Errol Andam’s spectacular and controversial rise from the average Los Angeles street to high-level designer for Nike ended badly on Thursday when federal prosecutors accused Andam of cheating his former employer for $ 1.4 million.
Andam, 49, known for his volcanic temper and four-inch mohawk haircut, is accused of wire fraud, money laundering and false statements about a loan application.
Prosecutors have been working on the case for more than two years since Andam Nike left at the end of 2018. Nike officials allegedly brought the case to the attention of prosecutors.
“He no longer works for the company,” said Nike spokesman Greg Rossiter. “We will cooperate with any government inquiry.
Andam could not be reached for comment. He was reached by telephone before the criminal case of today was revealed and told The Oregonian / OregonLive to leave him alone. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a message Thursday afternoon.
“I do not want to talk about this,” he said. “Please do not call me back.”
Andam worked at Nike for 17 years and moved up from corporate learning from a store in Los Angeles to the position of middle marketing manager. Several Nike contractors and former Nike associates told The Oregonian / OregonLive that Andam had a demanding, temperamental persona.
They said they tolerated it because he was the gatekeeper for millions of dollars Nike’s marketing money.
According to these contractors and former colleagues, the suspicion that Andam had been cheating on Nike in one way or another has plagued him for years. He was regularly at the best nightclubs in South Florida, co-workers said, and they wondered how he could afford it on his Nike salary.
Federal prosecutors on Thursday accused the former Nike employee of cheating the company and essentially stealing $ 1.4 million from the footwear giant. The government claims that in 2016 Andam recruited a childhood friend to start a new company, which is apparently building the kind of temporary or ‘pop-up’ installations on which Andam specialized.
Andam secretly controlled the company, prosecutors allege, and even prepared invoices to Nike. He allegedly signed the documents with a pseudonym – Frank Little.
Andam also allegedly diverted sales revenue from temporary Nike stores, known as pop-ups, which the company often sets up along with major athletics events, according to federal charges.
Andam cut a wide track through the Portland marketing scene.
SET Creative, in Northwest Portland, was Andam’s local contractor. More than a dozen former SET employees told The Oregonian similar stories about the long hours and difficult working conditions at SET, mainly due to Andam’s constant presence.
Nike is lifeblood for a small but vibrant ecosystem of Portland design firms, marketing stores, photographers, manufacturers and other specialists. Nike’s favor could mean the difference between wealth and bankruptcy for some of these businesses.
It helps to explain why so few are willing to talk about Andam in public. They’re afraid they’ll get black ball from Nike.
Mindy Hay was one who agreed to speak. She worked at SET for two years and treated Andam extensively, saying she was shocked by the federal charges.
“I was blown away,” she said. “People like him are never caught.
“Errol made my life a living hell, the whole time was there,” Hay added. ‘He was horrible, so insulting, the narcissistic kind of abuse. I think (SET) executives were afraid of him, they were afraid of losing his business, that he would destroy any reputation they had. ”
SET officials did not return calls.
Andam was the only person charged in the case.
His specialty was the large, flashy temporary exhibition that Nike regularly erects in a city with a major athletics competition. Partly a retail store, partly a interactive sports museum, partly a tribute to the Swoosh statue. They are called ‘experimental marketing’ in the business.
While labor intensive, a good experiential marketing project is seen as a way to build a much deeper emotional connection between brand and customer than current advertising.
A classic example was Nike’s Los Fearless event hosted in 2011 in conjunction with that year’s NBA All Star Game. Nike is a great distance from the Staples Center arena and has built a massive complex of basketball courts in the dirty alleys under the highway viaducts and hosted a tournament with local players. The venue was filled with classic cars with low riders and other references to the local Latino culture.
Such projects were usually large budgetary matters and tied together at strict deadlines. This led to a pressure cooker environment. Hay recalls one late night when contractors realized that a large amount of steel supports needed for an exhibition had never arrived on site.
Andam demanded that SET send the steel by plane to the location. Hay went to work and returned to Andam that the prize would be $ 280,000. Andam approved it without blinking an eye, she said.
Jeff Manning
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