Errol Andam’s spectacular and controversial rise from the mean streets of Los Angeles to high-level designer for Nike ended badly Thursday when federal prosecutors charged Andam with defrauding his former employer for $1.4 million.
Andam, 49, known for his volcanic temper and four-inch mohawk haircut, was accused of wire fraud, money laundering and making false statements on a loan application.
Prosecutors have been working the case for more than two years since Andam left Nike in late 2018. Nike officials allegedly brought the case to prosecutors’ attention.
“He no longer works for the company,” Nike spokesman Greg Rossiter said 2019. “We will cooperate with any government investigation.
Andam could not be reached for comment. Reached by phone months before today’s criminal case was unveiled, he told The Oregonian/OregonLive to leave him alone. His attorney did not immediately respond to a message Thursday afternoon.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” he said. “Please don’t call me back.”
Andam worked at Nike for 17 years, moving up the corporate ladder from a Los Angeles retail store to a midlevel marketing manager’s position. Several Nike contractors and former Nike coworkers have told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Andam had a demanding, temperamental persona.
They said they put up with it because he was the gatekeeper to millions of dollars of Nike marketing money.
Suspicions that Andam was somehow scamming Nike had dogged him for years, according to those contractors and former colleagues. He was a regular at the best nightclubs in South Florida, coworkers said, and they wondered how he could afford that on his Nike salary.
Federal prosecutors on Thursday accused the former Nike employee of defrauding the company and essentially stealing $1.4 million from the footwear giant. The government claims that in 2016 Andam recruited a childhood friend to establish a new company, ostensibly in the business of building precisely the kind of temporary, or “pop-up” installations that Andam specialized in.
Andam secretly controlled the company, prosecutors claim, even preparing the 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, that the company often erects in conjunction with large athletic events, according to the federal charges.
Andam cut a broad swath through the Portland marketing scene.
SET Creative, in Northwest Portland, was Andam’s go-to local contractor. More than a dozen former SET employees told The Oregonian similar tales of the long hours and difficult working conditions at SET due largely to Andam’s constant presence.
Nike is life’s blood for a small but vibrant ecosystem of Portland design firms, marketing shops, photographers, fabricators and other specialists. Nike’s favor can mean the difference between prosperity and bankruptcy for some of these firms.
That helps explain why so few are willing to speak publicly about Andam. They fear that doing so will get them blackballed at Nike.
Mindy Hay was one who agreed to speak up. She worked at SET for two years and dealt extensively with Andam and said she was shocked by the federal charges.
“I’m blown away,” she said. “People like him never get caught.
“Errol made my life a living hell the whole time was there,” Hay added. “He was awful, so abusive, the narcissistic kind of abuse. I think (SET) managers were afraid of him, they were afraid of losing his business, that he would destroy any reputation they had.”
SET officials did not return phone calls.
Andam was the only person charged in the case.
His specialty was the big, flashy temporary exhibit that Nike often erects in a city hosting a major athletic competition. Part retail store, part interactive sports museum, part tribute to the Swoosh image, they’re known in the business as “experiential marketing” efforts.
Though labor intensive, a good experiential marketing project is seen as a way to build a much deeper emotional connection between brand and customer than run-of-the-mill advertising.
A classic example was Nike’s Los Fearless event staged in 2011 in conjunction with that year’s NBA-All Star game. Blocks away from the Staples Center arena, Nike built a massive complex of basketball courts in the gritty alleys underneath freeway viaducts and staged a tournament of local players. The venue was filled with classic low-rider cars and other references to local Latino culture.
Such projects were usually big-budget affairs and cobbled together on tight deadlines. That led to a pressure-cooker environment. Hay recalls one late night when contractors realized that a large batch of steel supports needed for an exhibit had never arrived at the site.
Andam demanded that SET ship the steel by plane to the location. Hay went to work and reported back to Andam that the price would be $280,000. Andam approved it without blinking an eye, she said.
Jeff Manning
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Controversial former Nike designer accused of defrauding sneaker giant in $1.4 million scam - OregonLive
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