Mayhem at Castle Hill and CODOH

Dramatic events are unfolding with Castle Hill and CODOH as I write this. Without going into too many details, I may pick up where I left off with my last editorial about Castle Hill’s payment processor bailing out. In the meantime, trying to implement Plan B also failed. When our Plan B, CODOH’s current payment processor, looked at Castle Hill’s roster of products, they decided after a week of pondering not only to reject Castle Hill’s application for processing, but to cancel CODOH’s processing agreement as well, although that had caused no problems for them for several years.

Therefore, now the entire operation has lost its financial footing.

As if that were not bad enough, Castle Hill’s manager started exhibiting behaviors that are quite bizarre. To understand this, let’s step back a little.

The UK-based company Armreg Ltd finally announced the release of the print edition of the long-awaited Holocaust Encyclopedia for early December 2023. Castle Hill was meant to be the main sales outlet for this book in the U.S. After all, CODOH had been raising funds for this project since April 2022, and those funds had been duly and properly invested. The release of a never-before-seen massive project like an encyclopedia, one of the most exciting and important revisionist events in years, if not decades, should have been an event amalgamating all revisionist forces. All hands should have been on deck to promote this book, in order to get it successfully into the year’s most important sales event: Christmas.

But Castle Hill’s manager Michael Santomauro had other priorities. First, he nagged about Castle Hill’s latest book release (see the Book Announcement in this issue). He claimed that it has too much text in italics, threatening that he would throw into the garbage any new book produced by Castle Hill that has more than 5% of its text in italics. He became literally obsessed with this demand, refusing to discuss, let alone develop, a promotion strategy for the pending encyclopedia, and insisting instead on a commitment to “less than 5% italics.”

Next, when Armreg Ltd decided to produce the Holocaust Encyclopedia in both a hardcover and a softcover edition, Mr. Santomauro again took to threatening: He insisted that only full-color paperback editions should be produced, and that he would throw into the garbage any version that does not fulfill this requirement. Never mind that the book was produced by a different company on a different continent, so he had no control over that decision. I will not discuss here who is right and wrong. Suffice it to say that any employee of a company who threatens to destroy company assets based on his preferences is a liability.

On the upside, once pre-orders for the Encyclopedia’s print edition were accepted, Mr. Santomauro was among the first to place an order for himself (paperback, full-color), generously paying the full price plus shipping, although as a friend and company manager, he could have gotten a free copy or at least one at wholesale conditions, without incurring shipping costs.

In mid-December, just a few days after the Encyclopedia had been released, I was tasked by CODOH’s Board of Trustees to do the final accounting of the funds CODOH had raised for the Encyclopedia, making sure that they get disbursed to the authors of that book. When tallying up earlier payments, I glanced over Castle Hill’s bank statements of 2023, since some of the funds raised had been funneled through that bank account. While glancing through the statements, I realized that, during his past year of managing Castle Hill, Mr. Santomauro evidently had listed Castle Hill’s debit card as the default payment option for his private Amazon account, using it to pay for what looked like a massive number of personal purchases of all kinds of items worth several thousand dollars, foremost among them print and ebooks (Kindle). In addition, I established that he had paid with company funds the following private expenses:

• grocery purchases
• restaurant visits
• furniture purchases
• journal subscriptions
• repair for an A/C unit
• towing a private car
• an electric shaver which he gave me as a gift for my 59th birthday
• paying for his cell phone and internet services
• subscription to an expensive dating service (hooker service?)

Moreover, I found out that, in late 2022 and early 2023, supporters had donated close to $20,000 dollars earmarked for my personal support, which Mr. Santomauro had paid into the company account without ever telling me or anyone else. I am perfectly fine with Castle Hill cashing in on donations earmarked for me, if that is what it takes to enable Castle Hill to pay me for services rendered. However, during the entire past year, Mr. Santomauro insisted that Castle Hill was so cash strapped that I could not be paid – while at the same time financing his dolce vita on Hilton Head Island at company expense.

I instantly brought this to the attention of the other members of CODOH’s Board of Trustees. An emergency meeting was arranged, during which we convinced Mr. Santomauro to step down as manager of Castle Hill voluntarily. Then, I was put back in charge of Castle Hill to right the ship, and I was to sit down with Mr. Santomauro to figure out which of these suspicious charges to Castle Hill’s bank account were legitimate and which ones were not, and then what to do about it.

Around the same time, I was fulfilling pre-orders for the Encyclopedia. When I came across Mr. Santomauro’s pre-order, I got curious: Did he actually pay this with his own money, or with the company debit card? I checked, and lo and behold, he had paid it with his company debit card. I cancelled and refunded the order. When Mr. Santomauro received the cancellation notice, he instantly ordered another copy, again using company money. I cancelled it again, this time sending him a message saying “You will get your free copy. Stop paying full retail price using payment means of a company that can get the Enc at a discount or even free of charge!” We subsequently communicated through Skype and agreed on which type of book Mr. Santomauro wanted as a gift (color paperback), and I placed that order free of charge straight away. I thought that this settled the matter.

