The dark side of the Moon(light)

Last winter, I fell in love with a TV show, "Moonlight." The series ran on CBS for 16 short episodes and I've been heartsick over it ever since.But during the last three weeks, my attention has been absorbed by the online soap opera this cancellation gave birth to.

The setting for the soap opera is a Web site, www.moonlightline.com, run by a woman known online as "Leeser."

By default, since Leeser owned the site and said she had sources at the show, she became the leader of that little corner of the fandom. She collected money for various things: coffee for the cast and crew, pizza for the writers during the strike, birthday presents for the cast and more. Nice things we wanted to do to thank them for their hard work. Yes, somehow in the madness of loving a show, I decided that actors who make at least triple my salary per episode needed free coffee and a pretty, pretty birthday present.

She decided to host a pricey convention in Los Angeles at about $150 a head, sending more than $20,000 directly into her bank account.

All the while hundreds of fans were sending tens of thousands of dollars her way for various projects. When the show got canceled, in a desperate rescue effort, the fans raised $15,000 and more for ads in trade publications, an anonymous donor steps forward to pay for ads on LA buses and sends Leeser $11,000 back in July.

The magazine ads appeared on time as promised, but the bus ads don't. They are late. And the anonymous donor begins to worry. Not a lot. Leeser's had thousands of dollars from the fans in her bank account over the last few months. Sure, no one has any accounting of them, but the fans trust her and the fact that she wants "Moonlight" as much as if not more than anyone else.

Over the course of a month, Leeser produces a variety of excuses regarding problems with the printer. They didn't get the art. There's an unspecified hold-up. An unspecified printer error means the ads must be redone. The dog ate her homework.

Leeser makes regular posts to the Web site about the delays when badgered, seeming herself the soul of patience and calm demeanor. E-mails fly across the Web not just from worried, "Moonlight"- deprived fans, but also from the anonymous donor to Leeser.

Repeated "issues with the printer" are blamed for the better part of a month and the donor decides to cut out the middle man. She contacts the advertising and printing companies herself.

Only to discover there is no problem on that end.

Leeser hasn't paid for the printing. She hasn't delivered the art work. The donor's $11,000 is somewhere, but it isn't paying for bus ads.

Her calls to Leeser get a little more frantic and a little more frequent. The printer receives $925 to pay for the actual printing, but still has no art from Leeser, who's not returning phone calls from the donor.

Finally, the donor realizes that she may be watching her money circle the drain. So she posts an announcement on the board with her accounting of the facts and asking for Leeser to respond. Hundreds of active fans, who've also entrusted Leeser with plenty of their own money, are suddenly very interested in what happened to this money.

The stench of misconduct is in the air and suddenly there was a possibility of money gone missing.

Which is where I came into the picture again. Back in July, I pestered Jason Smith, the graphics editor here into creating the ad, so when I read that post, I contacted the donor and became embroiled in the sordid tale. I sent her another copy of the file for the ad and ended the no-art argument. The printers have the art, the donor signs off on it and now the burden is solely on Leeser. The original contract expired Aug. 24, but they granted her an extension until Sept. 18 to produce the remaining money or there will be no ads.

In the spirit of the Internet, everyone has an opinion. Some plead for patience and trust in Leeser. Others demand an explanation and all the little black marks on her record begin to look that much darker.

Leeser reveals a tale of woe and ill fortunate that is stranger than any soap opera. The hold up, it seems is due to theft. Not Leeser's - she's the victim. Apparently the donor gave her two payments for the ads and for reasons still unclear, she cashed the second check and wandered into downtown L.A. with $3,000 cash in her wallet. Which she says was stolen.

She did not file a police report. She did not tell the donor. Instead, the woman concocted all manner of lies more appropriate to a four-year-old than a 44-year-old.

Leeser claims embarrassment as the reason for her lies and obfuscation, but still has not paid for the ads. Or returned the remainder of the money. An online uproar commences as the donor produces e-mails and other evidence to support every aspect of her story. Leeser posts a scanned copy of her driving license, claiming that to be proof of the theft of her wallet, containing the money.

With the door opened to that bit of misconduct, others come pouring in. Further questions began to be asked about the handling of fan donations. The other people who helped with the convention detail about a $10,000 in the money collected and the costs for the event.

Then the matter of magazine ads arise. No one is in any doubt that the money was collected, the ads appeared as promised. But no one knows exactly how much money was collected and Leeser has not responded to requests for a full accounting. Her silence was deafening.

But the ringing of my phone was not. My number is the only one that Variety has, other than Leeser's. The advertising representative, sounding much like the ones I hear calling local businesses from the other side of the newspaper office, called me to find out if she can get any other information about Leeser. Because Leeser has not paid for the ads. Her credit card, used to secure the full page ad, was declined. Since I'm used to hunting people down for stories, I managed to find an address and other small bits of information for the magazine.

On a hunch, I called The Hollywood Reporter and find out they, too, are quite interested in the whereabouts of Leeser, aka: Lisa Gerry.

About this time, people begin to ask the questions they should have in the beginning. Who is this woman? Can she be trusted with huge amounts of money?

What even a consummate con artist may not realize is that once something is on the Internet, it is there for the long haul. You can delete a page but odds are good the Google bot archived it and there are entire sites dedicated to archiving old pages. With just one bit of information people's tracks are quite easy to find.

Leeser had disclosed her real name and her mailing address, so researching her was as easy as Google. The woman had her fingers in all sorts of online schemes. She offered 24-hour notary services, Web design and public relations work. She had a pagan online church, a pagan preschool with accusations of fraud, pagan lawyers, the pagan kitchen sink.

She squatted on famous folks' domains and "facilitated" virtual life assistants.

She had a really bad dominatrix page and not-safe-for-work ads for her services.

And all this for a fee.

A site was ultimately set up to track her cyber comings and goings and there were plenty of them.

It turns out Leeser was a lot more than just a super-fan trying to get "Moonlight" back on the air. She hadn't been working since January and maybe the fandom just started pouring money at her at just the wrong time, provided just the wrong temptation. But she refused to address the concerns of the people who'd put their trust in her.

Ultimately, Leeser shut the site down rather than answer questions, scattering critics to the winds of the Web and leaving people a little bit more cynical, a little bit more wise and with a little less money in the wallet.

I suppose this is less a soap opera and more a morality play. The lesson learned is to never send money across the Internet unless you're prepared to lose it. The Web can be the ultimate in self-delusion and mystery. No one is necessarily what they seem and a lie can be told with the click of a keyboard.

After all, there are places on the Web where I'm a skinny, leggy blond with an interest in skydiving and physics. But that's, um, another blog...

- Mariah

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