Author, A. J. Llewellyn

 

 

TARNISHED SILVER or WYOMING-GATE by A.J. Llewellyn

I have updated and amended this blog to keep current. As of this moment, 4/11/14 the information is as accurate as I can make it. Silver Publishing LLC is still in existence as a website. It boasts one lone author, Leiland Dale, the company owner.

It is my hope that readers will be refunded money they paid for pre-ordered books. It is only fair. But then nothing is fair with this man. He stiffed hard-working staff, stole from friends and really ripped off his authors.

I’ve spent some time compiling this report. As of now it looks like Lodewyk Deysel, AKA Leiland Dale has set up another website to lure in fresh talent. Writer Beware!

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184764&page=10

It has been all over the Internet for approximately two years that Silver Publishing, LLC, is a company in deep distress doing business in an unorthodox manner…its sole owner, Lodewyk Deysel, AKA gay romance author Leiland Dale, may have started with good intentions but quickly began not paying staff and authors, telling one lie after another.

And now, things have crashed completely.

I tracked down Alisani Brazil, an alleged former employee who told me that Lodewyk Deysel has fled. He went to South Africa on Monday – although she told me it was Tuesday. She took him to the airport but claimed she had no idea all this was going on.

It was a fluke I tracked her down just now. She said she hadn’t spoken to him in two years (a claim disputed by her LinkedIn resume).

She said he called her Saturday midnight and told her he needed to leave town in a hurry. She sold his RV for him yesterday – she said, and yet I found a listing for it alive and kicking!

http://www.rvt.com/Fleetwood-American-Allegiance-34K-1998-Grosse-pointe-farms-MI-ID5649105-UX147572?similarrv_local=0&nl=#emailseller

She also has listed his TV on her Facebook wall – a TV that he bought out of authors’ earnings.

“Pre owned Mitsubishi 60″ dlp TV in perfect condition!! $350. Only 1.5 year old!!!”

I begged her to take the listing down because she was aiding and abetting a fugitive from justice. She said the TV was already sold and yet the photo is still there.

She was not concerned about the people he has defrauded. In fact she was very defensive. I was enraged to see her boasting about the kindle fire “a friend” gave her and –

She even lied to me about the day he left. Look at her post, “chlling with my bestie at the airport”

I wonder which friend that might have been?

She aided and abetted a criminal.

https://www.facebook.com/alisani.brazil?fref=ts

I am not certain she IS a former employee. Her LinkedIn page indicates she’s still involved with the company. In fact her resume lists royalty payments as one of her duties!

http://www.linkedin.com/in/alisanibrazil?_mSplash=1

I called the police in her hometown of Harristown Township, Michigan, to report the crime. Dispatcher #31 would not help. He told me to call my local police. That I had to follow proper procedure.

That TV and the RV are items that should have been sold for the authors.

He has moved out of his house and his stuff is gone. Goodbye royalties. He told her he has shut the company down – or so she says. I think she helped him escape and planned to keep doing so.

At the time of this writing, Lodewyk is pretending to one staffer via cell phone that he is still in Michigan. She has now been informed otherwise.

He is GONE.

Alisani Brazil said he left town with $80 in his pocket. I think the rest is in his offshore account. Since she lied about everything else I don’t take her word on the cash lolling in his pants.

He is having his dog Gracie sent out to him in South Africa, but his accountant is looking after the dog in the meantime. SHE is the accountant…so I guess she’s the one looking after the pooch.

Flying a dog halfway across the world is expensive…but yeah, I would be stupid to believe he has $80 to his name.

She did however confirm that Lodewyk was here in the US illegally and cannot come back here for 10 years.

He left her to clean his place and complained about having to sell the RV. “I am not a happy camper,” she said, ironically.

She was stunned when I told her what was going on. He had told her his mum was sick and he needed to go home to her.

Not so…

I spoke to her for 25 mins. She said she thought she was going over to help him with business stuff, though if she is telling the truth, why would he reach out to a FORMER employee?  Anyway, she found him panicked, throwing things together and he got her to drive him to the airport. She is upset he left her with a huge mess. Yes. In more ways than one…
So that’s it kids. It’s over. I am so glad I hunted this woman down.

It begs the question:

Who is Lodewk Deysel? And how did all this happen?

Lodewyk M. Deysel first entered the US in December 2006. Our first verified knowledge of him is that he moved into a suburban home [address withheld] in Detroit, Michigan, immediately upon arrival.

