Thomas Wictor

A con artist relies on people not checking too deeply into his background. I was guilty of that when I hired Mike Albee and Lura Dold of Sandpiper Publicity on July 5, 2013. In my defense, I’d just fired another ripoff PR firm—one that has a stellar reputation, by the way—that same day, and the day before, I’d visited Mom and seen that she was determined to die.

I spent all of 2013 in a near-continuous state of dissociation brought about by post-traumatic stress disorder. My parents’ suicides also made the brain fog of Meniere’s disease so intense that I neglected to pay bills, locked myself out of my house multiple times, wore my pants inside out in public on several occasions, and often forgot how old I am and what year it was.

The end result was that Mike and Lura bilked me of $40,000 by double billing me, charging me for services they never carried out, and not following through on promises made. Mike said in our initial phone consultation of July 1, 2013, that he had spent twenty years at Random House. During my conversation with one of Albee’s victims yesterday, the person laughed when I said that.

“He used the same line on me,” the person said.

Albee’s second fake agency, Magnus Publicity, claims a variation on that theme. Click here to see a screen shot from the site. That bogus company history has two lies in it. First, the company was not founded in 2009. It was founded in 2013.

Secondly, the “leadership team” is Mike Albee. Here’s Mike’s résumé in his own words, written in 2009 and found here.

See anything about twenty years at Random House or anywhere in the publishing industry? Mike Albee outs himself as a fraud.

Busted, Mike. Owned. Game, set, and match. You’re a liar with no experience in publishing.

What Mike has done for twenty years, he says, is study “the UFO and paranormal phenomenon[sic].”

Because as we all know, there’s only one UFO and paranormal phenomenon out there. Looks like Mike needs to ask for his money back from whatever diploma mill gave him his BA in English.

In 2011 Mike described himself thusly on Twitter.

“LA based journalist covering tech.” Again, nothing whatsoever to do with publishing. And from my own experience, he knows crap about tech. Two different Web designers said he made a complete mess of my site.

One more lie, from Sandpiper Publicity.

No. Sandpiper has been in the business since 2013.

And none of their clients victims have been on Good Morning America, CNN, ABC Nightly News, Nightline, TIME, PBS, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Howard Stern, Family Circle, Women’s World, or Entrepreneur.

For one thing, a person is featured in a publication, not on it. For another, the only people ever featured on Howard Stern are his girlfriends and wives. Everyone else is featured on his show.

It’s a pain in the neck, but now we have to investigate every single claim before we do business with someone. I’ve heard from people who were hired by Mike, and they tell me he doesn’t pay and then laughs at them. It seems as though you have to become an expert at something before you hire an expert to do it for you, which defeats the purpose of needing that expert.

At least now you know that Mike Albee has admitted to being a liar. He has no—repeat, no—experience in the publishing industry. I believe he probably was a nighttime cleaning boy, a pizza maker, and a bartender. Drunks go where the booze is, he likes fatty foods, and he’s absolutely suited for pushing brooms.

Steer clear of him and his wife Lura Dold. They’re exactly like Russell and Taylor Armstrong of the TV show The Real Housewives of Beverley Hills. He borrowed money in order to live far beyond his family’s means and to keep up with their wealthier…whatever-they-ares. Certainly not friends in any meaningful sense of the word.

Russell hanged himself on August 15, 2011.

Mike Albee and Lura Dold are extremely good at convincing people of their authenticity in one-on-one conversations. But they’re also sloppy morons when it comes to covering their tracks. If we had a professional class of journalists in this country instead of the know-nothing buffoons, fanboys, deranged screechers, and jellyfish that report on almost nothing of consequence, Mike and Lura would’ve been driven out of the publishing industry long ago.

Well, my Website is now Mike Albee and Lura Dold Central. Keep on sending in the tips.

And thanks for the info, Father Who Dances. I picture you and your son dancing to this song.

It makes me very happy to know that there are fathers who dance. God bless you.