If it's been 7 months, that should be plenty of time to replace the money. If the money was too much to replace in that period of time, I'm not sure how I can believe it was of an amount that could be accidentally spent in this way.
If I had an extra $1,000 in my account, I might accidentally spend it, but I could replace it eventually. If I had an extra $50,000 in my account, that would be much harder to replace, but I'm not sure how I could with a straight face say I spent it accidentally.
Looks like replacing the money isn't the issue, it's whether or not D-Cal have screwed over the agency. Over half of the KS pledges were made fraudulently by D-Cal themselves, meaning the money doesn't actually exist and their campaign was a failure. This puts the agency on the hook for any and all refunds if the people who actually put their money into pledges ask for a refund (the agency account is tied to the campaign now). D-Cal have apparently not come up with a proper solution to repay the money if this happens, so Woodshed are not happy about releasing the funds until this is resolved (on their accountants advice). I'd suggest that all D-Cal have to do is finish setting up an account that can be used on KS and the account could be switched and funds deposited. Either that or put enough cash to cover the agencies costs into some sort of escrow.
That’s not true. There are plenty of ways to respond without increasing your liability. “We can’t comment until pending legal is resolved due to advice of council” is one. Far better is, “It’s not true, facts are X, Y, and Z.” Telling the truth in public isn’t going to increase your liability, if you aren’t guilty of anything.
> “We can’t comment until pending legal is resolved due to advice of council”
is a non-response of the best sort. It does absolutely nothing to dispel the presumption of guilt, though, and if anything, merely adds weight to the "you aren't responding because you're guilty" mindset.
As for “It’s not true, facts are X, Y, and Z.”, well, I'm Not A Lawyer. I presume that's a bit like a coach for a sports team giving a news conference to tell everyone which strategies and plays they're going to be making in the upcoming game. Facts can be disputed, procedural rules can get facts excluded, and so forth. Whether or not it is a "far better" strategy (weighing PR versus court battle) is too fuzzy for a lay person to judge accurately, I think.
Let me point out that the "culprits" responded, and it's a very good response. And turns out I was wrong to jump to conclusions because of their silence/blocking. Though they did initially handled it very poorly for a PR firm.
Blocking people on twitter doesn't mean anything, and this blog post came out today so I'm sure the agency is working on writing something with actual proof to respond with.
And now they responded, and the reason they didn't have a story ready was apparently they didn't anticipate the accusation because they were working to help fix a screwed up situation for the accuser.
Regardless, if the statement “we received none of the money” is true. There is definitely something bad going on here.