Ravae Sinclair and Denise Bolds discuss their experiences with being scammed by Augustine Colebrook, who promised a Belize retreat for November 2024 but changed it to February 2025, causing scheduling conflicts.

Despite paying in installments, they were unable to get refunds, with Colebrook citing financial difficulties and potential bankruptcy.

They highlight the broader issue of Colebrook's history of financial mishandling, including a $2,000 loss for a skills and drills conference cancellation and allegations of harming families in Oregon and Hawaii.

They urge caution for other birth workers and emphasize the importance of transparency and integrity in business practices.

Part 1 on YouTube: https://youtu.be/535CkMmvlgs?si=uCPE37UE6u1vyNv-

Part 2 on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MVdtv3IZxsg

Ravae Sinclair

Hello everyone, Hi. I'm Ravae Sinclair.

Denise Bolds

I'm Denise Bolds

Ravae Sinclair

and we're here to help you. Doula,

Denise Bolds

that,

Ravae Sinclair

okay, ain't nobody laughing. We are not, we are not coming to you. This is a part two, uh, we are not coming to you. Bubbly and happy today, although I'm not downtrodden, but this is kind of a sobering episode to follow up from a video episode that I did around being taken to the bank for $2,000 from a fellow birth worker. And there's been a lot of feedback. We posted the video on our doula that podcast Facebook page, and we are pleased that people are getting getting the message and hearing about my specific experience, which I've told a little bit about Denise's experience, but we're doing a part two, so Denise can share more of her experience, and we can actually talk about what we've learned since the post. Do you want to share. We want to start you share your story.

Denise Bolds

Ravae Sinclair

We are finding out a lot of stuff. So first of all, I don't feel guilty by pulling you into this, because this was not we just wanted a trip, y'all, we just wanted a trip. We really just thought, let's grind. I mean, we were working our butts off this year, knowing that, like, mid November, we were going to get an amazing I was so looking forward to this. You know, how much I was looking forward to this. So So I think we'll get, we're going to still get an amazing trip. We're, you know, this is not something that takes us down. We will not thwart it in our mission to get to the beach. Okay, so that's still going to happen. We're going to figure it out. But I believe, just like you, you and I have so many like, parallel experiences, and we might be bonded for life, whether we prove them, I know it's in some people would say a trauma bond somewhat, but we healed. We've healed a lot together. Oh yeah, that it's a toxic bond, but I think we're also kind of like an unlikely pair. But little do people know, this is like perfect, like, this is perfect for us right at the stage of life that we're in and the stage in our careers. And so I'm really grateful. I think God does everything for a reason. You know, no accidents with my God, no accidents, no accidents. And so Denise knows I love having a witness. The lawyer in me really appreciates always having a witness and different experiences, because, similar to me, we've grown up always, often being misunderstood, our confidence, our propensity towards telling the truth, and when things are wrong, we expose a lot of people don't like that, and they misinterpret it. And so we have that also similar experiences. And so together, we did decide. We had a conversation about whether we were going to do do this episode on or the episode that I recorded, we're going to do it on our podcast. Like, is that the appropriate platform? And here's the thing, we had to inclinate inclination that the way that she was acting, that this was like, no big deal. It would that's what was egregious for me and I, and it felt predatory. And I definitely just felt like we must tell people, like birth workers should be worn like Yes, could happen to you. Well, it was that agreement and that motivation to make sure that you all have information and you all can be protected, that mo that got us here to where we are today. Little did we know that when I posted, I was posting solely for you all to be aware and for me to try to compel her to give me my money back. Well, we opened up the gates like my in my messenger inbox, my text messages, yes, are flooded. Yep, people immediately had a response. Most did not want to do it in the Facebook thread or publicly, which is one thing I want to address, the energy people are afraid to speak out about Augustine Colebrook. I'm going to keep saying her name and tagging her not to harass, because that's not what it is, but I'm not going to allow anonymity in a situation that's very specific. Okay, so they are messaging about their personal experiences, which is not slander. I'm a lawyer. I'm going to need y'all to look up the definition, okay, this is that term too freely. It's

Denise Bolds

not slink.

