Denise Barnes, a DFW-area advertising executive with the national LGBT aadvertising website and app Gayborhood, on Friday told Dallas Voice that a woman claiming to be with the Atlanta-based company is scamming local LGBT-friendly businesses. But the woman accused of the scam told Dallas Voice that she has never claimed any connection with Gayborhood

Gayborhood, a part of Carma Productions that has been around about 25 years, sells online and app-based advertising to LGBT-friendly businesses around the country looking to attract LGBT patrons and customers. Barnes said several of her clients have told her that a woman claiming to be with Gayborhood had approached them, offering a package deal with promote their businesses at local Pride events. Barnes said the woman, who identified herself as Crystalie Camp, has no connection with Gayborhood or Carma Productions, and that clients have told Barnes that Camp has taken their money but never delivered on her promises.

Barnes said one client recently told her that she had paid the woman $750 to have her company’s logo put on t-shirts which would be passed out at local LGBT events, but that she had never received the t-shirts she was promised, and no t-shirts had been passed out at events.

“It makes me mad because she is telling people she is with Gayborhood, and she is scamming people, good people who don’t deserve to be treated that way,” Barnes said.

But when Dallas Voice contacted Camp by phone, at an 817-area code number provided by Barnes, Camp said she has never claimed to be connected with Gayborhood in any way, and that she has had only one customer complain, and that complaint was based on a misunderstanding. Camp also said that she moved from Texas to Miami, Fla., more than a year ago, and that she moved her business, Legit Marketing Group, to Florida, too.

Camp told Dallas Voice that Legit Marketing Group promotes clients’ businesses by putting the businesses’ names and logos on T-shirts and then distributing those shirts at Pride events. Barnes said that she has had several clients over the last couple of years tell her that a woman identifying herself as Camp and claiming to be with Gayborhood approached them offering to do just that, for a price of $750, but that they had never received shirts and that the shirts were not, to their knowledge ever distributed at events.

An internet search for Crystalie Camp turned up a listing on the Better Business Bureau website, identifying Camp as owner and CEO of Legit Marketing Group, giving post office box in Aledo as its business address, and an 817-area code phone number that Camp identified to Dallas Voice as her personal cell phone number, not her business number. BBB also includes a street address in Mansfield for the business.

The Better Business Bureau lists one complaint against Legit Marketing, in which a client claimed to have paid Legit Marketing $1,500 for advertising at and sponsorship of  both the Fort Worth Parade of Lights and the Aledo Christmas Time Festival via T-shirts bearing the client’s company logo that would be passed out at the events and via radio advertising. “To my knowledge none of that happened,” the client told BBB. “I have attempted to call the two phone numbers I have for her with no response.”

The BBB lists the status of the complaint as “unanswered,” meaning that no one with Legit Marketing had responded to the agency’s attempts to contact them.

The BBB file was opened Dec. 12, 2018, and the complaint was dated Dec. 13, 2018. It is the only complaint against the company on file with the Better Business Bureau. The dates are well past the time Camp told Dallas Voice she and her company had moved to Florida.

“None of that is true,” Camp said of the complaint. We haven’t been in Texas for more than a year, and we never worked with any events except Pride events. “Except for the one complaint I mentioned already, we’ve never had any issues in the six years we have been in business. This [Barnes’ allegations] really raises a red flag for us. I will certainly be looking into this, and if I find out someone is using my name or my business’ name this way, I will be contacting the police.”