He joined Facebook on December 9, 2006 and his personal page as Lodewyk Deysel, Publisher of Silver Publishing says he was born April 21, 1980 in Rugby, Western Cape, South Africa.

https://www.facebook.com/lodewyk.deysel?fref=ts

He says he attended Buren High School in Ysterplaat, South Africa in 2002 and graduated in 2006. If this is accurate – and he states all this himself – it means he attended high school from the age of 22 to 26!

There is no way of knowing if he DID attend this school and actually graduated.

He seems to have left high school and come straight to the US.

I can find no background information on him in South Africa so none of this might be true, but this seems to be fitting considering his soon-to-be-revealed established pattern of secrets, fantasies, and outright lies.

On this same page he proudly proclaims he graduated with a PhD in Accounting from Belford University in 2011 but this is a fraudulent online university which offered unaccredited degrees for “life experiences” and has since been shut down. The owner, 30-year old Salem Kureshi, ran this scheme from his apartment in Karachi, Pakistan and was forced to pay out $22.7 million in damages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belford_University

Lodewyk’s US arrival date of December 2006 (as verified by his former landlady) is interesting because he has never left the country since…BUT he was allegedly in South Africa when he created Silver Publishing in 2009…but more on that bit of fraud coming up…

I discovered that his landlady at the suburban Detroit house he lived in shared the same name as an author/reviewer/publicist I know from the Internet. Was it a coincidence? I was shocked to see her name because I was certain she was the same woman that my friend and frequent co-author D.J. Manly and I know as a huge fan of M/M authors, and a supportive online friend.

I contacted her. She was stunned that I knew about her involvement with Lodewyk Deysel. She confirmed that she, her husband and six kids rented him a room in their single family home (which has 1 bathroom!!!) in 2006.

He was a struggling writer. He mostly stayed in his room with his beloved dog, Gracie.

She had no idea of his background or any details about his past.

From his Facebook page, it is clear he started a relationship with a man in Liverpool, Ohio since he posted photos of him and his dog during the visit and states he is In a Relationship on April 26.

The relationship appears to have failed because by May he’d set up an online dating account listing his address as East Liverpool, Ohio.

http://www.meetme.com/member/4781781

All of this is personal data, but it establishes a pattern of dishonesty because he was supposedly in South Africa all this time.

He stayed with his landlady’s family until 2010. He had no job yet always paid his rent on time. He was secretive about his activities but somehow managed to pay his rent without any income for FOUR years.

This author’s husband disliked him. Lodewyk had no discernible income but seemed to always have money. During his last year with the family, he created Silver Publishing and began inviting authors that she suggested he should work with to give him books.

I know this to be true because he invited me and DJ to submit books to him.

He offered us 90% royalties on our first book. 90%! For the first two years then royalties would drop to 60%. This was still a huge, for me, unprecedented royalty and we jumped at the chance figuring we’d start with one book and see how it went.

My experience with the inept editor who handled my book The Oasis was so bad I stopped submitting there, but DJ did well there with various paranormal titles and we collaborated on Mirrors, which turned out to be one of our biggest-selling books.

This was a much better creative experience for me, so I submitted more work. I even gave Silver Publishing the rights to my self-produced audio book for Phantom Lover.

Silver’s editors were all replaced by then. There seemed to be an endless revolving door of staff members. One former editor wrote me saying she was leaving because he hadn’t paid her. This stunned me because the company seemed to be doing so well.

Lodewyk started making money fast with authors that just seemed to capture readers’ imaginations. In the beginning, though royalties were supposed to be paid quarterly, he paid early.

Authors loved that!

At this point in 2010, he moved out of the eight-member family’s humble house into a swanky new place on 91 Sand Bar Lane, Detroit, MI 48214.

This is when it seems his financial problems began. The company took off so fast and made so much money, he began to spend. And spend…

And woo hoo! he had cool new digs.

The house was huge but from a Google search looks remote and not particularly lush… besides, he’d begun to develop expensive tastes and it didn’t take long for him to move from Sand Bar Lane into a gorgeous, big house in Grosse Pointe, eight miles east of Detroit.

His former landlady says “He wanted to live like rich people.” A Google Earth map search of his physical address at 16355 E. Jefferson Ave, Grosse Point, MI 48224 shows it to be a sumptuous residence – it looks like Southfork!! – in which he resides with his dog and at various times, different assistants are there helping him.

