The Montana Fraud Association
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If you live in the Flathead Valley, you may have seen me wearing this badge while carrying a small, spiral notebook, and a pen, paying close attention to what was going on. I am a trained journalist and I love writing and reporting.
However, I'm no longer working as a reporter for Montana News Association. Why? Because, its not enough to love your work, you have to get paid for it and be treated with respect. Simply put, my former employer cheated me out of more than $1600 and rewrote one of my most important stories, making me sound like a total and complete nut in the process.
This page is set up to expose what Don Cyphers did to me, as well as to provide a possible chance of recovering some of my lost wages.
In June of 2002, my mom saw a story on TV about a new statewide Conservative Christian newspaper. I called the television station and then contacted the person who hosted the paper, finally getting in touch with the newspaper's publisher, Don Cyphers on June 14. I wanted an application or to know where to send my resume. He surprised me by telling me he didn't care about resumes but wanted someone who could write and gather news. He gave me two hours on a Friday Afternoon to track down two stories and e-mail them to him. Miraculously, I succeeded at this impossible task and actually got a job as Independent News Correspondent for the Montana News Association. The e-mail below proves when I was hired.
I contacted Mr. Cyphers on the following Monday and we worked out the terms of my employment. I was already working a part-time job, so we agreed that I'd be paid $200 a week while I was working part-time and then once my other job was done, we'd re-negotiate. He said I was to work as an Independent Contractor for Montana News Association, so I was to take care of my self-employment taxes.
I went to town with my new job. He had made all of Flathead County my beat. This included everything from the City Council Meetings to Montanans for Multiple Use public meetings to free concerts in Depot Park. I spent hours covering meetings, running from event to event, seeking stories, asking questions of local residents. I saw the Von Trapp Children perform twice, I interviewed Candidates for Justice of the Peace, I covered the flap over the Glacier Mall. I went to dozens of events that interested me and wrote stories about them.
There was a downside to all of this. For one, if I ever made a mistake, I couldn't count on anyone at that paper to catch it. There was no copy-editing. They also failed to bring out issues of the paper that included Exclusives, one of which was picked up by local papers before my story could be published.
This, I could have gotten by with, if they'd simply paid me. From June 15-August 3, I worked six weeks (taking one off for my Honeymoon) and didn't get paid for anything. Cyphers told me that the check had been lost in the mail and that he had talked to the "Postmaster General" in Kalispell and tried to get him to deliver the letter despite the problem. It was early July when he said he sent the first check out. He said that he had a similar problem in Mid-July. This was when I finally did what I should have done in the first place, I searched the web for information on Donald Cyphers and Montana News Association and found four articles from the Billings Outpost (see below).
I was shocked by what I saw, particularly the parts where it alleged that he'd used the "it got lost in the mail" trick before. For the first time, I became aware that Don Cyphers may be trying to cheat me. I became more insistent on getting paid. I contacted his office (where he was always absent) every two hours on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of the week I discovered the Billings Outpost articles. Finally, Cyphers said that he was going to pay me for future charges through an employment agency. He said that, like everyone on his staff, I was going to be paid $6.25 per hour until everyone was finally in the system, then pay would be raised as the accountant saw fit. This is an incredibly low wage for a reporter (the starting wage for a register operator at K-Mart is $6.50 while the average hourly wage for a reporter is $18.00 an hour). Still, I was willing to take the wage because I loved my job and because he promised it would only be temporary. Note: Five weeks after that, the salary had not been raised. So it was another lie from Don Cyphers.
It took nearly two weeks to get set up with the labor contractors. Cyphers was supposed to call in my hours every Friday. I knew that would be a challenge. I couldn't get through all day on the first Friday, I was working with the labor contractors and that I still wouldn't get paid. Fortunately for me, the man who runs that business is a decent guy and failing to get a hold of Cyphers, and knowing that I was in desperate financial straights, he contacted me, and asked for my hours that week. I gave him my hours and got paid the following Wednesday. For three weeks, it worked like that. I called the labor contractors, they sent me a check and Cyphers was to confirm my hours.
Cyphers, who never saw me work and had no idea about my schedule, disputed my hours and told the labor contractors not to pay me without first receiving the hours from him. This was ridiculous because, as he lives 400 miles from me and he had no clue what I worked or didn't. I didn't find this out until the Thursday of the following week that he told the labor contractors this, so I didn't get paid for my final two weeks at Montana News Association (69 1/2 hours, $434.38) bring the grand total owed to $1634.38.
Cyphers had talked with me the day before I found out about his shenanigans and hadn't asked me anything about my hours nor did he hint that he had any problem with what I had reported in prior weeks. I began trying to contact him every half hour, finally get a hold of him at around 5 on Thursday. He promised to contact the labor contractors "first thing in the morning". This time, I would hold him to his word.
