DAN PRICE CRIMINAL OR PROFESSIONAL BACKLASH UNLIKELY

Millennial media darling Dan Price might have raped, assaulted and otherwise abused a multitude of women, let alone bilked his industry of millions, but punishment for doing so is a longshot at best.

Legions who have read Hundred Eighty Degrees articles about Price’s transgressions should not expect him to be perp-walked any time soon, largely due to systemic issues.

Hundred Eighty Degrees has conducted nearly six years of on-again-off-again reporting during which Price buoyantly navigated detractors. In no uncertain terms has he proved his innocence. Then again, he hasn’t needed to.

Perhaps that’s because only a handful of parties have publicly requested that his apparent cruelty be vigorously probed.

Time and again, folks ask why any of this matters, why Price is worth a lick of investigative reporting. And time and again, the answer lands on the same mark. Price personifies the steady erosion of truth amidst the steadier construction of rabidly shared fiction via social platforms, city council meetings, even propaganda-cum-advertising showcases that masquerade as news.

At his core, Price is a small-time, small business owner who hails from small town America. Yet, he has masterfully manhandled so-called progressive paragons — including the likes of Bernie Sanders and Harvard — while bamboozling faithful followers under forty from every corner of the globe.

After all, Price runs a credit card company. He and his business snatch money from people. Lots of it. He works hand-in-hand with some of the world’s most notorious financial goliaths.

More importantly, Price paid himself silly sums until his underpaid over-worked staff started jumping ship in droves.

Company morale was in the dumps. His business partner brother sued him for bilking the business they built. And beastly secrets about Price’s abusive personal and professional behavior abounded.

Then Price claimed he had an epiphany — he would give his employees a wage that made up for all the money he had taken from them for years during a time when Occupy Wall Streeters were bashing other mostly rich, white men for doing doing the very same thing.

Somehow Price convinced the The New York Times and NBC that his do-over was worth their column inches and cameras. They showed up in his carefully staged conference room to hear him — a younger, rich, white guy — convince the masses that he was actually a national treasure.

And off he went into the global mediaverse, all because he was cunning enough to recognize an opportunity when he smelled it.

Price has since ordained himself commander-in-chief of some quasi-political movement. He recycles sound bytes excoriating big, bad rich guys to the adulation of those who don’t see the forest for its trees.

He blathers on about how “the little guy or gal” from Main Street USA gets a raw deal from those millionaire and billionaire bullies who steal their futures. Meanwhile, Price hired a ghostwriter — a former Seattle Times reporter and admitted sexual predator — to craft such cloned content because Price himself is far too busy wake-surfing behind his yacht.

Anyone who thinks such an assertion is hogwash should do two things. First, take a look at one of film’s most iconic moments when an exasperated Bud Fox interrogates Wall Street titan Gordon Gekko with the line, “How many yachts can you waterski behind?”

Second, watch the Instagram clip of Price literally waterskiing behind his yacht. And, yes, he bought the yacht with the same money he used to extremely overpay himself at the expense of his then underpaid employees.

Price’s abuse of the truth and of people is a by-product of what he learned in his very own household. In fact, the Price family has a rather dubious history of selling ice to eskimos.

His father Ron peddled fake pills to vulnerable populations who thought they could beat cancer and other deadly maladies. The FDA eventually caught on and shuttered Ron’s pyramid scheme. Ron avoided jail time but needed a new playground to peddle new wares.

So, he launched something called Price Associates. His new pill is “thought leadership” that he and a team of like-minded Christians peddle to small businesses that seemingly seek to transform company culture by way of Ron’s magic sparkle dust.

Sound familiar?

After all, Ron and son Dan essentially sell the same thing — the notion of Oz. There’s no place like home where if they say something enough, it must be true.

At the heart of all of it is their obsessive desire for validation, for adoration, for control over the narrative. This endemic fame-hunting is part and parcel of our current culture fixated on reality TV, YoutTube stars and Insta-everything.

More alarming, however, is that Price can continue to gorge himself on a diet of apparent professional exploitation, psychological arson and physical terrorism with absolute impunity, if not ardent protection.

