IP.Gold: A Cautionary Tale of A Tarnished ICO — Part 4

Published in

IP.Gold

10 min readJun 14, 2019

a multipart series told by the founders detailing how you can make all the right decisions and still fail.

Part 4: Demand Letter & Silence

So, after several launch delays, dozens of broken promises, misrepresentations and a complete lack of support and professional behavior from Tech Bureauテックビューロ株式会社 /COMSA we closed our ICO on the COMSA.Global platform, having wasted months of our lives, our reputations, tons of money and goodwill. And now the hard part began!

After a few weeks of discussions with Tom Beno, the CEO of Tech Bureau USA, and a Tech Bureau Japan board member, who was responsible for COMSA.Global, where we laid out Tech Bureau/COMSA’s clear violations of the deliverables as outlined in the contract and our corporate communications with regards to our 3 week launch delay, lack of promised support, etc, it was clear we were getting nowhere. When we started to push back harder regarding their fiduciary breach of contract for not delivering the services under the contract in a way that supported the minimal successful operation of our ICO, they accused us of not being ready, causing all the delays, under-funding the project and more. So we pushed harder, asking for damages for breach of the contract, to which Tech Bureau/COMSA responded that we were simply trying to extort money for a failed ICO — then gave us the usual “silent treatment” again! Funny thing is, during the time that all of this was going on, Tom Beno, told us that the Tech Bureau/COMSA board had, in light of the situation, decided to not invoice/charge us for the $100,000 fee as outlined in the contract, as a goodwill gesture! Wow, you screw us on launching and supporting our ICO over and over again, and now you’re going to be nice guys and not charges us for the services you either delivered late or didn’t deliver at all!

While it was nice of Tech Bureau COMSA to not charge us for services they delivered late or did not deliver at all in support of our ICO, the monetary and reputation damage they caused by not launching us on time on the COMSA.Global platform, were far greater than the $100,000 service fees outlined in the contract. Tech Bureau/COMSA clearly knew this and knew they were directly at fault for what happened — why else would they be so willing to not come after us for the $100,000 because they were getting off pretty cheap for not delivering on the still active contract and they got a scapegoat out of it that bought them another few months of time to keep drawing out their “long con” and laughing all the way to the bank! It’s not as if the $100,000 was real money out of their pockets they spent on launching the IP.Gold ICO, it was ours.

At this point, we asked Tech Bureau/COMSA to come to the table to discuss remuneration for our losses due to their delays and failed promises, as well as other options for resolving their obvious and blatant breach of contract and fiduciary responsibility. Nothing, silence. This is the normal response from Tech Bureau/COMSA at this point regarding any issue.

So, we were left with no choice but to send a lawyer advised demand letter to Tech Bureau EU and the Tech Bureau executives in Japan.

We sent certified registered mail to Comsa & Tech Bureau EU as per the contract, but the address was no longer valid we sent to the listed address on their EU site and the Japan site. We also emailed copies to Tom Beno, Patrick Spiess and Takao Asayama 朝山貴生 .

The Demand Letter Sent:

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August 23, 2018

Delivered via Certified Mail and Email

Tech Bureau, Corp.

c/o Takao Asayama

10th Floor, Mifune Honmachi Building,

1–5–18 Utsubo-Honmachi,

Nishi Ward, Osaka, Japan

Re: Breach of Contract and Fiduciary Representation of IP.Gold ICO/Token Sale

I am writing to inform you that Tech Bureau Europe SA/Tech Bureau, Corp./COMSA (“TB/COMSA”) is in breach of the terms of the Agreement signed with IPG Holdings, Inc. on April 23, 2018, as well as its fiduciary responsibilities as a business partner to the agreement as the service provider under this agreement. We are requesting a meeting immediately to take action to cure this breach of terms and fiduciary responsibilities.

Services to be delivered under this agreement by TB/COMSA in support of the IPG Holdings, Inc./IP.Gold ICO/Token Sale were not delivered on time or in a commercially acceptable manner. Additionally, promises and commitments made by TB/COMSA management were not kept, withheld, severely restricted and/or not delivered or acted upon, often at or just before a planned coordinated marketing plan effort made by IPG Holdings, Inc./IP.Gold. All of which resulted in a cascading and escalating erosion of marketing momentum, ICO community support and market confidence for the IP.Gold ICO/Token Sale, costing IPG Holdings, Inc./IP.Gold hundreds of thousands of dollars in time, direct marketing expense and an untold amount in lost contributions, as well as the business and personal reputations of the founders and team members of IPG Holdings, Inc./IP.Gold.

