We ALL already knew Regent Media — owners of Out, The Advocate, here! TV, Gay.com, and a slew of porn properties — was broke, destitute, scammy, bitchy, and at general risk of collapse. Little did we know the company's proprietors may be behind a $90 million scam involving two huge Wall Street banks.
In order to score $90 million in loans from Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, Regent allegedly created fake movie licensing and distribution deals and passed them off to the banks as legitimate contractual relationships that would drive future revenue. The banks, of course, needed reason to believe Regent would have the ability to pay back its debts based on earnings to come. The fake agreements, the banks claim in a fraud and breach of contract lawsuit filed against Regent, were purposefully drafted by the company to trick the banks, with Regent allegedly knowing full well its deals were crap.
A few current and former Regent employees, some of whom have had better experiences working under Jarchow than others, but the reactions are all the same:
• "Not surprising!!"
• "This is a long time coming. I worked there for [a number of years] and could never figure out how the company made money. But [Jarchow and Colichman] always seemed to have plenty of cash" [Ed: Check out Colichman's huge L.A. home he recently bought.]
• "I would have never thought they were [scamming banks] for this much money, but it it's true it all makes sense."
• "I wondered how they kept downsizing the company [closing magazines like Unzipped, HIV Plus, and shuttering the newsstand version of Out] but were able to keep paying themselves so much money. Now we know."