We’ve seen this movie before, thanks to our former president, former politicians, former Hollywood producers, former news anchors, former sports stars and a bounty of other largely male miscreants who believe women are inflatable sex toys until women rightfully began burning down that myth.

Speaking of mythis, Price has guilefully positioned himself as a savior-savant for the progressive populace. But what millions apparently tend to conveniently forget is that, soon after he made his $70K pitch, Price sat on the set of Varney & Co., a FOX News staple segment, and said he did not support a healthier minimum wage. He also said he wanted businesses to run the show, not government.

Both talking points are about as FOX as it gets.

Yet, look at him now — shepherd of the little guy and gal, the suckerpunched middle class, the bewildered tribes of Gens Y, Z and Alpha, all after the speaking fees, the yacht, the multi-million dollar house, the nonstop press for being a credit card guy in a superhero suit.

While his foot soldiers are as faithful as they come, his detractors, including some who are über-progressives, have labeled Price’s professional and personal pursuits akin to cult-building.

Pop culture purveyors such as Trevor Noah, Russell Brand and Esquire Magazine have winked and nodded about how Price has steadfastly transitioned his likeness to that of the Son of God.

And with every divine leader comes a throng of acolytes willing to feverishly defend the acts of their chosen one. Here are a handful of Price’s LinkedIn devotees who responded to Hundred Eighty Degrees posts and articles.

Unhinged, vitriolic, abusive social platform warriors are one thing. Abuse itself is another.

Since Price was a teenager, his private life has been unusually riddled by he-said-she-said abuse.

In 2003, Price, his brother Lucas and father Ron stole proprietary information and client lists from a credit card processing company. The company sued the Prices who settled the case before trial. A non-disclosure sealed the details.

Apparently, Dan and Lucas still used the information to launch Gravity Payments from Dan’s college dorm room.

Two years later, Kathy Adams, one of Price’s early employees, initiated a lawsuit that accused Price of stealing an abundance of her commission monies. Again, Price settled right before the jury trial. And again, he demanded an NDA.

He also illegally recorded Adams’ phone calls, according to a sworn affidavit from a party who helped Price with the recordings. Doing so is a felony.

But nobody pursued charges.

That same year as a 21-year-old, Price married Kristie Colón. According to Colón’s highly detailed writings topped off by her TEDx Talk, all of which Hundred Eighty Degrees has viewed, Price brutalized her for years. He beat her. He sexually assaulted her. He tortured her to the brink before she eventually moved clear across the nation to live a life she could control on her own terms.

Colón did not sue Price or report any incidents to Seattle police. She has said that she believed Price might have dialed up his torture if she did pursue charges against him, including by way of defamation suits. Price and company did dangle such a possibility after Colón’s TEDx Talk.

Colón made this statement for Hundred Eighty Degrees:

“No woman owes the public her story of pain. And it should not be her responsibility—any victim’s responsibility—to hold problematic people accountable. Being a survivor is enough. There are plenty of bystanders who are aware of predatory and abusive behavior, and I would challenge those who have seen such abuse, in this circumstance and others, to speak up in order to promote change.” — KRistie Colón

While Colón is correct that no woman — or man, by the way — owes the public such a story, it is nonetheless hard to square her notion that we should challenge bystanders to be the ones responsible for speaking up and taking action, considering the lion’s share of such abuse is conducted in private, like that which Colón herself alleged.

Deploying bystanders as proxies also sets up a host of problems compounded by those that already exist. Many regional and national advocacy groups, such as RAINN, already support victims in a variety of legislative and logistical ways.

There are plenty of “problematic people” who do not rape and beat others. Being problematic is not a crime. Rape is. Assault is.

Therefore, surviving abuse is indeed a mighty triumph, but to say that it is enough is to perpetuate a significant obstacle in that if fewer and fewer victims themselves fail to report, the system will suffer even more than it currently does.

Victims do not report such crimes for many reasons: fear of reprisals from their abusers, shame, confusion, economic or reputational concerns, distrust in law enforcement.

However, many if not most such victims must also deal with a system buckled under by the he-said-she-said paradigm, which is largely favorable to what “he” said.

