I've spoken to an attorney about this. He believes that there is certainly a case here. With some very rough numbers, let's say there are 200 participants in this group buy and that the average cost per participant is somewhere around $300. That means that the total amount payed to Weaston (Gray Industries, LLC via Shopify) MINTAUTUMN/Jaxxstatic was somewhere in the neighborhood of $60,000. There are a few options.
The attorney says that the group could bring a lawsuit and that the cost to do this, if all 200 group buy participants also participated in the lawsuit, would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 per participant. This probably isn't the first course of action to take, but is absolutely an option available to us and not something so astronomical as to be completely out of the realm of possibility.
Separate from a civil lawsuit, the attorney believes that taking $60,000 without delivering any product likely constitutes felony fraud. As such, we are going to begin a discussion with The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services which, as far as we can tell, seems to be the appropriate department to take the first steps with.
My PMs are open for any questions. I do not yet need any personal information from anyone to continue moving forward. However, it would be helpful to start getting an idea about who's interested, and how much you spent on this GB, separate from this thread, just so these rough numbers can get slightly less rough. If either course above is to be taken, we'll need to offer evidence. It will also likely be possible for the attorneys to get this information from Shopify if a lawsuit is filed.
It is still my sincere hope that Weaston Jaxxstatic will simply do the right thing, expediently, and ship everyone's orders. I do not believe he has any malicious intent and do not savor the idea of having to take this to court. I think we all just want this to end with everyone as happy as is possible at this point.
/s
