In the summer of 2009, David Lasalle Gabriel called my band after locating us on our Myspace music site. Mr. Gabriel offered us a spot on his record labels compilation disc which he asserted was coming out within a month. His offer contained the strange request for money up front on our part; I was quite concerned by this but his claims of industry connections and his resume seemed very compelling.
We decided to work with Mr. Gabriel and forwarded him the files and finances he requested to move the project along. He continued to stay in touch with us and he told us that our song was mastered at Bernie Grundman's studio in L.A. Mr. Gabriel then informed us that his label, SLR Records, wanted another one of our songs on the compilation; we had our reservations but decided to do it; a second investment was made, both totally $5,000.
As the weeks turned to months, we began to ask for results. Mr. Gabriel became irritable and told me that his enemies in the industry were working against him and actively attempting to halt the release of the CD. Myself, being a business owner, knew quite well that this was absolutely not true. When we found other people that had claimed that Gabriel had defrauded them, and believe me there were alot of them, we started to demand a product. Mr. Gabriel then changed his contact information and his phone number.
With the inability to reach him, i contacted the studio where he claimed to have our music mastered; naturally they had never heard of him. I then reached out to the acts he claimed to have worked with on his resume and the evidence began to accumulate that he was a con man who had fabricated his resume and work experience. I talked to family aquaintences in Minnesota who told me he had been running music business scams for the last twenty years. With this collection of information, I simply requested that Mr. Gabriel return our money. He became hostile and then threatened legal action and told me that he was going to have the local authorities show up at my house because I was harassing him. I decided to back off for a while until I was contacted by another act that was taken for much mone money than I was. This individual effectively had Sony Records legally force Gabriel to halt using their name in his schemes and to remove their name from his website (it was only a Facebook site by this point.) Mr. Gabriel also claims that anyone who has harassed him in the past because they felt cheated, was arrested and imprisoned; a claim which is absolutely untrue.
If David Lasalle Gabriel contacts you, do your homework on him. His legal history is a good read as are all the aliases he has used. If Mr. Gabriel used all his energy on getting a real job instead of conning artists, I suppose he would be quite successful. It is truly a shame that someone like him is out there making promises to people who really believe him. It is now 2014 and I have not heard one thing from him regarding the money he stole from me and the CD that was a mere month away in 2009 is still unreleased and will surely not be coming out. Although, He does currently have a website set up marketing the Compilation and it does not look like something that a real record company would put out; sadly, it looks like a spoof of some 80's recording project.
David Lasalle Gabriel Reviews
In the summer of 2009, David Lasalle Gabriel called my band after locating us on our Myspace music site. Mr. Gabriel offered us a spot on his record labels compilation disc which he asserted was coming out within a month. His offer contained the strange request for money up front on our part; I was quite concerned by this but his claims of industry connections and his resume seemed very compelling.
We decided to work with Mr. Gabriel and forwarded him the files and finances he requested to move the project along. He continued to stay in touch with us and he told us that our song was mastered at Bernie Grundman's studio in L.A. Mr. Gabriel then informed us that his label, SLR Records, wanted another one of our songs on the compilation; we had our reservations but decided to do it; a second investment was made, both totally $5,000.
As the weeks turned to months, we began to ask for results. Mr. Gabriel became irritable and told me that his enemies in the industry were working against him and actively attempting to halt the release of the CD. Myself, being a business owner, knew quite well that this was absolutely not true. When we found other people that had claimed that Gabriel had defrauded them, and believe me there were alot of them, we started to demand a product. Mr. Gabriel then changed his contact information and his phone number.
With the inability to reach him, i contacted the studio where he claimed to have our music mastered; naturally they had never heard of him. I then reached out to the acts he claimed to have worked with on his resume and the evidence began to accumulate that he was a con man who had fabricated his resume and work experience. I talked to family aquaintences in Minnesota who told me he had been running music business scams for the last twenty years. With this collection of information, I simply requested that Mr. Gabriel return our money. He became hostile and then threatened legal action and told me that he was going to have the local authorities show up at my house because I was harassing him. I decided to back off for a while until I was contacted by another act that was taken for much mone money than I was. This individual effectively had Sony Records legally force Gabriel to halt using their name in his schemes and to remove their name from his website (it was only a Facebook site by this point.) Mr. Gabriel also claims that anyone who has harassed him in the past because they felt cheated, was arrested and imprisoned; a claim which is absolutely untrue.
If David Lasalle Gabriel contacts you, do your homework on him. His legal history is a good read as are all the aliases he has used. If Mr. Gabriel used all his energy on getting a real job instead of conning artists, I suppose he would be quite successful. It is truly a shame that someone like him is out there making promises to people who really believe him. It is now 2014 and I have not heard one thing from him regarding the money he stole from me and the CD that was a mere month away in 2009 is still unreleased and will surely not be coming out. Although, He does currently have a website set up marketing the Compilation and it does not look like something that a real record company would put out; sadly, it looks like a spoof of some 80's recording project.