Carissa Reiniger Does not pay employees and contractors New York Nationwide

I was brought in to do some freelance work for Carissa during Q4 of 2013 for her book launch. She touts herself as someone who has started a "global" movement called Thank You Small Business to acknowledge small business for everything they do for the economy and to help small businesses obtain success but what I found is she takes advantage of small business owners to get them to do work for her and then doesn't pay them.

A friend had been doing some work for her on a 3 month contract basis reached out to me because she needed some help with the book launch. I pulled together the event and was able to get a few small businesses that I had relationships with to be present and donate their goods to this cause. She didn't bring her self-published books to the event for signing - instead she had postcards printed with the cover of the book explaining that books are too heavy to carry around. As it turns out, she hadn't written the book and was preselling something that didn't exist yet. She asked for me to continue to help with other projects, since I had shown myself to be capable. I was paid 2 weeks late for this work.

The designer who she contracted to design the cover made all the changes and edits she asked for quickly so it could be printed for the postcards for her book event. That woman still has not been paid. I was copied on an email recently and it's been over 5 months and she's still waiting to be paid.

After the event went well, she wanted to talk to me about a full-time position. She assured me that it was a salaried position with commission and I'd easily make what my target income was and used the previous guy who had worked for her as an example. She insisted the company was stable and in the past 8 years, she'd earned $7 million with her small business services. A week later when I told her I was interested, she told me that there was no way she was going to pay me that much and to come back to her with a proposal of what I thought I could bring to the table. The next meeting involved her telling me that if I could bring in enough sales, I could find a way to pay myself and that she wasn't going to pay me anything because she had no money (not sure where that "$7 million" went).

We agreed that I would continue with the project through the end of the year and she even wrote me two post dated checks for those months and then we'd reevaluate if it made sense for me to continue and for her to keep me. At the end of that month, she emailed to say that she couldn't pay me for the next month and to rip up that check. She also asked me not to deposit the check for the current month until she reached out and said to. Well 2 weeks went by and I hadn't heard from her so I started going to the bank that the check was issued and attempting to cash the check so I could get paid for my time/work. It took me a few times but finally, there was money in the account and I was able to cash it. She sent an email a few days later saying she'd wished I hadn't done that - clearly, she had no intention to pay me and that money was allocated for something else.

My friend who was contracted for the 3 month project is still owed $4,000. She has attempted to get paid for that over the last 4 months and she gets no response. She's reported her to the IRS and Carissa is now being investigated for not only not paying her but for not doing any paper work (I9) or reporting anything legally.

After all of this happened, I googled her and found some articles about her. In the comments, there's several different people who she owes money to for work over the past 8 years. This is clearly a pattern and I'm posting this for anyone who she's speaking to about working with her. Don't do it. You won't get what she's promising and you'll be taken advantage of.