Those who claim to have lost money to Castaldo include filmmakers, projectionists, ad agencies and institutions providing space for the festival. Many say they were not paid for their services, and some allege that they were conned into giving Castaldo up to $20,000 for film distribution deals which turned out to be phony.
Castaldo, who has a string of aliases, has also been sued for failing to pay workers at a film festival she ran in Narrowsburg, New York in 2000, and for breach of contract after bouncing a $35,000 check for a private party in Los Angeles in 1997, according to published news reports.
The QIFF organization, which bills itself as a nonprofit corporation, is not on the IRS list of tax-exempt entities.
Castaldo did not respond to repeated phone and email requests for comment. On opening night, when reporters questioned her, she took off running down the block and did not return to the festival for the opening ceremony.
On the festival’s final evening, when asked about the allegations against her, Castaldo grabbed a Queens Chronicle reporter by the arm, told security, “It’s a private event and she’s not allowed,” and rushed out the door. When pressed for comment outside, she said “I am not very happy. I have a press release on its way, and I have no comments.” The press release had not been issued at print time, three days later.
Among the individuals and businesses allegedly stiffed is Kerry Wallum, who was in charge of putting together the closing night festivities this year, including a tribute to musician Levon Helm.
Wallum said he flew up from Texas, expecting to be paid for his services and for the $21,000 he had shelled out for bands and other festival expenses. After he arrived in New York, Castaldo allegedly said she didn’t have the money.
Outraged, Wallum canceled the tribute to Helm, took his bands up to Woodstock and held a concert there instead. The show was a success, he said, but didn’t make up for the thousands of dollars he lost.
“They’ve tarnished my name, and they’ve done me dirty,” Wallum said of Castaldo and any associates she may have.
Wallum said he plans to sue — and he’s not the only one.
A New York filmmaker who served on the advisory board of the first QIFF and has worked with Castaldo on and off for the past several years, said he was conned out of $20,000 this summer.
The filmmaker, who wished to remain anonymous as he is negotiating a big movie deal, said Castaldo offered to distribute a film he and his partner had made earlier this year. According to their agreement, the filmmaker allegedly paid Castaldo $20,000, with the understanding that she would take the film to Cannes.
“She never went to Cannes,” he said. “It was one total ripoff. ... Everything was phony.”
Castaldo allegedly tried to convince him that she had been to Cannes, showing him a website with video footage of her there. The filmmaker said he soon discovered that the footage was doctored. The website offers to Photoshop anyone into Cannes, he said.
Before he realized the Cannes trip hadn’t happened, the filmmaker said Castaldo convinced him to enter his movie in the Latino Film Festival in Manhattan. She organized an elaborate party, told him to fly in his actors and had him pay for a private table in the lobby. The money he and fellow filmmakers fronted for the event totaled about $10,000.
When the festival opened, the filmmaker said, he discovered that his table was shared with five other people, each of whom had paid Castaldo for the same space.
Castaldo allegedly got the filmmaker to give her $700 cash for catering bills — money which he says she pocketed, as she had gotten much of the food for free and “paid” the remainder with a bad check.
“Oh my God did I get conned,” the filmmaker said. “She’s like a midget Bernie Madoff.” He added that he plans to sue.
Ripping off a single individual for tens of thousands of dollars isn’t necessarily the norm for Castaldo, her self-described “victims” say; often, the sums are much smaller — which is one of the reasons they say she has slid by without lawsuits in Queens for the past seven years.
A spokeswoman for the Museum of the Moving Image, where the festival was held in 2007, said the institution is owed $3,650. The city’s Department of Education did not respond to inquiries about whether Castaldo has paid for use of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, where the festival was held this year.
James Hill, the head projectionist at QIFF last year, says Castaldo owes him $1,000. She allegedly agreed on a price — $250 up front, and $1,000 on the final day of the festival — but wouldn’t sign a written contract. By the end of the first two days of work, Hill says he hadn’t seen a cent of money and didn’t have a contract, so he threatened to quit. Eventually, Castaldo presented him with $250 in cash, but the remaining $1,000 was never paid, he said.
A week after the festival ended, Hill threatened to contact the press if Castaldo didn’t fork over the rest of the money. He soon got a call from her ex-husband, Richard Castellano, who was sentenced to a year in prison in 2001 for scamming residents of Monticello, New York out of several thousand dollars.
