The team that allegedly had their truck, trailer, and race car stolen earlier in the season is making headlines once again this season. The team announced Friday that they would be withdrawing their entry for this Sunday’s race at Martinsville due to a threat of rain.
That was two hours before a team member and reddit user, Daegoba, posted this message on reddit.com/r/nascar entitled:
Team Xtreme Racing owner John Cohen has not paid his employees salaries in two weeks
“EDIT: *I’m dealing with this now, I’ll update as soon as I can! *
2nd EDIT:** I went to the shop this morning to collect my tools, and wait on my money. Shortly after my arrival, I was informed the checks were still “no good”.
I then posted this thread on Reddit. Mr Cohen called me shortly after and expressed his displeasure with my actions. I informed him that all he had to do was pay us what he owed us, and all this could’ve been avoided. He then became very aggressive and screamed obscenities at me. I informed him that I had nothing more to say to him, and walked away. The GM then informed me to be careful with social media, and insinuated that physical harm would come to me for my actions. I was then asked to leave the premises. I’ll answer all of your questions as best I can.**
This has been an ongoing problem for us. Several instances, including paychecks being bounced, returned or refused by Wells Fargo, Chase, BB&T, and other financial institutions have occurred since Team Xtreme’s inception. One team member has had over 9 checks issued to him that were no good. Some employees that have resigned over the issues have returned to pick up their last check have been denied their due pay, and turned away with no explanation.
The latest issue originated in California where team owner Mr Cohen says Goodyear overcharged the team for tires causing the discrepancy. Mr Cohen communicated to the team members that he would fix the problem Monday the 23rd. Today is Friday, and his employees have yet to be paid.”
Redditors took the team member’s advice and started tweeting Cohen, however it didn’t go very far as Cohen mostly blocked criticizers. He tweeted the automated Nascar on Reddit twitter account, but later deleted the tweets. The only response tweet that wasn’t deleted stated, “Not True.”
@AllenBedgood not true.
— John Cohen (@johncohen44) March 27, 2015
“My first reaction was to not panic. I’ve had jobs on smaller teams before that have had payroll issues, but they always made good on it within 24-48 hours,” Daegoba said.
This time, however, Cohen did not come through.
“After the weekend passed, I knew I’d probably never see the money. I still worked Monday and Tuesday as a show of good faith to Mr. Cohen and to finish out the payroll schedule. Wednesday I went to the shop briefly, hoping to get what was owed to me. I got nothing more than excuses from management,” Daegoba said. “Thursday, I informed the General Manager that I would go public if I had not received my due compensation by lunch on Friday. When I arrived at Wells Fargo at 9:00 am this morning to verify the check and was told it wasn’t honorable, That was the final straw.”
Of course Daegoba then posted his story on reddit, alerting the online message boarders of this string of events.
“We live in a time of social media and free flowing information thanks to the internet. I have all I need to make it known what I, and my fellow co-workers have put up with,” Daegoba added.
Note: At this time we are working to verify /u/Daegoba‘s story… and will update further when we can. At this point the story is an unconfirmed social media rumor.
Main image:
