IDW Publishing has a personnel problem with its former President, who had the job since the company’s founding, who now is going to prison for wire fraud after a recent conviction.
As a company, IDW Publishing has had about the rockiest several years a comic book publisher could accomplish. It seems they have personnel problems up and down the chain, which has led to a financial disaster where it’s been speculated the comic book publisher may not survive the upcoming months.
David Oser was their president since the founding of the company. He left in 2018 to “become an independent producer” in the middle of multiple shakeups where IDW Publishing replaced their CEO, among others.
Artist and writer Ben Templesmith exposed in 2023 that, “Last night I found out an IDW ‘executive’ since ‘let go’, was using actual company funds to pay the rents & more of at least two ‘sugarbabies’. What’s more, this is one of the guys who wrote me out of my own creator owned comic TV development deal, in-house at IDW. Wow.”
Whether this was the same situation or not is unclear, as Templesmith didn’t name names, but since that point, Fandom Pulse learned from an inside source that My Little Pony pulled the license after senior editor Heather Antos hired self-admitted drug addict and sex worker Tee Franklin to write on the children’s property, something the parent company apparently took offense to.
Last year, despite a huge success in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles relaunch, IDW Publishing went through massive layoffs amid financial turmoil, where publisher Mark Doyle was fired. Our insider said that despite all the hype of the #1 issue, he spent far too much on the talent and variant covers involved for it to be at a profit level the company anticipated.
Now, David Oser, the former company president has had legal troubles. According to IcV2, he received a sentence of 18 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud. This came from the US Attorney’s office of Central California. He was also ordered to pay $399,344.52 in restitution.
These instances came from embezzlement in TV production for his independent company where he apparently defrauded one of the investors for over $200,000 by faking invoices and providing false documents on his personal expenses.
He also attempted to launch a second series where he received loans and misused funs for personal matters.
Why IDW Publishing seems to keep hiring people who are bad for business is unclear, but it seems their lack of solid personnel might be a large indicator on how they got into the financial mess they’ve been in the last few years.
What do you think of former IDW executive David Oser going to jail for wire fraud? Leave a comment and let us know.
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