“Best Boss” Dan Price Accused of Rape, Fraud, and Generally Being Awful
Back in 2015, Jon Ronson published a book called So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, which explored the relatively recent phenomenon of people using social media to, well, publicly shame people. The term “cancel culture” would gain prominence a few years later, but the ideas are related: social media suddenly became a great leveler, where it seemed that anyone could use it to call out behavior they didn’t like and get others on board to condemn it. The result might be positive or negative depending on how you feel about the behavior in question and whether or not the response was proportionate.
Part of the debate over whether or not it’s a good thing is an assumption that maybe randos on social media have too much power–why should the average dork have the ability to “cancel” someone rich and famous just by, say, posting on Facebook that they stiffed them on a restaurant tip or something? Shaming is fine but we’re used to it going through the proper channels, like the tabloids, the talk show circuit, or hidden away in boardrooms. It’s like the electoral college: we can’t expect a majority of people to correctly identify poor behavior! We need an intermediary.
“Cancel culture” IS a real thing, in that people have lost their jobs or otherwise suffered negatively because others lambasted their behavior on social media, where it picked up traction. But just as “cancel culture” is a boogeyman because it gives the power of shaming to the common person, the only true victims of it are also common people. The average dude yelling misogynistic slurs at a barista might lose his job, but it’s hard to think of examples of wealthy or famous people in positions of privilege who are ever truly and irrevocably “canceled.” For instance, in 2017, the comedian Louis CK admitted to using his powerful position in the industry to cajole young women into watching him masturbate, and people were very upset that he was “canceled.” In 2022, he won a Grammy for an album where he jokes about the incidents. He’s currently on a tour that is mostly sold out.
Again and again and again, we see powerful people who defy cancel culture, often at the same time they rail against it as an evil tool of the woke left to silence anyone they disagree with. Today I’d like to give you another example, of a seemingly leftwing, charismatic, wealthy man who seems to defy cancelation constantly, even though he really, truly deserves it. That man’s name is Dan Price.
Dan Price is a CEO, which should be an automatic red flag for you. But unfortunately, the general public seems to always be ready to celebrate any CEO who seems like he might be “one of the good ones.” Dan Price is the co-founder, sole shareholder, and board member of what was a relatively obscure company called Gravity Payments, a credit card payment processor. In 2015, he gained international attention and celebration when he announced that he was reducing his own pay from $1.1 million to $70,000, and raising the salaries of all his employees to match his own, claiming that he was even going to mortgage his home to cover the cost. He was immediately celebrated as a progressive king, because yeah! That is a good thing! Corporate higher-ups tend to earn wildly more than the people in the company who actually help generate the revenue that pays their salaries, and studies show that this leads to extreme income inequality, especially amongst women and people of color.
Price’s announcement led to fawning coverage in the New York Times, The Daily Show, Good Morning America, The Today Show, and Inc Magazine, who suggested he might be “the best boss in America,” which…you know what, even after everything that we’ve learned about Price since, that might still be true because bosses suck so badly. But yeah, around the same time those headlines were coming out, Price’s ex-wife gave a TEDx talk at the University of Kentucky where she detailed the ways that Price physically abused her, including shaking, punching, slapping, and even waterboarding her. Price heard about the talk through Karen Weise, a reporter with Bloomsberg, who asked him what he thought of the allegations. He denied them and then threatened to sue the University, so they decided to not publish the video.
At the end of that year, Bloomsberg published their blistering investigation on Price, revealing that Gravity was only making a profit of $2.2 million in 2014, when Price was paying himself $1.1 million. A very similar company at the time was paying their CEO $355,000. So for years prior to his wage cut, he had been wildly overpaying himself, something that his co-founder and brother had been trying to stop. His brother eventually sued him over it, which Price twisted to imply that his brother was just punishing him for his generous salary hike for the employees. In fact, the lawsuit predated the raise by one month, leading the journalist to question whether or not the raise was actually a response to the lawsuit, giving Price leverage over his brother. Price insisted that despite the dates on the legal documents, he recalled the case starting after his raise. Sure, Jan.
That same month, GeekWire reported that contrary to Price’s claims, he did NOT actually mortgage EITHER of his Seattle-area homes, which he originally purchased with millions of dollars in cash. Which he got by overpaying himself. A few months later, he responded by blaming the lawsuit from his brother, which, again, started before he instituted the pay raises and claimed he had mortgaged his properties.
Despite these blistering reports, Price posted through it. He won his court case against his brother, and his Facebook and Twitter followings continued to grow as he posted more of his progressive views, like how Gravity has no gender pay gap. He continued to get positive mainstream media coverage, like this piece from PBS in late 2016 postulating that his business ethics are based on Christian values.