Ravae Sinclair

It's not slander. I get to tell my lived experience. You don't have to believe it. If you don't believe it, just keep scrolling. You don't have to give feedback. Okay, like there, you know, and you know, have some self awareness around this situation. People who are navigating really tough things don't need you saying, go to court. Go to court. I know how to go to court. I was a litigator for seven years, child. I could go to court in a heartbeat. Court is not where things get resolved. Court is where things get compromised. I am not interested in compromise. I gave her money. She didn't give me a service. I want my money back. I deserve my money back, and I don't have to prove that to anyone, by the way, somebody you know called my credibility into question, and she acted like she didn't, but she did, and at this point, post election, I'm not hearing it from none of y'all. Okay, I am a black woman resting when I'm finished with this scenario, y'all probably ain't really gonna hear from me, except on the podcast in general, for general purposes. But this is it's okay to tell what has happened to you that is not slander. If somebody's trying to manipulate you into silence, don't fall for it. If you're not sure, call a lawyer and get some advice and then speak up. So I'm speaking up, and I'm really hope that I'm helping others unlock their voice. I saw. In the thread that one person said this happened to me, and I didn't say anything, and I'm glad you're saying something for the sake of other birth workers. So these kind of comments are really, really helpful. When y'all share what y'all have experienced at the hands of Augustine Colebrook, it actually frees up other people. Frees people up from their shame, their guilt, their just

Denise Bolds

just trying. They're traumatized. They've been betrayed. They trusted this person. Just for the record, I lost. I had to get charged back $1,581 from my credit card with this trip that that's what I'm I'm fighting and showing documentation to the credit card company about this situation. Yeah,

Ravae Sinclair

Denise Bolds

Yeah, and you know, when she made this transition from being in person to a virtual conference, she offered some pretty low bar consolations to people who've already paid for the in person. Oh, I'll get you CEUs. Oh, you get another free training off of my of my website. Oh, you'll get another handout. It's like, well, this, all this, all should have been included already.

Ravae Sinclair

Oh, yes, that's what she offered. Speaker. So the in person started last week, Friday, you sure did. And so I reached out to one of those speakers to try to see was this conference legitimate? Because I wanted to see if, when, when, when did she go to being a virtual presenter? And she said it was about the time that we found out in September that the conference was not going to be in person, so she found out last minute as well. But yeah, there was no compensation for speakers. Now, these the two speakers on Friday that I saw. There were two black women, which I thought it was interesting, and the compensation was not monetary. It was like, yeah, we'll get you see. I'm gonna apply for CEUs. Wait, you haven't done that yet that may never come to fruition. So you're offering something that may never actually even happen. And

Denise Bolds

apply for CEUs takes money. You have to pay for that.

Ravae Sinclair

Oh, yeah, yeah. So what part of the reason why we were going to do part two was there were a lot of things, I had a lot of thoughts and feelings. And now that we're on camera, which often happens, I'll be on roll when we're private, and then when we get a camera, I have to try to be organized, but I'm gonna let you share a little bit more of your reaction or your motivation for being a part of this.

Denise Bolds

Well, you know, a couple of years, two years ago, I came on and did a live and called out spinning babies with a black trainer, and she had done the spinning babies training, and she did not give out certificates of completion with contact, our verification to predominantly people of color. And I called them out, and I basically stood up here by myself because no one wanted to come forward with me, and that kind of learned behavior does more harm than good. Um Rhea tried to to make some back room calls about me and try to disparage my my my personality and my credibility. And you know, like you said, a hit dog. Holler. So it's so bad.

Ravae Sinclair

She She reached out to me. I don't think she knew that you and I were friends, and I tried to redirect her. She reached out to another person who was also your good friend. That's kind of interesting how that ended up happening, yeah, but to

Denise Bolds

this day, you know, August, two years ago, we there still has not been an issue of those certificates of attendance. And I don't know how Gail really allows that to happen. I really don't, because these were a mixture of professionals taking this course to get the contact hours to get the certification, and they never received it. I received it because I yelled out, hit. You know, I yelled out, squeaky wheel gets the attention. I yelled out. But there's a group of community doulas who took the same training up at North Central Bronx, and they never got their certificates, and that is a predominantly community of color trying to advance themselves on their doula and birthing skills trained by a black person, that trust is so breached on something like that, and I'm so passionate about it because I am a trainer, I Make sure my CE user in place before I advertise. I make sure that everything is Integris on what I'm doing. I'm making sure that everything is communicated properly. If someone can't make it, I bend over backwards to make sure that they can get into the next cohort if something happens. I'm very, very transparent. But with with this situation here, you and I, we paid for a service that was terminated before we could even get the service. We never got we never got anything.

Ravae Sinclair

We didn't even get an email saying, Let's get ready. We're excited. We can't wait to see you. There was nothing. No, I got nothing for my money, literally nothing. And we're not you know, this is not a scenario where you just run and sue someone and use the court system.

Denise Bolds

She doesn't have an address here. We don't even know where she was. Doesn't even

Ravae Sinclair

live in the United States. She

Denise Bolds

doesn't live here. Y'all,

Ravae Sinclair

Denise Bolds

didn't somebody say something? If y'all had said something, I would have never bought would have been so avoided if somebody would have smoked.