Further confirmation of a breach of this agreement and TB/COMSA’s fiduciary responsibilities came on August 8, 2018 with TB/COMSA publishing of a blog post on its official corporate site, https://comsa.io/en/54626.html, in which it states categorically, among other things, under Item №1, the development of COMSA Token Sale Platform is “Not yet completed”, and further, that “Planned to be implemented domestically by this company. However, not to be done until the environment is prepared. Planned to be implemented overseas by Tech Bureau Europe SA (mainly in Switzerland)”. This further affirms that TB/COMSA knew full well that its team and ICO/Token Sales SAAS platform were not commercially ready to support the IP.Gold ICO/Token Sale, or any other ICO/Token Sale, a clear violation of TB/COMSA’s fiduciary responsibilities and commercial terms of service under the agreement as a service provider.

Starting just days before the signing of the agreement between the parties and continuing through the Private Sale and the IP.Gold Public ICO/Token Sale, TB/COMSA made statements, promises and commitments that were never followed through on or turned out to be patently untrue.

TB/COMSA management and development team represented that their SAAS Platform was fully prepared to commercially support the IP.Gold ICO/Token Sale.
Tech Bureau, Corp/COMSA charmain, Takao Asayama, implored IPG Holdings, Inc. management to “sign the agreement, as I have private investors to introduce you to”. To date no investors of any kind have materialized from Takao Asayama or TB/COMSA.
Service defined in the agreement were either not provided in a timely manner or not provided at all:
Tech Bureau, Corp/COMSA failed to launch the IP.Gold ICO on the agreed upon launch date of May 2, 2018, instead launching in on May 28, 2018 — a full 26 days later. All marketing spend and marketing momentum IPG Holdings, Inc. had developed and coordinated for its launch date was lost. The impact of which is thousands of hours and dollars spent by the founders and other team members were wasted. Not to mention years of goodwill, industry & personal reputations and market confidence.
IP.Gold could fully accept all of its funding currencies on the COMSA platform for a further 14 days after the adjusted May 28, 2018 launch date.
An agreed upon apology statement/letter/email from the Charmain, Takao Asayama to the COMSA Community for the late launch of the IP.Gold ICO was never sent
A marketing email to be sent by Tech Bureau, Corp/COMSA as part of the apology for launching IP.Gold 26+ days late to approximately 800,000 COMSA CMS token holders and ZAIF exchange members was only sent to a limited group of 40,000 CMS token holders
No attempts were made by COMSA, Tech Bureau or its management to support IPG Holdings, Inc./IP.Gold, its ICO or its founders and team publicly or in the markets, leading to a further erosion of market confidence in IPG Holdings, Inc./IP.Gold and its founders/team
Tech Bureau, Corp/COMSA’s chairman and senior management chose to show no support to the COMSA global platform, development team and the launch of the IP.Gold ICO
Tech Bureau, Corp/COMSA and its chairman have shown no remorse, contrition or taken any responsibility whatsoever for the delayed launch of silence the IP.Gold ICO and the significantly damage that it had on the funding of the IP.Gold ICO and the continuing damage it is having to the operation and reputation of IPG Holdings, Inc., as well as its founders and team members, both personally and professionally.
The ongoing silence of Tech Bureau, Corp/COMSA and its management in the COMSA community with respect to itself and the IP.Gold ICO, are serving to further accelerate the claims that both IP.Gold and COMSA were just one big coordinated “money grab” scam to bilk investors and manipulate the CMS token price for “insider” COMSA gain.
The excuse from TB/COMSA and its Chairman, Takao Asayama, that Tech Bureau, Corp/COMSA’s “hands were tied” because of the FSA investigations appears hollow and does not match the facts, as several other multiple Japanese ICO companies similar to Tech Bureau, Corp/COMSA who were also “under investigation by the FSA” were conducting business as usual, promoting their platforms, ICOs, communities, and tokens, going to industry shows and generally supporting their contributors and communities.
Of more than 5,000 people completed a very complex Know Your Customer (KYC) process and accepted Terms of Service on the COMSA Platform, only 53 of them invested. This is both statistically insignificant at .011% of fully validated potential contributors and far below the average of 5% reported by several other ICOs interviewed. IPG Holdings, Inc./IP.Gold, its advisors, and many successful ICOs to believe that there were either significant anomalies in the acceptance of funds in the COMSA platform or Tech Bureau, Corp/COMSA deliberately siphoned off or blocked funds from potential contributors.

