DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. - IBill , the one-time kingpin of online processing for the adult industry, seems to have disappeared.
A visit today to its homepage shows that it has been replaced with an adult blog, G-Spot News.
A call to iBill’s parent company, Interactive Brand Development, via the number listed on its latest SEC filing, revealed the number to be disconnected. A call to a secondary number for IBD went through, although the company’s president, Gary Spaniak Jr., and Chief Executive Officer Steve Markley were unavailable for comment.
In its latest SEC filing, IBD posted a basic net loss of $105,668,558 for the three months ending June 30, 2006.
This March, iBill outsourced its payment processing to Etelegate, an offshore processor specializing in high-risk processing. Calls to Etelegate revealed only an automated system that runs the caller through a continuous loop, offering to cancel a transaction by asking for credit card, bank account, or transaction numbers.
The latest move by iBill is one in a long list of shady and/or questionable ones. The company’s problems first began in late 2004, when the company’s bank, First Data Merchant Services, decided not to renew iBill’s contract, thus crippling iBill’s ability to process.
In the end, webmasters who felt the brunt of iBill’s mismanagement were what signaled the company’s impending doom. Although re-bills and client data were still going through iBill, which in 2004 was managed by Care Concepts, no one was getting paid.
In early 2005, IBD came into the picture while trying to acquire Penthouse, which along with iBill was a subsidiary of Care Concepts. In what appeared to be a somewhat forced acquisition, Spaniak says that in order for his company to buy Penthouse, IBD was forced to take on iBill or lose a $20 million investment in the publishing company.
IBD initially began paying back some of the money owed to webmasters and appeared to be moving forward with iBill in good faith. Spaniak claimed that $30 million in past-due funds were paid back to webmasters.
Spaniak did not return multiple requests for comment by press time.
