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Cremily is an authentic, keto French frozen yogurt that uses A2 milk, and 100 percent of the profits are donated to ignite the power in girls globally. Sounds like a great product, right?
That’s the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Los Angeles Angels of the MLB, thought as well. Same for the New York Knicks, and several others.
There was just one major catch.
The company was a scam, offering up incredible promises to teams and marketing partners that it could not deliver on. Unfortunately for the DBacks and Angels, they found this out the hard way after agreeing to $5.75 million combined in advertising deals with the company, only to never actually see that money.
How Did MLB Teams Get Conned By Fake Frozen Yogurt Company?
Sam Blum and Cody Stavenhagen of The Athletic released a bombshell story on Monday morning regarding the deals, as well as the ways that Cremily and former executive Steven Delaportas exploited several franchises with promises they never intended to deliver on.
According to the report, Delaportas has a long history of alleged fraud. But each time, he’s managed to wiggle his way back into different companies.
“Whether Delaportas is the upscale equivalent of a three-card monte dealer remains to be seen,” district judge Barbara Crabb wrote in a 2005 judgement, “but he most definitely is not some hapless naïf whose irreproachable business practices are undermined constantly by an unremitting string of bad luck.”
Eventually, Delaportas found his way to Cremily, and got back to his old ways.
He agreed to long-term deals with the Angels and Diamondbacks, and the company flaunted partnerships with the Red Sox, Mets, New York Knicks and Boston Celtics.
This is despite the fact that the company had no significant track record or brand equity at the time.
“Everywhere you look you saw that 100 percent (profits) were going back to girls,” said a former employee who helped pitch the company to the Knicks. “It’s a little cup. It’s healthy, it’s keto. It makes a ton of sense.”
Cremily continued to spend, putting stands in both the Diamondbacks’ and Angels’ ballparks. But eventually, the bill came due.
“Six months in was when I knew, wait a minute,” one former employee said. “These costs don’t make sense. The finances don’t make sense. Then comes that multimillion-dollar deal with the Angel Stadium, and we all just sat there like, ‘Hold on. We haven’t earned a single dime of revenue. And yet we just went and spent how much on a contract?’”
The company never got off the ground.
Despite creating a product, it struggled to scale and reproduce its items, leaving the teams to sell frozen yogurt from other companies at its stands, while still passed off at Cremily. One former marketing employee even said he was asked to create Cremily labels for generic ice cream.
Eventually, the company folded. Both MLB teams found themselves out of millions. But Delaportas has, thus far, walked free and now works as the CEO for Clean Bottling Co., producing products for the brand Alkaline88.
Meanwhile, former Cremily employees are still left wondering what exactly happened to the one-time next big thing in frozen yogurt.