Ex-2TheMart workers seek pay COMPANIES: Final checks bounced after its merger with GoToWorld.com, one says.
April 25, 2000
By CHRIS FARNSWORTH
The Orange County Register
IRVINE -- Kalin Hatfield thought he was signing up for the dot-com dream: getting in on the ground floor of a hot new company that offered stock options and "the opportunity of a lifetime."
Now, he and other former employees of 2TheMart in Irvine say they can't even cash their final paychecks.
Hatfield and as many as 25 other employees of the troubled e-commerce company were laid off after its merger with GoToWorld.com of Orange.
They say the merged company revoked their stock options and paid them with checks that bounced. The laid-off employees plan to show up at GoToWorld's offices at 10 a.m. today to demand what they say they're owed, Hatfield said.
Neither GoToWorld chief executive Ian Simpson nor former 2TheMart chief executive Steve Rebeil returned calls seeking comment.
The company's outside securities counsel, Richard Cutler, said, "(GoToWorld) has put money in the bank to cover the paychecks."
Cutler said he did not know if any paychecks bounced. He said no stock options were revoked, and then declined to comment further.
2TheMart launched in January 1999 with a promise to be the next eBay. Its stock jumped from $2 per share to $50, giving it a market value of almost $600 million.
But the company quickly ran into trouble: The Web site failed to materialize and the stock price plunged.
Both Rebeil and Dominic Magliarditi, 2TheMart's founders, were denied gaming licenses in Nevada amid concerns about money diverted from Rebeil's homebuilding company, and Magliarditi's tax problems.
In a recent interview, Rebeil -- now co-chairman of GoToWorld -- denied those allegations. But shareholders later filed lawsuits against him and Magliarditi, which are pending.
Hatfield, 30, was hired last November at 2TheMart as a customer support supervisor. He said he was optimistic about the company's future, despite its messy past. Hatfield said many people inside the company saw last month's merger with GoToWorld as a good sign. GoToWorld, an Internet directory site, claims 2 million registered users.
"The potential was there," Hatfield said. "We were just waiting for it to come together."
When the merger was announced, Hatfield said, Rebeil gathered all the 2TheMart employees. Tossing a Nerf football with 2TheMart's logo on it, Rebeil promised there would be no layoffs, Hatfield said.
"A week later I was laid off," he said.
Hatfield said not he nor anyone else laid off last week was given a final paycheck. They later came in the mail, he said, but bounced when employees tried to cash them.
The company's stock, which is traded on the Nasdaq OTC Bulletin Board, closed at $3.63 Monday, unchanged from Friday.
|