“He gave me veiled threats,” Hill said. “He said: ‘You’re not to talk to anybody. Do you understand that?’”
Others also claim to have been threatened.
Dan Nuxoll, the program director at Rooftop Films, which provided projection equipment to the festival in 2007, said his company is owed $2,750.
The first day of the festival, Castaldo allegedly told him she had forgotten to bring a check. Each day she had another excuse, Nuxoll said, and on closing night she disappeared. When he tried calling, her voicemail box was full, and eventually the phone was disconnected.
Nuxoll then talked with other member’s of the festival’s supposed advisory board, but, he recalls, many told him they had nothing to do with the festival, and others said they were also having trouble tracking down Castaldo. Nuxoll’s assistant eventually found her at a restaurant in the city where she worked.
“She said her father died and she had a nervous breakdown,” Nuxoll said.
Eventually, Nuxoll gave up, but the following year he got an email advertising the festival, so he called the number on the website, told the intern who answered the phone his story and asked for Marie. She returned the call at around 1 a.m.
“She’s furious that I called and is flipping out,” Nuxoll said. “She said, ‘Let me tell you this: if you come down here tomorrow, I have some men here who are going to make you regret it.’”
The following morning, she apologized and said she’d work out a payment plan, but Nuxoll said the checks never came, and her phone was eventually disconnected again.
It’s unclear how many people have been left high and dry after this year’s QIFF. Some of the festival workers, including the projectionists and the couple running the youth initiative, are volunteers and were never promised compensation. Some, including one box office worker, say they have been paid. One individual, who described himself as Castaldo’s second in command, said he has worked with her for three years and has never had problems.
Many of the filmmakers whose work was showcased also said they were pleased with the festival, praising the films and networking events.
Others say they feel QIFF was poorly organized and made false promises about the nature of screenings and film advertisements. At least eight DVDs were lost, leading to last-minute cancellations in screenings.
One filmmaker, who came all the way from Asia, said he was embarrassed by the way his film was screened.
“The screening room was just a hotel conference room with a bunch of chairs,” he said. “A tiny projector was set in the front of the room and the screen was smaller than a widescreen TV.
Howard Nash, a filmmaker from Fresh Meadows, said sub-par screenings aren’t new this year. Nash said the projection machine broke on the day his movie, “PJ,” was set to be shown at the 2008 festival.
“This is every filmmaker’s worst nightmare,” he said. “I was mortified.”
Nash added that the equipment QIFF was using seemed “like 1990s Walmart home DVD players from God knows where.”
QIFF staff never apologized, he said.
Concerns weren’t limited to technical problems, though.
The Asian filmmaker said he paid $100 for the festival’s “filmmaker package,” which was supposed to give him four all-access passes, 20 screening passes for guests, a link on the QIFF website and a one-third-page ad in the festival’s program. The program was never printed.
Another filmmaker named David Wenzel said he also sold 15 ads to local businesses, which were supposed to appear in the nonexistent QIFF program.
“These are businesses in Astoria,” he said. “I go to their restaurants all the time. I have to face them every day.”
It might seem surprising that the alleged con artist would be able to pull off the same scams seven years in a row in Queens. But her self-described victims say she’s just that skilled.
“She’s good at what she does,” Nuxoll said. “She moves around a lot. ... She moves her venues each time, and she gets different supporters.”
The filmmaker who was allegedly conned into the $20,000 distribution deal agreed, adding that Castaldo often plays the victim to get money out of people.
“She comes into a meeting, she starts out with a nice business plan and then she will talk about being victimized by her last festival,” he said.
Others who claim to have lost money to Castaldo say she told “sob stories,” claiming to be going through a nasty divorce or saying she was disfigured in an auto accident.
Castaldo has been in court elsewhere in New York but so far seems to have escaped being sued in Queens.
Hill and the president of Ballyhoo Central, a Queens advertising agency which is allegedly owed more than $8,000 for programs, posters and other promotional materials it provided to QIFF in 2007, both said they contacted the district attorney’s office last year about possible legal action.
A spokeswoman confirmed that several people have come to the DA about Castaldo but said, “None of it rises to a criminal level. ... If you work for somebody, and they owe you money ... that’s a matter for civil court.”
The Ballyhoo president, who declined to be named for fear of retribution, said she hasn’t gone to court because she fears legal expenses would be prohibitively high.
It looks as though Castaldo may be facing charges soon, though — if she hasn’t skipped town.
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