One of the most sinister if not heartbreaking symbols of a broken system is the fact that Seattle and other cities are enduring outrageous backlogs in processing “rape kits,” which means that sexual assault crimes are consistently at the bottom of the priority pile.

Naysayers who scorch Hundred Eighty Degrees over its reporting of Price-related abuse consistently say they do not believe women who refuse to file police reports, especially if those women subsequently decide to make anonymous allegations.

This is hardly news, considering even a renowned reporter with a far-reaching pedigree like Ronan Farrow took years to corral support for his stories about abuse at the highest levels of entertainment and government.

Farrow’s widely reported battles with NBC epitomize how media outlets too often bury the lead if it affects their bottom line.

Joanne Belknap’s distressing research titled “Rape: Too Hard to Report and Too Easy to Discredit Victims,” is further proof that society often coddles the assailant and criminalizes the abused.

Victim-blaming is a deeply damaging act. Communities must provide both emotional support and efficacious resources for victims to receive the redress and encouragement they deserve.

That said, here are the facts about sexual assault:

• As sociologist, criminologist and false rape allegation expert Sandra Newman has illustrated via extensive research, roughly .5% of sexual assault allegations are false, not 5-10% according to FBI reports.

• An American is sexually assaulted every 68 seconds.

• 1 in 6 women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape during her lifetime.

• 33% of women who are raped contemplate suicide, 13% attempt it.

• 90% of adult rape victims are female, 82% of youth victims are female.

• 72% of sexual violence is committed by an acquaintance or intimate current or former partner.

• Rape and sexual violence of a spouse or long term partner are both common.

• For every thousand sexual assaults:

  • 70%+ of victims do not file reports.

  • 5% lead to an arrest.

  • 3% lead to a felony conviction.

  • 2.5% lead to jail time.

• For every thousand assaults/batteries:

  • 62% are reported.

  • 25% lead to an arrest.

  • 10% are referred to prosecutors.

  • 4% lead to a felony conviction.

  • 3% lead to jail time.

HOWEVER, All hope is far from being lost. This study concludes that more women report their own abuse when they share it with loved ones who encourage them to contact authorities.

Since communicating with Colón beginning in 2015, other women — and some men — continued to send emails to Hundred Eighty Degrees about Price’s harassment, terror, harm.

Two women recently told Hundred Eighty Degrees that Price raped them. With Colón’s allegations, three women have now alleged that Price committed savage sexual crimes.

One of those women — who only briefly dated Price — filed a police report that detailed how Price raped her in the Ace Hotel Palm Springs, California, after she had taken a sleep aid for persistent insomnia.

Price has not publicly responded to that allegation.

Another woman claimed that Price raped her in Seattle, prior to the Palm Springs rape. The conditions under which Price allegedly raped her were similar to the Palm Springs incident. However, she did not report to Seattle police nor has she considered doing so at this time, despite the 20-year extended statute of limitations.

Rape in the second degree is a Class A felony in Washington, punishable by up to life in prison.

Price has not publicly responded to that allegation.

Another prior former girlfriend alleged that Price videotaped them having sex without knowledge or consent. She also claimed that Price broke into her computer, stole passwords and attempted to gather compromising information should she be inclined to report him.

Each of these Class C felony offenses is punishable in Washington by up to five years of prison. She too has not alerted police.

Price has not publicly responded to the allegations.

One year before Colón divorced Price, Natalie McKinnon said Price assaulted her at a bar-restaurant and stole her ID. She said he would not return her ID unless she went to his place, presumably to engage in sex.

Price refused to return her ID for three days, until a friend of McKinnon’s forced Price’s employees to do so. McKinnon did not report the incident to police. The theft and the bruise on her arm equated to felonies.

Price has not publicly responded to those allegations.

Two years later, in 2013, Seattle police arrested Price for criminal trespass, property destruction and assault of Jeremy Johns at Paddy Coyne’s restaurant in Bellevue, Washington. A judge sentenced him to two-years of probation. According to a long history of judicial inequities, one might wonder if Price were Black or Latino such judgment might have been considerably different.

Price has not publicly responded to those charges.

Dozens of former Gravity Payments employees have said that Price dished a steady diet of workplace abuse, despite his breezy, pro-worker public persona. All of these employees have said that Gravity’s Chief Operating Officer Tammi Kroll and human resources staffers are complicit in enabling Price’s abusive behavior by way of their deafening silence.

A close high school friend and Gravity employee said that Price was not only extremely abusive in company meetings but also, for years, possessed by being recognized by girls and women.

The entire Gravity Payments marketing and communications team — of more than a dozen — quit toward the end of 2019 due to the abusive work environment, according to a former senior employee.

The fact that Price even had such a sizable marketing communications team for a small business says a lot about what he seems to care about: him.

In fact, Hundred Eighty Degrees acquired a video of Price in his house while a virtual “meeting” plays out on his computer with at least 20 employees who dissect his talking points for future media or public relations appearances.

Remember, this is a credit card processing guy — not some corporate titan — who cherry picks articles and adapts them as his own. It took him 11 years to make up for the exceptionally poor pay he had been dishing out while he used his outsize paychecks to party like it was 1999.

All of these employees have said that Price’s defamation of them and others in front of peers left his targets in tatters. Multiple employees have said they sought therapy after Price stripped them of their self-worth.

All of these employees have also mentioned their fear of having signed a non-disparagement agreement that they believe Price will enforce through his devoted team of lawyers.

Price cleverly tied the agreement to their new wages. As long as employees keep their lips zipped about what he does, they get a decent paycheck and due severance pay should they eventually move on to greener pastures.

A Seattle journalist contacted Hundred Eighty Degrees about its Price articles. Price harassed the journalist’s media group nonstop for a year after what he deemed to be unfavorable coverage.

When asked why the media group had not yet picked up or piggybacked on any of the Hundred Eighty Degrees coverage, the journalist said, “It's a standard journalistic practice. You could call it CYA or cowardice, or appropriate caution, depending on your perspective.”

A board member from a high-profile business leadership organization contacted Hundred Eighty Degrees to bemoan Price’s similarly unyielding harassment of the organization when he didn’t get what he wanted. The member said they were seeking legal support to remove Price, but nobody was willing to go public about the issues.

A member of the Seattle Sounders professional soccer team said, on the condition of anonymity, “Dan is truly a master when it comes to treating people like shit. He will promise you heaven just to get you to do what he wants. He speaks of inequality but he doesn’t care about the real work as long as people think he does.”

This source also said that Price views women through the prism of sex having witnessed, firsthand, how Price mistreated a now ex-girlfriend.

Hundred Eighty Degrees has reached out to another former Sounders star who apparently shares the sentiments of this former teammate.

Price also has had a rather long line of personal assistants or “house managers.” One such former assistant recently contacted Hundred Eighty Degrees. The assistant said, “He tries to play the part of someone sacrificing wealth for others. He’s an actor.”

She said she witnessed significant family dysfunction and a host of abusive behavior, including Price’s refusal to pay contractors she had arranged to work at his house, which put her own credit at risk.

HEREIN LIES THE RUB. Without exception, all sources said that they want PRICE to pay for his ABUSE. Yet, only TWO PARTIES HAVE BEEN willing to see that he does. ONE police report in 2013 PUT PRICE ON PROBATION FOR ASSAULT. AND ONE POLICE REPORT ALLEGING RAPE IS A STRONG INDICTMENT BUT YET TO GO ANYWHERE. THE REMAINING universal reticence IS a minefield for future victims. There is no reason why Price would cease his apparent abuse, given his virtual free pass to do so.

Allegation after allegation of abuse follows a distinct pattern. Reams of documents and interviews support the conclusion that Dan Price is a deeply troubled individual who has likely committed grave crimes.

But if only Hundred Eighty Degrees is willing to air these allegations, the general population will likely conclude that the truth is not worthy of validation or perhaps even fanatical fiction. Throw in the fact that an investigative reporter who has pored over this here and there for years does not work for a traditional newsroom, and the whole thing is likely damned to dismissal by big media and other stakeholders.

