Amelia Meloni PR Vintage New York City Magazine, Vintage NYC Magazine, Rainmaker LLC Copyright infringement, slander, libel, con artist, theft New Shoreham New York

Amelia Meloni PR has been using the Vintage New York City name to promote a magazine that was not fully paid for by her. My company, Stars and Stripes Marketing LLC, designed all of the original artwork, websites, and graphic design work that was done on the project. Part way into the third magazine, it was disclosed to me by a friend of Amelia's (accidentally) that she had taken money for ad space.

This was odd because Amelia told my team that she couldnt sell any ads for the third one.. so we would have to do it for free until the magazine took off. I did two magazines and only was only paid our full price - barely - for the first one. That didn't include the free website and an extra site I did for HER PR FIRM! It's still not live because she ended up ripping off another guy who started a site for her. (she plays dumb watching others do her work)

The verbal agreement (and in email traffic) was that Amelia would sell ads and promote the magazine at events in New York City. I would handle all aspects of production - business cards, website, logo design, print ad design, magazine design, and copy editing. I even wrote her articles because English is not her first language and she didn't want to write. I ended up also writing all the press releases, managing emails, domain names, and more. I paid for all of it.

The logo I created was NOT trademarked by her or by me, but I have records of dates the artwork was approved by Amelia via email. Also my entire staff worked on it. I incurred payroll costs, and other costs that Amelia did not. She would not provide itemized receipts, contracts or other materials that I asked for on numerous occasions. She did not want to do a formal partnership agreement (HUGE RED FLAG - DUH) and so I outlined everything in an email and sent to her for approval, and that was ok for me so we moved forward.

My pay was supposed come from ad sales and ticket sales for events split with her 50/50, but she donated a portion of those sales, so I would get almost nothing at the end.

When I told her I was not willing to foot the bill for the third edition, she flipped out, and is still upset. She is trying to make her case that she started the magazine and I'm a scammer trying to take her copywritten material.  

She now has celebrities and wealthy friends like Robert Davi, Mina D Jewelry, Run DMC, Real Housewives of New Jersey stars, and others who probably would pay her, if they haven't already, to sue me.

I'm a small business and WAS an overly trusting person. This taught me a lot, so when I get a chance to sue her, I'll thank her for teaching me a lesson. She is a snake. Her and her husband are in it together. She says he beats her and she needs help getting out of her "situation". I've been to her home, it's huge and all of her neighbors are wealthy. He pays all her bills and she goes to parties. So today, from her huge Long Island home, she wrote a report against my marketing firm.

She is extremely upset that I won't give her all of the material that I created on her behalf. I gave her a breakdown of costs and if it was paid I would gladly give her the materials, but she laughed and said I was crazy and she isn't going to pay me, but she will continue to use the name. I gave her the idea, I bought the domains. Why didn't she do all that herself if she was the one who thought of all of it? I ALREADY had a business involving Pin-ups which is why I was already into vintage stuff. She never cared about vintage anything and her style is far from that era. You can see a huge change in her previous super modern photos to the ones she has done since we met and started the magazine.

Her husband has a business called "Rainmaker" with no explanation anywhere on the internet as to what he does. He does her taxes and I'm sure puts her Amelia Meloni stuff under his name, or she just puts checks in her personal account.

I know she never works for free, so I am sure she made a lot of money on this while I had four people on payroll busting their asses to do the right thing. I flew to NYC twice to meet with her and she had tons of excuses. She is mainly upset because I wouldn't work for free. I was paid a total less than $5,000 for two magazines, 40-pages each plus the expenses that I outlined above. The photos I received were not good on the first issue but we worked with it. NEVER AGAIN.

None of her staff members are paid and she had no plans to pay them, even though she told them they'd get paid eventually. I hope they see what she really is up to because the true colors will come out in the end.