Ravae Sinclair

This is how I know social media is powerful. I had a fellow doula who I really respect, go to the conference in Colorado. Oh, my God. It was amazing. It was fantastic. I'm like, Really, dang, I missed it. Okay. Oh, next time I'm be in the room. So then she opened up another kind of gathering space, and it sold out. Like, immediately I was like, dang, I missed it again. So I'm following this person because I only know them through social media. I only know them from people saying, Oh, it was a great experience. Now, if the people who having a great experience can shout out I'm saying today, I'm telling you how important is when you have a bad experience, to shout out, not every single time, okay, but there is a time and a place for us. This was the right time and place to shout out. I have never done this. I have never called out someone. I would be horrified if somebody called me out. I haven't been a perfect birth worker. I've had to give back money, where people weren't happy with services. Here's the difference. This is not like somebody I gave a service and somebody didn't pay me. I didn't have a service to give her. That's not that she had a service to provide to me, and she got the money. She got everything. She I said I would give her, and she didn't give me anything, and I'm over here fighting for my money. Okay, I have never done this, but I realized the way all people are responding that this was the right thing to do. People are getting freed up, but it is important to speak up, because social media made me believe in this brand. Made me believe in this woman. In fact, I found out that the person who did the marketing, her logo and her websites and stuff, that person had to sue her to get paid. There you go, the very marketing that's drawing a lot of us in. There it is. It didn't even get paid for she had to fight. She's making payments to that midwifery student. That was one of the messages I got after somebody saw the video. I mean, y'all, it's, all it's, it's, let me just stick to my experience, because I don't want to step into the slander. But I'm telling you what I learned, and I know we are on the right track by having spoken out. I would not just do this for anyone, and I wouldn't want anybody to just do this to me. But egregious is clearly where we are. We are in the land of egregious. That

Denise Bolds

was we would not look into to do anything and say all these things again. We weren't looking for this. We went in to buy a vacation and hang out as friends. That's what this

was, and that's what she offered. That's what she offered. She

Denise Bolds

offered, and we did it on her term. She says, Hey, you can do a payment plan. Here's your credit card. We did the payment plan. We filed the charge back. She's still charging my card. I had to get a new credit card to stop her from this point, to stop her from continuing to charge on my card. Yeah, so

Ravae Sinclair

let's talk on that. Let's speak on that, the charge I made an agreement with memory wisdom collective, okay, that was the business on the original transaction. That's what showed up on our bank statements from June to July. We made the had the conversation that we needed our refund because she breached the contract when she changed the date of the con, of the conference or of the retreat. That was a material change in the contract. So what was initially a non refundable scenario now has become refundable. She acknowledged that, she acknowledged that in writing to both of us that a refund was in order by asking us, how do you want your refund? She's not disputing that we deserve a refund. She's never said we don't deserve it. What she hasn't done is given it and claims it'll happen in November. Well, guess what? We're in November. She said to me in writing, I aim to give you your. Money in November. No, at the end of November. What does that mean? That's not an exact date. At the time that she said this, that was two it was 60 days out. I'm like, That is not an instant refund. That is crazy. And what does aim mean? Aim like I may or may not get it. And that's why the timeliness of our of us talking out is important, because I'm not sure that she is going to give it, and it was just so uncertain. But what happened is, July was the last payment. We asked for the refund. No payment was taken in June. I mean, sorry, no payment was taken in August. No payment was taken in September. I'm thinking, okay, fine, okay, so I'm I'm just trying to be patient. I'm watching Denise do the chargeback process. And that is not that wasn't absolutely initially available to me because of the way I paid it on a business debit card. So you all have to know how surprised and shocked I was to get $600 taken out of my bank account in October,

Denise Bolds

and I got 400 taken out in October on my credit card again. And

Ravae Sinclair

Denise Bolds

steak, hosting so hard that's gotta be real, posting

Ravae Sinclair

reels and I'm not listen. I'm gonna take my vacation. I'm gonna find a way. But the point is, you don't do that a week after you took $600 out of my account, $400 out of Denise and who else she studied, collecting money from folks who are registering for our conference. Shame for

Denise Bolds

shame. Glad we didn't buy the plane tickets. I'm so glad we didn't buy the so glad we didn't. Oh my god. And

Ravae Sinclair

here's what I here's what I suspect. I suspect that she's on a visa. She's gotta leave the country after being there for so many months straight. Her plan was to come to the United States for this conference for 30 days, and then go to Belize for that week. And that didn't happen. So she just went to Bali for the month. She's admitted that on her own, I got, I have that on the in the thread her reels of her, you know, diving in the ocean in Bali. Swing with turtles, yeah, swim with turtles and all of that. And again, go have your fun, but take care of business. Take care of your responsibilities, and clearly that this is not what she does. There is a pattern of behavior here that is predatory, that is that is harming birth workers, and there's also a culture of quiet and shame around it, and I don't think we should be in that space. So I want to encourage you all to live in your truth, live in the light. Keep going. I really want my heart goes out to those who have been, who are in, you know, we're walking in your shoes. You've been where we are. Obviously, life goes on and we'll move on. But people should know. People should know that there's a, you know, a wolf in sheep's clothing amongst us, and you know, if you buy from her, that's that's on you. You can't, you know, you can't claim you didn't know that nobody sounded alarm, because we I

Denise Bolds

just wish somebody alarms sooner. I would not have you know if, in my circle, if I came across, I would say over vades, a great idea. But I think we need to be wary of this before we make an agreement to do this. We had no idea all of this was going to be uncovered when we when we did this?