It is clear from the above, as well as other information and statements we have corroborated, that TB/COMSA took both willful actions or inactions to support IPG Holdings, Inc. and the IP.Gold ICO/Token Sale, even when said support was promised and confirmed through multiple channels, resulting in a complete collapse of the momentum of or confidence in the IP.Gold ICO/Token Sale. Even after the IP.Gold launch announcement on the TB/COMSA platform, which increased the CMS token price by over 30% in hours, TB/COMSA management and the ICO Committee continued to take direct actions to undermine the IP.Gold ICO/Token Sale. Was the IP.Gold ICO/Token Sale just a dupe, a patsy, a sacrifice, a fall guy for TB/COMSA to buy more time, or is it what the CMS token and greater ICO community believe it is, part of a scam perpetrated by COMSA to manipulate its token holders and the market for pump and dump gain when the lock on CMS tokens issued to management expires in November.

IPG Holdings, Inc., IP.Gold ICO/Token Sale, its founders, advisors and team members are not a scam and are prepared and committed to use any and all information and tools at its disposal to defend the company and their personal and professional reputations in any and all private and public forums available.

If you wish to be honorable and to discuss with us how we can resolve this breach of contract and fiduciary responsibility quickly and amicably, please contact us within the next 10 Business Days. Otherwise, we will be forced to move forward with defending ourselves.

IPG Holdings Inc.

CEO — Founder CIO — Founder

IPG Holdings, Inc. IPG Holdings, Inc.

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Within days of the demand letter being delivered, the various channels for communication with the company started to dry up, disappear and be deleted. However, the IP.Gold ICO is still the only “completed” ICO listed on the COMSA.Global website, and most of the social media and other posts on COMSA regarding IP.Gold remain.

In one of our last direct conversations with Tech Bureau/COMSA, we were told in a fit of rage that “your ICO sucked, it was never going to work, we should never have done it, you are trying to extort money you don’t deserve….”, all because we demanded again that they take responsibility for the significant momentum and reputation impact their 3 week IP.Gold ICO launch delay and non completion of the contract caused and pay us remuneration as per the terms of our signed contract!

I guess when you have over $300M+ in other peoples cash you are the “all-powerful” corporation that can do or say anything you want to bleed the little guys dry — or simply ignore them or anyone that has an issue with them.

Funny, all the time the IP.Gold ICO was languishing and dying and our reputations were slowly eroding, being called scammers & having physical violence threats hurled at us: the social media pages of Takao Asayama and others at Tech Bureau/COMSA were showing lots of expensive swiss watches and other toys they were buying and having fun with! All of the posts and images showing this extravagant spending have been removed now.

Finally, after a few months, after we published the first part of this story, Takao Asayama reached out directly to an IP.Gold founder, stating that he wanted to jump on a call “to solve the problems and talk again as friends”. Great! But, when given an itinerary about the call repeating our demand that we should be compensated for the breach of contract, Takao never responded and the IP.Gold founder(s) were eventually deleted from his personal telegram account @takaoasayama.

We are making an earnest attempt to resolve this open and active contract before this goes to far. But their only response to date has been posted that ‘We cannot say anything publicly about the issue and that it is being handled internally”. We are still waiting for them to contact us!

Part3: Downhill From Here!

Part 5: Oh, There Are Documents! — The IP.Gold WikiLeaks Evidence Dump Is Here! — Coming soon

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Here is a list of COMSA/Tech Bureau major investors. We ask that everyone copy and paste this story and their own personal tails and send them directly to the following:

Infoteria Co.Ltd. (now Asteria)

https://www.asteria.com/en/

ww-business@asteria.com

Ouka Wave Co., Ltd

https://www.okwave.co.jp

https://go.okwave.co.jp/contact

Shinsei Bank

https://www.shinseibank.com

https://www.shinseibank.com/english/crm/form/n01/

JAFCO

http://www.jafco.co.jp

ir@jafco.co.jp