When, he didn't contact them at all on Friday, I tendered my resignation. I accepted a good job with a great company that I'd been trying to get on with for more than two years. Finally, they had an opening for me. (Praise God!) I have a family to support and Don Cypher's games became too much for me.
On Saturday, I sent him a letter detailing my resignation and letting him know that I wasn't to be trifled with. I demanded payment by Tuesday, September 20 and warned him of the danger to his soul. A lackey and/or just an alias for Don Cyphers contacted me and said that they'd reported my hours to the labor contractor (another lie) and that I was never their employee but just the labor contractor's (contradicting the plain facts of the case), they then demanded my press pass back and threatened to press charges if I didn't return it, as well as threatening a liable suit. I sent them the latest press pass they issued to me and they never even went down to the post office to pick it up. The only reason that I can figure that they wouldn't want to pick it up is that if they do, they would have to sign for it.
Tuesday, September 20, I sent a letter to him by Certified mail along with the press pass, in following the advice of Writersweekly.com with the additional provisos that I'd contact his competitor at the Billings Outpost and let him know what was going on. Don Cyphers has made no attempt to satisfy this issue, thus the reason for this website.
I owe a most sincere apology to those I represented myself to as a correspondent for a legitimate news organization. I thought I was. However, Montana News Association is not a legitimate news organization but rather a fraud perpetrated on its reporters, advertisers, and subscribers. Many good people have supported this paper because they believe that Montana needs a Conservative, Christian paper.
I, too, believe this. But, we need a legitimate Conservative news source that pays its reporters, practices good journalism and editing standards, prints its papers on time, and follows business practices consistent with the Bible and basic journalistic ethics. We need a paper that's more like Human Events than the National Enquirer.
The most awful thing about what Montana News Association is doing is that they're claiming to be Christians, to be providing "the good news" to Montanans. In reality, their practices are far from being in line with the Gospel. "let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith." (Galatians 6:20). Doubtless, the certain demise of Montana News Association will lead many to shake their heads at the Christian faith and attack its legitimacy.
However, those who look at Christians to judge Christianity are using a wrong standard. The faith is not about Don Cyphers. The day will come when we won't even remember who Don Cyphers is and our faith will still be grounded firmly in Jesus Christ, and it is He that we must measure ourselves by not one miscreant who claims Christianity.
In the Word, Jesus says, "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." (Matthew 7:21-23)
Don Cyphers owes me $1634.38. For some, this is not a great amount. For me, it is. My wife and I are just getting started out in life and this is a huge amount of money. He knew that I was just getting started and desperately needed the money but chose to forebear paying me anyway. He robbed me not just of the money but of time. By my estimate, during those eight weeks for which I was never paid, I worked 219.5 hours without being paid. That means Don Cyphers stole more than 9 days from the prime of my life, including dozens of hours I didn't get to spend with my new bride.
You can help in this difficult situation and it won't cose you a dime or even that much time by doing the following things:
1) Contact Don Cyphers and the Montana News Association
The Montana News Association can be reached by phone (406-256-0828), currently there is no e-mail service to the MNA as everyone who was sending e-mail to them reported "bounces". If you phone them, and get the answering machine, just leave your name and politely say, "Pay Adam Graham", if you get Mr. Cyphers or one of his employees, tell them that you think that Adam Graham should be paid.
2) Pray for my wife and I
We're going to make it, but it's going to be tight for the next couple months because I worked so much without getting paid. Pray also that God gives me strength and also that I don't become bitter about this.
3) Pray for Don Cyphers
Don Cyphers needs to get his heart right with God. What he's done is wrong and sinful. Pray that he'll really become a Christian and stop defrauding people. Pray that God gets a hold of him and changes his heart. If that happens, everything else will be taken care of.
4) Tell your friends about this page
The more people doing this, the more pressure that it will bring to bear on him to do the right thing and take care of this. Once he pays me what I'm owed, this page will go off the Internet. I will maintain the link below discussing the truth about what I wrote the Burgert case because I don't want people to believe I actually wrote the article he published. I didn't. But, I'll stop trying to collect money from him, once he pays me. It's that simple. The ball is in his court.
Declaration of Non-Independence: Don Cyphers and the Independent Contractor Law
Cyphers Actions Border on Plagarism
Return to Sender: Montana News Association demands press pass back and then won't accept delivery
The Montana Fraud Association Forum
Read what I really wrote about the Burgert Case
Why I don't just sue Cyphers and Montana News Association.
Lockwood Crier Goes for the Big Time: First Billings Outpost Article on Montana News Association
Crier Still a Mystery -or Miracle
Lockwood Crier News on Hiatus, but who's counting
Crier isn't dead yet
Why Read a Newspaper that You Disagree With?
Montana Fraud Association in Billings Outpost