Company Denies Knowing of Job Plan for Gangs

A plan to provide at least 100 jobs for gang members through a Watts church appeared to be in jeopardy Friday when officials of the Swedish company that supposedly was backing the idea said they had never heard of it.

Company officials in Sweden and Texas said Bill Holiday, the Orange County man who has billed himself as the firm’s “factory representative,” had no authority to act in any capacity on behalf of the firm and that officials knew nothing of any effort to employ gang members.

“This is not part of our activities,” said Magnus Lundberg, managing director of Drink Maker, the Swedish manufacturer of a line of home and office carbonated beverage appliances.

Earlier in the week and again on Friday, the leader of the Tabernacle Baptist Church, the Rev. Charles Mims, said negotiations were under way with the Swedish firm to provide about 100 jobs for gang members, setting up distributorships for the carbonated water and soda appliances, servicing and delivering them.

However, Fred Parker, the church’s administrator, said there never had been any plan for Drink Maker to provide the jobs and that the church never was officially involved. He said Mims apparently misunderstood the terms of negotiation. According to Parker, the negotiations were between Holiday and another pastor at the church, who was acting on his own.

Roy Seibert, vice president of Drink Maker U.S.A., the Swedish firm’s Texas-based American distributor, said that self-proclaimed representative Holiday, an Anaheim resident, “has come out of the blue on this and he’s causing us a lot of grief.”

Holiday, reached at Mims’ church late Friday, denied misrepresenting himself. He said he had sold 46 of the home units to the Rev. James Stern, one of the church’s pastors, and said he would personally back the product. Another church executive said Stern paid about $2,700 for the units that, in turn, are supposed to be sold by gang members to homeowners.

Church administrator Parker said officials have begun trying to determine Holiday’s relationship to the Drink Maker company.

Drink Maker officials said the appliances that Holiday apparently is selling actually belong to another private individual who bought them at least a year ago and has stored them in a warehouse. When that supply runs out, so would the gang members’ jobs, said William C. Overman, president of Drink Maker U.S.A.

To support their contention that Holiday does not represent the company, officials provided signed documents dated July 6 declaring that the Texas firm was Drink Maker’s sole representative in all 50 states.

Overman and Seibert said they have their own plans for marketing the carbonation machines, which can use cola and other syrups to make soda pop or plain seltzer water without having to cart bottles and cans from stores.

Overman said because the units use carbon dioxide cartridges, they need to be transported and handled by trained personnel and are not suitable for selling door-to-door. Holiday had said the plan was to sell them in the same way that Avon cosmetics or Tupperware are sold to homes.