The House of Cards: Inside the Fragile Financial Web of Pleroma and IBT Media

For months, a group of journalists and independent contractors—spread across the globe from Brazil to the Philippines—found themselves caught in a recurring, agonizing cycle: work performed, invoices submitted, and silence returned. By December 2025, the collective debt owed to these workers by Pleroma Media and its affiliate entities had ballooned to approximately $40,000.

What began as a routine inquiry into unpaid wages quickly spiraled into a labyrinthine investigation involving allegations of corporate shell games, past criminal convictions for fraud, and a pattern of intimidation directed at the press. At the center of this web lies a collection of media brands—including the Latin Times, Tech Times, and Medical Daily—all seemingly tethered to the controversial orbit of IBT Media and its former CEO, Etienne Uzac.

The Patterns of Nonpayment

The workers, nine of whom spoke on the record, described a confusing corporate structure where the lines between "Pleroma Media," "Pleroma MGMT," and "IBT Media" were perpetually blurred. Contractors reported receiving paychecks from shifting entities, often with little explanation.

Ethan Dreilinger, who served as a contract-based president for Pleroma Media, found himself working for two months in 2025 without compensation. His experience was not an outlier. Luis Addor, a software coder hired as an independent contractor, faced such severe financial strain from the withheld payments that he was forced to vacate his home and move into a shipping container, supplementing his income by working at a local pizzeria.

"Every time they made promises, I was counting on that money, and then I never received it," Addor said. "Today, I am facing the consequences."

The strategy appeared to be one of managed exhaustion. When contractors pushed for payment, they were met with vague assurances of "right-sizing operations" or "lost financial backers." However, whenever the pressure reached a critical point—often coinciding with journalistic scrutiny—small, partial payments were suddenly issued, seemingly designed to keep the most vocal creditors at bay while litigation proceeded in the background.

A History of Fraud and Corporate "Three-Card Monte"

The instability plaguing Pleroma and IBT is not without precedent. In 2020, Etienne Uzac and IBT Media pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and fraud brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. The investigation, which centered on a $35 million scheme to defraud lenders and cycle funds through a maze of corporate accounts, also implicated William Anderson of Anderson & Associates.

Cyrus Vance Jr., the Manhattan District Attorney at the time of the conviction, characterized the operation as a "childishly managed" yet complex game of "three-card monte." Despite the guilty pleas and the requirement of community service, the entities involved appear to have transitioned into new iterations, continuing to operate with the same opaque, fragmented structure that characterized the 2020 case.

Chronology of an Investigation

The tension peaked in June 2025, when a visit to 347 West Thirty-Sixth Street—a New York office building housing various Pleroma-linked businesses—resulted in a bizarre confrontation. After being asked to leave by Titus Choi, the head of development for IBT Media, the reporter was later subjected to a police report filed by the company, which cited a "safety breach" and "trespassing."

The legal escalation did not stop there. A law firm representing IBT Media issued a cease-and-desist letter, threatening civil litigation. Simultaneously, the Latin Times—an outlet with shifting corporate allegiances—published an attack piece on the reporting process, questioning the reporter’s ethics. This was followed by emails from Daniel Acosta, an editor at the Latin Times, demanding answers to a list of loaded questions that implied a coordinated "attack" by Newsweek operatives.

Throughout this period, websites associated with the Pleroma network began to vanish or shift, replaced by minimalist, contact-only pages. Yet, the underlying connections remained visible to those looking closely; for instance, the privacy policy on the Pleroma Management website explicitly instructed users to contact a Pleroma email address to opt out of marketing communications from the International Business Times.

The "Shell Game" Defense

The defense offered by these entities often relies on the legal distance between various limited liability companies (LLCs). Yen-Yi Anderson, an attorney with Anderson & Associates—and wife of the previously convicted William Anderson—has argued in court filings that contractors working remotely for Pleroma cannot claim harm in New York because their work was performed abroad.

Corporate governance experts, such as Professor Ann Lipton of the University of Colorado Law School, suggest this is a textbook method for shielding assets. "You keep very few assets in each individual LLC," Lipton explained. "That way, the contractors sue the actual company that hired them, but that company doesn’t have any assets, because they were all paid out through a different related LLC."

Furthermore, the physical headquarters of Pleroma MGMT—located in a former Days Inn in Montgomery, Alabama—serves as a nexus for several other companies, including NavConnects LLC, which operates the Latin Times. This geographic consolidation, despite the entities claiming to be independent, paints a picture of a singular, highly decentralized network designed to survive legal and financial pressure by shifting the burden of liability from one shell to the next.

Official Responses and Lingering Silence

Attempts to secure comments for this report were met with consistent evasion. Simon Lee, president of Pleroma MGMT, requested all questions in writing to ensure "accuracy," only to ignore the subsequent emails entirely. Etienne Uzac and Michael Lee, when pressed on the relationship between their companies, offered contradictory statements—at one point denying any link between Pleroma Media and Pleroma MGMT, despite the overlap in management and infrastructure.

When asked by the Manhattan DA’s office about the potential for recidivism following the 2020 fraud case, Cyrus Vance Jr. noted the reality of institutional memory. "Even after a criminal conviction, that doesn’t always mean that’s the end of the criminal conduct," Vance remarked. "The truth of the matter is that even law enforcement agencies and government agencies, their memory is short."

The Human and Professional Toll

While the legal battles continue, the professional and personal lives of the affected journalists have been significantly disrupted. Former contributors have moved on, with many finding more stable roles in technology, communications, and higher education. However, the residual stress of being treated as disposable assets remains.

The case of Pleroma and IBT Media serves as a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities inherent in the modern gig economy, particularly within the media industry. By utilizing a "web of entities," these companies have successfully delayed, obfuscated, and avoided the consequences of their financial obligations for years.

As of the latest updates, the legal proceedings in the New York State Supreme Court remain ongoing. Former contractors continue to wait for a resolution, while the companies themselves continue to threaten legal action against those who dare to document their operations. In the final analysis, the story of Pleroma is not just one of unpaid invoices, but of a systemic exploitation of the gaps in corporate accountability—a game where the players are constantly shifting, but the outcome for the workers remains consistently, and unfairly, the same.