The bottom line is clear. If Price’s private and professional victims do not attach their names to their stories, if some do not at least file official police reports or publicly demand action, Price will strike again and again and again. He will make more women contemplate suicide. He will make others doubt their self-worth. He will steal dignity and security and even money.

He might not be a Weinstein or an Epstein or an Allen or a Lauer, but he is, according to many, a monster posing as a demigod.

Millions who only know Price the way he wants them to accept this type of messenger at his word, because why else would he wind up on CBS or The New York Times if he weren’t worthy.

The fact is, in a world reigned by social mania and the next best thing, fewer folks take time to look behind the curtain where they just might see an army of self-proclaimed saints for the bedeviled fame-hunters they truly are.

RELATED STORIES:

WASHINGTON WOMAN FILES POLICE REPORT, SAYS PRICE SQUEEZED HER THROAT AFTER SHE REJECTED SEXUAL ADVANCES… MORE →

SECOND RAPE ALLEGATION AGAINST DAN PRICE … MORE →

DAN PRICE ACCUSED OF RAPE … MORE →

DAN PRICE FACES MORE ABUSE CLAIMS … MORE →

TAMMI KROLL SILENT ABOUT DAN PRICE ABUSE … MORE →

DAN PRICE NDA MUZZLES STAFF … MORE →

DAN PRICE HIRES SEXUAL PREDATOR … MORE →

TWO DOGS DEAD AT DAN PRICE HOUSE … MORE →

DAN PRICE BUSINESS FRAUD … MORE →

DAN PRICE LAWSUITS & LIES … MORE →

DAN PRICE BRIBES MEDIA … MORE →

DAN PRICE AND A BROKEN SYSTEM … MORE →

DAN PRICE ABUSE & FRAUD … MORE →

DAN PRICE VIDEOS … MORE →

A partial list of the news outlets with whom I either spoke or exchanged emails as far back as six years ago, all of whom declined to pick up my reporting, except one nod from Geekwire.

ABC
NBC
CBS
FOX
CNN
MSNBC

The New York Times
The Seattle Times
The Los Angeles Times
The Boston Globe
The Washington Post
USA Today
US News and World Report
Associated Press
New York Post
The New Yorker
Huffington Post (HuffPost)
Idaho Statesman
Idaho Press
Fortune Magazine
Forbes Magazine
Bloomberg
Business Insider
The Atlanta Journal Constitution
The Atlantic
Pro Publica
Inc. Magazine
Entrepreneur Magazine
Southern California News Group (13 publications)
Geekwire
Mashable
Vox
Salon
TruthDig

Plus countless smaller market and smaller circulation outlets

Empe, Gelderland, Netherlands
Long Lake, Minnesota
Spanaway, Washington
Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada
Weybridge, Surrey, United Kingdom
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Sulphur, Louisiana
Idaho Falls, Idaho
Valrico, Florida
Rancho Santa Margarita, California
Tallinn, Harju, Estonia
Novi, Michigan
Jecheon, North Chungcheong, Republic of Korea
Olathe, Kansas
Chicago, Illinois
Prague, Czechia
Gaithersburg, Maryland
Utena, Utenos, Republic of Lithuania

Sao Juliao do Tojal, Lisboa, Portugal
Dublin, Ireland
Madrid, Spain
Avon Lake, Ohio
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Elkhorn, Nebraska
Bruges, West Flanders, Belgium
Hamburg, Germany
Brockton, Massachusetts
Joinville, Santa Caterina, Brazil
Frederiksberg, Hovedstaden, Denmark
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Vienna, Wien, Austria
Napoli, Italy
Thrissur, Kerala, India
Charlottesville, Virginia
Bend, Oregon
Charlotte, Vermont

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Barranquilla, Atlántico, Colombia
Novi Sad, Južno-Backi, Serbia
Brooklyn, New York
Aurora, Colorado
Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada
Gulfport, Mississippi
Lambeth, United Kingdom
Lahaina, Hawaii
Henderson, Nevada
Nashville, Tennessee
Palos Park, Illinois
Almere Stad, Flevoland, Netherlands
New Britain, Connecticut
Cranston, Rhode Island
Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
St Louis, Missouri
Los Angeles, California