Feb 27 2009
Dragon*Con’s Founder, Ed Kramer, Sues His Successor Over Money
Uh oh! This doesn’t sound good: Dragon*Con founder Ed Kramer is suing current director of Dragon*Con, Robert Patrick Henry, for “allegedly shortchanging him on stock proceeds.” According to the court documents filed by Kramer, Henry misspent funds in Vegas, and hired “unqualified” family members. Henry is also accused of hiding financial documents from Kramer. And finally, Kramer is also accusing Henry of under reporting attendance figures to mislead the Fire Marshall. Kramer actually hired private investigators to case the 2008 con, where they counted 41,000 people. Whereas Dragon*Con’s estimate put that figure at more than 30,000.
Neither party has issued a comment to the press about the suit.
You can see the original news article here.
The only commentary I will add is that I have long heard rumors about the Fire Marshall situation being a problem. I am not saying that Henry, or anyone else, tried to dupe the Fire Marshall. Only that I know attendees have had issues with the Fire Marshall shutting down events, and otherwise causing some difficulties with evening programming and picture taking in the Hyatt.
I just hope this doesn’t impact the 2009 convention, or any future conventions, no matter what the outcome is (especially since Barry Bostwick is attending this year!).
@ Jonathan
I did see the charges about molestation in the original article. I don’t know that it negates his moral authority, especially if indeed Henry has also done something wrong/illegal. This is by no means a justification of any of this, and it may be naive to say, but everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
As for the fire marshall… someone in the Dragon*con LJ community made a good point: that he’s there for our safety. Heaven forbid something truly bad happen, and people get trampled to death, hurt, or trapped as a result of so many people. I admit to having been in areas so crowded that I did actually feel a bit unsafe. I’d rather have the fire marshall enforcing the laws, then some awful tragedy happen. It seems like there needs to be better planning involved, or perhaps an outright attendance cap, to solve this issue. Not a condemnation of the fire marshall.
Oh, please, the only reason Kramer is doing this (besides needing money) is to delay his damn child molestation trial. For someone who claims to be eager to “prove his innocence”, he sure finds ways of making sure his court date is always 6 months down the road! The man’s a liar, thief & pervert, plain and simple. There was even a series of articles in the Atlanta paper a couple years back about how he bamboozled several million dollars out of the federal goverment as part of an internet scam. Talk about boondoggles! Still, DragonCon derves a black eye for turning a blind one to Kramer’s arrest for kid diddling the FIRST time, back in 1996. I’m not surprised he’s decided to try and destroy DragonCon–it serves no more use to him. Just like Michael Jackson & Neverland Ranch.
This is yet another example of how ‘geek’ has become mainstream. We may as well be talking about regular old politics. It kind of sucks the fun out of conventions and other such activities.