Ravae Sinclair

No idea. And, you know, I think back to what I was saying. I think there this happened for a reason. This is not karma, child. I plan really great seeds, okay, but I think it happened to us so that, because we do have a platform, we do have a heart for birth workers. We do want you all to learn lessons and grow in your practice. And we don't want you to become victims. We want you to be effective. And this is just a lesson, I guess. We're just going to take move it forward. We're going to just move it forward so that you all get a chance to be mindful. Look for the red flags, the yellow flags. So in this I would say one of my yellow flags was when I did the transaction, I didn't get a copy of a contract. I didn't, and so that made me screenshot the website. But there, like, in by February and March, when we didn't get communication, I should have, like, right,

Denise Bolds

busy working. And, you know, that's part of the plan that, you know, I'm going to work with this population, because we are so busy, we are doing so many things,

Ravae Sinclair

yeah, and it was so far off. It's like, okay, it's February. We're not going on time. We're traveling in November. We got time. We got time. But you should absolutely be getting correspondence if you're not getting correspondence, if you're not being put in a group with other participants, if you're not seeing continuous promotions around it, you that's a yellow flag. Um, I think the other yellow flag is, was a red flag that when I reached out to her, because we had to reach out to her when we found out the date had gotten changed, that she immediately was like, Yeah, okay, you know, no apology. There was no acknowledgement. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry I did all that. Thank you

Denise Bolds

for your patience and understanding. That's what she kept saying. Thank

Ravae Sinclair

you for your patience, understanding. Patience, understanding, which is one of the posts y'all see, I finally snap, and I'm like, I'm not patient and understanding anymore. I'm out of patience with you. I've been paid. I've been between the two of us the most patient, right? Like, and now it's over. It's a lot of gas lighting manipulating, like, in one of the threads, she says, Oh no, we realized those $600 payments. As soon as we realized them, we refunded them. Well, so because I don't have it, you don't have you didn't get yours back. You're lying. But then in another phrase, in another post, you say, oh, all the refunds are coming in November. Which is it? The refunds went came right away, at least for those transactions or the refunds are coming in November. It can't be both. Pick one, pick a lie, because that's what you're doing. You don't even remember what you're saying. Now, I suspect that there is something like, besides health wise, there's some mental there's some stuff going on with her, and we're getting kind of a flat affect. And even though I'm tagging her, she is not responding, and that tells me that there's something else going on. I think this person is not well, so I would question doing anything, a retreat, a class, learning under her. I don't think that there's stability. And there's clearly not financial stability, and that is, it's it's sad, and so for honestly, I want to recognize that there might be other birth workers in this space who are on the edge financially as well, like they're struggling to figure out how to they're borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. And if that's the case, then feel free to reach out. I help people do business building and perhaps would do that extend myself in order to support you in getting stronger and better birth workers, we need to do better. We can have strong, vibrant businesses. I don't care what the economy is. People are having babies every day, but we ought to do we got to do it with integrity,

Denise Bolds

and that integrity is whoever is our office staff person. I do believe you know they, if they see that all of this is happening, they could be held liable as well. They could be held liable when, when stuff is coming down with the paperwork and everything. They could be accomplices to this whole situation. Well, I would be very

Ravae Sinclair

careful, other than accomplice, I would say for sure, be subpoenaed, because if they are, if their name is on documents, they can be subpoenaed and questioned about their involvement. They can definitely be inconvenienced and be deposed. There's, yeah, they can absolutely be dragged in, and they're probably some of our chief witnesses right to but I don't even want to go to court. It's not that I. Just give me my money. Just give everybody back their money. Yeah?

Denise Bolds

But it's just, it's really sad how this is just one lie, begets another, begets another, and it's just it's like an avalanche of, like a

Ravae Sinclair

cascade, yeah, like a domino effect. So everyone protect yourselves. And I hope this provides a little bit more clarity. I definitely wanted to give a chance to bring Denise into the space, but like y'all, don't, don't come this way. Don't come this way. Protect yourselves. Get your receipt. No, don't board on credit card. Buy traveling insurance, I don't know. Ask people. Get, get people's reputation. Ask, ask, all the person and ask them questions. You should have a FAQ. You should have a sign. There's all kinds of things, but take care of yourselves. Protect yourselves. Don't do it all right, everybody, this is us. We hope you will better do love that, because we will too. Okay, have a good time everybody. Take care. See you next time you