He does not appear to have ever paid taxes, either personally or as Silver Publishing LLC, and staff members and authors began to complain publicly about monies owed.

Where did all the money go?

Because in late 2011 to early 2012, some authors began to realize their payments had stalled.

For me, when I checked in the spring of 2012, it had been five months without a dime.

For others, they never, ever received a payment.

He’d fob people off with “your book didn’t get any third-party payments” or in some cases, a promise of something next quarter. Some people he never even responded to.

I heard a lot of stories and began to worry. I was stunned when I began receiving emails saying he was organizing an author retreat. I couldn’t believe it. I got many, many emails asking about what food I like and would I vote on the destination for this trip.

He seems to have made the classic mistake of expanding too fast and spending everything that turned up in his Paypal account.

Lodewyk updated the Silver website – but this lavish new space has always had problems with crashing. He also invested in an expensive Workflow system, which was an oxymoron.

It forced authors to submit online and for the first couple of months the Workflow was inoperable.

It also forced authors and editors to communicate and exchange book edits this way.

And then I received an email saying he was coming to America and would I be interested in meeting him? He’d contacted all his US authors and embarked on a  nationwide tour in a big RV between June and August with a couple of staff members. These adventures are catalogued in online photos in his Facebook account as Leiland Dale.

https://www.facebook.com/leilanddale?fref=ts

He also organized the author retreat for September. I don’t know how he pulled off this “I’ve moved to the US” shtick when he was here all along, but he did it beautifully.

Lodewyk Deysel has no driver’s license and doesn’t drive – a big red flag which could indicate he is here illegally. This former landlady said he is, and various authors confirm this. Not being here legally means he can therefore not obtain a driver’s license. He does however pay car insurance on a recreational vehicle  (my skip tracer was able to find this) but the vehicle was listed as a Silver Publishing company vehicle until it was sold April 9, 2014.

He apparently spent a lot of money on the vehicle, against his friends’ advice. He had employees drive the vehicle for him during his adventure in the great outdoors.

His various assistants in the past and his current assistant/accountant drove him around – until he skipped town on Monday.

And now to Silver Publishing…

He registered the company in South Africa in 2009. Since early emails showed a South African ISP for some people, this can easily be explained.

He was using a proxy ISP. One can buy packages for around $400 to disguise real ISP addresses. Once he established his move here in early 2012 when he was here all along, and, emboldened by his new-found fortune, embarked on his coast-to-coast tour, he no longer needed to pretend he was in South Africa.

He was already stiffing people on payments and when they tried to find him, they realized it was all smoke and mirrors. There WAS no company in South Africa. No physical address.

Lodewyk had quietly changed the company’s registration from South Africa to Michigan.

A US address suddenly popped up, listed in Grosse Pointe, MI. This caused a lot of confusion for some authors. They weren’t even sure it was a legitimate address since this particular tract of land was new and at the time nothing showed up on Google Search. One enterprising author’s accountant lived nearby. After sending numerous requests for payment for his client – and being ignored – the accountant drove past the address – which turned out to be a UPS and mail box drop.

Lodewyk was spending everything that came into the company and suddenly, when the heat turned up, instead of taking care of things correctly, he went ahead with his ill-advised author retreat in the mountains of Tennessee for the first week of September, 2012.

A former employee of Lodewyk’s has confirmed all of these findings. She has kept emails with certain details and said that he spent more on this retreat than she did on buying her own home.

She said he bought numerous Kindles as gifts for family, friends, blog contests… He bought Silver swag to give his authors when they arrived in Tennessee.

And all of it with royalties that should have been paid to Silver authors. This employee quit before the retreat actually took place.

He flew his mother out from South Africa to attend both his nationwide tour and the infamous retreat.

She knew he’d been living here for six years. Did she not think it was weird that he was claiming to have just moved here?

And was she proud when he drunkenly confessed to some authors that he was here illegally?

Authors said nothing…the few who were at the retreat and knew these things cared more about getting paid than telling the rest of us what they knew…

Which allowed him to conduct business as usual.

Back home from his vacation, he continued to spend, spend, spend, as authors became alarmed and royalties stopped being paid all together by August 2012.

What is almost unbelievable is that many of the authors who attended the retreat were already owed a lot of money. One author posted photos on her Facebook account saying, “I’m having such a great time and it isn’t costing me a penny!”

