CEO behind billboard proposal breaks silence on accusations tagging him as a scammer

MANILA, Philippines - Xian Gaza, the 23-year-old man behind the controversial billboard for Kapamilya actress Erich Gonzales, has decided to release an official statement to address issues tagging him as scammer.

Gaza, who is apparently president and CEO of Guanxiqian Group, recently made headlines after he paid for a billboard to ask Gonzales out on a coffee date. A few days after photos of the billboard went viral, several netizens came forward to share their harrowing experience in transacting business with Gaza.

Xian Gaza breaks silence on accusations tagging him as a scammer
PHOTO CREDIT: Facebook/Xian Gaza
Haiyan Shirt Project: A Scam?

Twitter user Dewanie Catapang said she was previously hired by Gaza to be part of the Haiyan Shirt Project, a fundraising project that supposedly sold shirts to raise funds for victims of typhoon Haiyan. After Gaza began evading her questions about how many shirts were sold, Catapang started getting suspicious about the said project. She eventually dropped out of it after the young businessman allegedly tried to flirt with her.

According to Catapang, Gaza didn’t pay her for the project and that the project’s Facebook page suddenly disappeared after she left.

In his Facebook post on Tuesday, July 4, Gaza insisted that the Haiyan Shirt Project was a legitimate project he spearheaded in back 2015 in Quezon City and Davao City. Gaza pointed out that he personally cashed out P300,000 for the initial capitalization of the project which didn’t materialize and that he didn’t get back a single centavo from it. He added that the 2,000 pieces of t-shirts produced in Davao City were never sold and ended up being distributed to different charitable institutions and Christmas charity programs.

“Wala akong kinita maski ni isang kusing and even lost 300K Pesos on that project plus the burden of paying 10K Pesos every month until now to the company that I partnered with to produce the 2000 Haiyan Shirts in Davao City,” Gaza wrote.

Pocketing Talent Fees from Filipino Vines Event?

Meanwhile, a certain Ryan Salcedo Tañada also decided to share his experience with Gaza after the latter became a trending topic on social media.

According to Tañada, he entrusted P200,000 to Gaza, an amount which will supposedly cover the talent fees of artists for an event of Filipino Vines in Qatar last year. Tañada said the artists including Ella Cruz never received the supposed talent fees. Although Gaza already settled his debts with Tañada, the latter said he wanted to warn the public about the schemes of the young CEO.

In his statement, Gaza admitted that he received P200,000 from Tañada but diverted the funds for the operation expenses backlog of Gazara Media company, which he allegedly co-owned with Walter De Vera, founder of the Filipino Vines community. He said that as the financial partner of the company, he shelled out a total of P1.7 million for the initial capitalization and total operation expenses for 8 consecutive months. Gaza said he eventually stopped funding the partnership as it became a bad investment for him.

Ella Cruz’ mom speaks up

Actress Ella Cruz’ mom Jessica Zurc also took to social media to expose Gaza whom she called her daughter’s stalker. The mom of the young actress echoed the claims of Tañada and insisted that Gaza was involved in a scamming incident.

“Wow para luminis name nya sa scammer issue nya, may pa billboard naman ngyon… may nauto nanaman sya guys para mag invest sa monkey business nya.”

She also revealed that Gaza issued unfunded post-dated checks for a Fortuner he was supposed to buy from her husband. Gaza eventually returned the vehicle after failing to pay them.

But according to Gaza, he backed out of the deal after learning that the unit, which was priced at P650,000, had a market value of about P500,000 to P550,000.

Gaza wrote: “I personally pressured myself to take it dahil gusto ko silang i-impress kahit wala naman akong paggagamitan ng unit at wala ring siguradong buyer. When I found out that the unit is roughly 500K-550K ang market value at luging-lugi ako, there I decided not to fund it anymore and nagkasundo nalang na magsolian ng unit and so with my downpayment.”

Denying Jesica’s accusations on him being a stalker of Ella, Gaza posted several photos and videos of him with the 20-year-old celebrity.

Towards the end of his post, Gaza urged the public not to judge him because of his past mistakes and maintained that he simply wants a coffee date with Gonzales.

“I just wanna show her how much I like her and using this billboard effort to possibly create an initial friendship with her over coffee,” Gaza wrote.

-- Mini, The Summit Express



Previous Post Next Post