Mills was a first-time entrepreneur, but he had received backing from high-profile investors like Mark Cuban, and according to the Motionloft website, the company had secured clients like CVS, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Cushman & Wakefield.
Several former friends say Mills was also fun to be around and generous about inviting them to party with him at various music festivals and in places like Las Vegas.
All of which is why, when Mills started asking friends if they wanted to invest in his company, a few of them jumped at the opportunity.
They say Mills cashed checks that altogether were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, promising them a small percentage of the company. Later, when he told them an acquisition was imminent, they felt confident they had made the right decision.
Mills is no longer part of Motionloft (Joyce Rietman is the CEO, effective December 1), and the validity of the investments his friends made while he was there is being called into question by earlier investors. As a result, after months of waiting, those friends now believe that not only was there no acquisition, but that it is possible they won’t get any of their money back. ...
... Sources say the private performance by Miguel, which cost $100,000, was never paid for. That was also true of the private jet charters, which included three separate flights into Vegas and four flights out, and cost nearly $100,000 altogether.
Justin Sullivan is the CEO of Private FLITE, the private jet service Mills used to charter the flights in November. He told me that Mills promised several days in a row he would pay for those flights by wire and later told Sullivan he would FedEx a check. Neither came.
After multiple attempts to reach Mills on the phone, Sullivan confronted Mills at his house to demand payment. Mills then wrote two checks for a total of nearly $294,000, but both bounced, Sullivan told me.