That piece repeated the lie about the lawsuit being retaliatory, despite that having been debunked the previous year. They also showed this incredible moment when his employees were so grateful that they gifted him a Tesla.
The moment again caused Price to go viral, and he leaned into his social media channels to reach new audiences and even recruit new employees. He got more fawning coverage, with spots on shows like Kelly Clarkson and a loving profile in the New York Times in 2019 and the Wall Street Journal, who in 2021 asked him and other “luminaries” to weigh in on humility.
At the end of 2021, journalist Doug Forbes was planning to create a glowing documentary on Price, but instead discovered evidence that Price had committed blatant fraud. He found that the way Gravity was able to offer small businesses better credit card processing rates was to fraudulently categorize them as different business types with the credit card companies. Those companies charge more for riskier businesses where they stand a higher chance of their customers failing to pay a bill. Bars, for instance, are less risky than restaurants due to smaller individual bills, and so get a better credit card processing rate. Price, Forbes alleged, had been knowingly falsely categorizing thousands of clients for more than a decade, leading to a suspected increase in revenue of $60-100 million.
Price posted right through it, with his various progressive social media posts getting tens of thousands of likes, faves, retweets, and shares.
In early 2022, the New York Times dropped a bomb: not only was Price using his social media accounts to boost and launder his reputation, and not only was he using his DMs to hire new employees, but he was also using those DMs to lure young women to him, several of whom reported he had sexually assaulted them.
Oh, and that Tesla his employees “gave” him? That was fake. He bought the car and told them to give it to him on camera. But let’s focus on the sexual assault.
Those negative articles about Price’s fraud, lies, and alleged abuse of his ex-wife had all been buried in Google search results, so that when these young women looked to see who was hitting on them in their DMs, all they saw was his own social media accounts (which Google started placing at the top of results) and “the best boss in America:” a young, progressive, successful, and charismatic man who wanted to fly them around the country with him.
Here’s where the content warning comes in: we’re going to talk about rape. You might want to stop here if a description of a sexual assault will put you in a bad place.
One such woman lured in via Instagram DM was Kacie Margis, a model and artist who dated Price for three months before he flew her to Palm Springs, where she says he raped her while she was high on an edible and too drugged and scared to stop him.
Her account is supported by the fact that after the assault and once she was sober, she saved her underwear, left the hotel, texted all her friends, called her mother, and called the police. The police spoke to the hotel manager who reported that on the night of the alleged assault, Price came to the front desk and requested a second room, volunteering the disgusting “back story” that his girlfriend “felt uncomfortable about falling asleep” during sex so he “opted to leave her alone in the hotel room.” Who the fuck would say that? Oh, a rapist, I guess.
Margis then reached out to Price’s ex-wife, who connected her with Doug Forbes, who then connected her with an entire network of women who said that Price had sexually assaulted them or secretly recorded them during sex.
One woman, an artist named Shelby Alexandra Hayne, had a boyfriend but agreed to meet with Price for dinner hoping he could offer her advice and connections. After dinner, he got her into his car “to warm up” while she got an uber, but tried to kiss her against her will, squeezing her throat as he did. Other women also reported him grabbing her throat–strangulation, it’s worth noting, is the number one predictor that the abuser will later murder the victim.
Hayne reported the incident to the police, but in April of 2023 they dropped the charges after the defense team alleged that the victim said he had put his hand on her neck, not her throat, and he hadn’t fully constricted, and also because she admitted to sometimes flirting with men in her Instagram DMs.
Meanwhile in Palm Springs, the District Attorney assured Margis that her case was moving forward and that she should not speak out publicly about it. Last fall, a Grand Jury voted to indict Price for allegedly raping her, but lat week the DA informed Margis that they were dropping the charges anyway as it was a “he said, she said” situation. I learned this thanks to a video Margis and Hayne made describing their incredibly disappointing fight for justice. As of the recording of this video, their video has under 7,000 views and only 13 comments, which is pathetic, and the reason I decided to make this video. Because I’m sick of seeing this rich, powerful man continue to do the worst shit imaginable and get away with it. I’m sick of seeing people complain about how mean and effective “cancel culture” is, when we can’t even cancel a man who has now been credibly accused of raping several women, sexually assaulting others, lying constantly about what a well-loved boss he is, and defrauding an entire industry. The myth of “cancel culture” is that social media gives the average person the ability to take down the powerful, but the reality is that social media has allowed the powerful the ability to launder even the filthiest of personalities–to manipulate society into believing they are exactly the opposite of their true selves.
I cannot in good conscience sit aside and let this happen with Dan Price. Because the longer Dan Price is able to convince the world he’s a good person, I believe that more young women will be put in danger of being abused, raped, or worse.
