X13 folds as staff alleges $2.7k of unpaid wages, expenses

Dust2.us has been approached by a number of X13 employees with allegations that the organization's owner, Jessie Moreno, owes them collectively around $2,700 in unpaid wages and other expenses. The employees came forward after all attempts to contact Moreno have fallen through, with the organization's owner essentially disappearing since the start of February.

Despite the owner going essentially abandoning his post, the organization continued to operate, with the remaining management taking care of day to day operations and attempting to pay players all while Moreno dodged all attempts from his co-workers and employees.

The employees seeking compensation from Moreno include a number of full-time and part-time employees of X13: CEO Zack "Barca" Looney, Creative Director Daniel Marín, Co-Owner and Chief Media Officer Aiden "Pablo" P., and Caster/Social Media Manager Conner "cernersandals" Rhodes.

In particular, each are owed the following:

• Looney is owed $300 for unpaid salaries to the Rocket League team and $100 for Marín, whom he paid out-of-pocket.

• Pablo is owed $600 after paying cernersandals' salary out-of-pocket.

• cernersandals is owed $1,120 for casting and social media work.

• Marín is owed $525 for his salary.

The various parties presented Dust2.us with ample evidence of their efforts to contact Moreno over the past six months, including via email, Discord, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, email, and his personal phone number.

The lack of communication from Moreno continued to the point where cernersandals where the social media manager was forced to file an Unpaid Wage Claim Form with the Arizona Labor Department in an attempt to recoup backpay from the organization. Dust2.us has seen the claim against Moreno and X13 Squad, LLC, which has unfortunately yet to gain any traction as a way for cernersandals to be compensated for the over $1,000 Moreno owes him.

Dust2.us attempted to contract Jessie Moreno for this story in order to get comment regarding the allegations against him. Unfortunately, much like his co-owner despite reaching out via his Twitter, X13 email, and his personal phone number, Moreno did not respond or acknowledge our request ahead of publication.

In a further attempt to contact Moreno, Dust2.us also looked into X13's corporate filings in the state of Arizona. Despite what one can usually expect from small North American organizations, the company is based out of a real office building as opposed to a house or apartment.

Unfortunately, while Dust2.us was able to confirm X13 had an "office space", per se, in an office complex in Paradise Valley, Arizona, it was only a virtual office for the low price of $75 meaning they is no physical footprint to get a hold of Moreno. A phone call to the office complex also revealed at the time of the phone call revealed no record of an X13 Squad, LLC currently having office space, virtual or physical, within the building

Surprisingly, it doesn't appear that Moreno has completely abandoned the online world, as he recently claimed the lucrative jessie username on Discord as part of their account changes.

Considering that the Discord username changes only started rolling out on May 3rd, Moreno seemingly hopped online to change his username, ignored all DMs from concerned employees, and then went radio silent once again. Unfortunately, as can be expected, his DMs are friends only so Dust2.us was unable to contact him via this vector.

Dust2.us will update this story if Moreno elects to reply, however at the time of publication it appears that is a classic but unfortunate case of an owner getting in over his head and closing up shop.

As X13 is a limited liability company, Moreno would have very little personal liability if the company truly went bust, raising more questions about him cutting and running.

Unfortunately for his employees and the wider community this will likely serve as another cautionary tale about the risks associated with unaccountable NA organizations no matter how professional their operations attempt to be.

The only real good to come out of this story, is that former management of X13 have officially canned the brand and created their own organization, Slate, free of any association with their former boss.