However, later that day, I logged into Castle Hill’s online banking account, where I saw dozens of recent Amazon Kindle ebook orders paid with Mr. Santomauro’s company debit card. I watched in real time as new charges were coming in every other minute or so. I furthermore noticed that he had drawn money from Castle Hill’s account via e-check to buy books from another publishing company. I instantly contacted that publishing company and informed them of what was going on. Next, I contacted the bank and had them block the debit card and initiate an investigation. After that, I sent Mr. Santomauro another message. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I told him that I had his company debit card blocked, because it evidently had been compromised, since someone was placing massive numbers of orders on Amazon with it.

Mr. Santomauro swiftly answered my text message, writing, “Nope, that was me giving myself $700 Christmas bonus […]” – while Castle Hill had been struggling financially the entire year to make ends meet.

Mr. Santomauro and I had agreed a day earlier that I would visit him in Hilton Head Island to pick up all physical company assets he had stored in his home and garage (among them most importantly some 160 boxes full of books). However, while I was on the road to him two days later, Mr. Santomauro had a change of mind, evidently after finding out that his private “Christmas-bonus” book order using a company e-check had been cancelled and refunded by that other company. He now demanded $5000 in cash before handing over any assets. Then, out of the blue, he called me, screaming at me that I had allegedly instructed someone to murder him – which never happened – and screamed at me at the top of his lungs repeatedly: “I will fuck you up, Germar!”

Since the bank had Mr. Santomauro listed as the company’s CEO, it was impossible for me to revoke his banking permissions. Hence, he could continue draining the company’s bank account. However, since the bank had me listed as the owner of Castle Hill (although strictly speaking CODOH owns Castle Hill), I could close the account, which I initiated the next day to stop the hemorrhaging. On that same day, Mr. Santomauro texted a third person that he considers killing me, if that’s what it takes to protect himself (see screenshot). Mr. Santomauro evidently had lost his mind.

The next day, Mr. Santomauro tried to first cancel the auto-renewal on CODOH’s internet domain name codoh.com. When that failed because it required my confirmation, Mr. Santomauro tried to move the domain name out of CODOH’s GoDaddy account, which failed for the same reason. Alarmed by this, I contacted GoDaddy to regain control of the domain names owned by CODOH. Mr. Santomauro furthermore texted all members of CODOH’s Board of Trustees that, in spite of him having stepped down as Castle Hill’s manager, he intended to keep exerting “full control” of Castle Hill in order to skim the company for his private financial needs. And indeed, the next day, Mr. Santomauro went to a local bank branch and cashed out all remaining company funds. To a mutual friend, he stated that he currently demands a payment of $300,000 from CODOH before relinquishing the company assets he holds hostage.

At that point, CODOH had only some $4000 in the bank, and no means of accepting card payments. Therefore, Mr. Santomauro demands are impossible to meet, even if CODOH’s Board were willing to give in to such mafiosi methods, which it is not. Among other things, Mr. Santomauro “justifies” his demands by claiming that he is entitled to an ex-post facto compensation for 15 years of loyal services to revisionism – including his service of passively shutting down Castle Hill in 2005 by not following instructions (see my editorial to the previous issue), and by first mismanaging and now ruining the company completely. He furthermore has taken control of CODOH’s domain-name and website-hosting accounts by changing all contact information and passwords, and by denying all other CODOH board members access to these accounts. To a mutual friend of ours, Mr. Santomauro admitted that he hijacked CODOH’s virtual assets in order to gain “leverage,” meaning to enable him to blackmail CODOH.

Therefore, with Castle Hill having no books to sell and no bank account and no money to do business with, we had to suspend business altogether – just before Christmas, when sales are supposed to peak. Fortunately, the Encyclopedia is sold by a different company…

It is rock bottom for Holocaust revisionism. The damage Mr. Santomauro has done during the past year while he was in charge easily rivals the damage all the enemies of free speech have done over the past several decades. But as I see it, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings…

This account of events unfolding at our end is neither complete due to a lack of space, nor can it be impartial, because I am a party in this struggle. Once this nightmare is over, however, I will strive to give a more detailed and fully documented account in a more appropriate context. An editorial of Inconvenient History most certainly is not the proper forum for this. But I owe our readers, friends, fans, donors, supporters and customers an explanation as to what the heck is going on.

For now, friends who still are on good terms with Mr. Santomauro are employing all means to talk him off the ledge. Pray with us that they may succeed.

P.S.: Mr. Santomauro prides himself to be the descendant of Italian immigrants whose claim to fame is their membership and activity in the Mafia. Go figure…