And have you seen the website? http://www.greendayacrosstheworld.org/

I know what you mean, Tony. I was discussing the party earlier with Alex and he said the same thing. The first time I actually ever spoke to Dawn at any length was at that party and she just seemed so out of it. But not blitzed in a good way (like some others at that party LOL). It felt more like I was talking to a really old person that didn't get what I was saying.

I find this interesting. I won't jump to any conclusions, but who knows that that may have also been the reason how this all worked out. Because it is indisputable that she had some good intentions (giving away shirts and tickets to concerts. I do not believe that that was part of a big scamming scheme), but this thread quite obviously illustrates how GDATW played out.

[Tripe]

The website was awful, I agree. Discussion about the website here on GDC was where I first saw Mallory challenging her, although at first it was because Mallory strongly felt that that website design person Dawn had supposedly hired for a couple of thousand dollars was taking advantage of her. Dawn was insistent in her support of that person and kept saying she had invested all this money of her own in the website and she thought it was great.

The grammar and spelling in those emails made my eyes roll back in my head too.

[Chris P FaFu]

I am just glad now there is somewhere for people to voice concerns... on this forum at least... I know GDA isnt responsible for any of this... but many people found out about this project through gda.... and I mean... MANY. And those who arent gdc'ers found out on facebook or twitter... via gda.. you cant really have a forum like this on twitter... and short of setting up a facebook page.. this is the best option

A member of my team also won... she hasnt recieved her "prize" yet ... I may just share mine with her...