Oh, yes it was. That’s where her royalties went…

According to his former landlady who remained friends with Lodewyk, he thought the big money would never stop flying through the door and it didn’t, but he kept spending.

He had a flair for generosity – such as the retreat – contributing money to one author’s political campaign in NYC, and buying his employees gifts.

But after the author retreat, even his precious high-earning authors who traveled from as far as the UK for it began to scream.

He went radio silent, trying to figure out his next move.

Lodewyk owed so many people money he had to figure out something. He sent out a blanket email claiming extreme illness, which bought him some time.

In all of his proven, verifiable dealings with his authors, every move he makes is a stall tactic.

For two months he did this, claiming to have hired an accounting firm but gave no details. He said they were going over things and that these things take time. Again, it was another delay tactic.

Two MONTHS went by before he came up with a complicated repayment scheme. His plan was to pay 20% of past-due royalties plus all current ones.

He said in no uncertain terms that authors who stayed with him would receive all monies owed. He admitted in writing that he’d spent his authors’ earnings and said he’d made mistakes.

It was mind-blowing to admit such fraud on a grand scale.

People wondered what kind of accountants would recommend such a haphazard plan, but some authors bolted. Some stayed.

The lies kept tumbling out. His claims – which have been widely reposted online – were untrue. Hit with legal letters from a few authors, he made secret deals with them to pay them back monthly, all the while PRETENDING to have his loyal authors’ best interests at heart.

It is clear he resents paying the authors he owed most and another former employee says she quit because she became uncomfortable at the way he continued to spend money. Each time royalties came in he’d say, “Let’s go shopping!” and off they’d go.

What is disturbing is that she said as early as 2011 he was altering authors’ royalty reports. She observed him doing so.

What is sad is that Silver made the money. He proved the model worked. He could give authors generous royalty payments, but his greed got in the way.

He made some payments, but not to some remaining authors who also began pulling their books.

When these authors began blogging about their experiences, he claimed on the phone to DJ Manly that the company’s income dropped from $45,000 a month to $10,000.

And yet, I ran a check and his US division of Silver, established in 2011 claims a revenue of $78,000 a year.

http://www.manta.com/c/mwfztyr/silver-publishing-llc

It was less than he owed one particular author – who has publicly claimed he owed her $90,000 but the figure was probably less. Even if he owed her say $60,000, his official income claimed is slightly above this number and therefore cannot be accurate.

How is this possible when he has several authors including me and DJ who have made him good money?

Another site indicates the company makes $82,000 a year –

http://companies.findthebest.com/l/8887273/Silver-Publishing-Llc-in-Grosse-Pointe-Farms-MI

When a few authors bailed and got legal representation in early 2013, he worried about his unblemished official criminal record.

I ran a criminal background check but he is clean…all that will soon change in all likelihood.

In order to keep his record clean – doing otherwise would alert authorities to his illegal activities – he made secret deals with these authors to pay them monthly installments. To do this, he avoided paying his other authors.

By mid 2013, things were a shambles in his lovely, lush, Grosse Point abode. People were hounding him for money and his addiction to electronic goods and online spending meant that anything that came in, went out again.

He stopped spending time altering most authors’ royalty reports. He simply stopped sending these out. Authors that made very little money got reports – that may or may not have been authentic – but no actual payments.

Some authors got payments but the figures did not match those on their author dashboards.

This was another bone of contention. Nothing added up. Figures on the dashboard changed like the wind.

In desperation last year he borrowed $7500 from his former landlady to pay off installments owed to two authors with whom he’d made the secret deals.

The rest of us got nothing so he could pay off his debts to them. At some point, he couldn’t meet those payments from his authors’ royalties any longer.

He borrowed the money from her. She has a signed contract with him specifically stating the short-term loan’s purpose, but he never paid her back. She is taking him to court. It’s on the docket for June but she told me he was so afraid of the legal system  that he would pay up before the due date.

The last time she spoke to him, he told her he was planning to move back to South Africa. Which of course, he has.

She said she had, up until now avoided legal action because she’d hoped he would pay her. To keep in his good graces and hopefully see her money come back to her she has stayed friendly/ She listened to his endless woes as she and her husband went through hell.

They have lost their home and he doesn’t care. “He doesn’t feel anything,” she said.

In spite of her husband’s fury that she lent Lodewyk the money, when he called last year crying, telling them he’d been beaten up for being gay, they went and picked him up because they felt sorry for him.

Now she is afraid to tell her husband that he’s fled the country.

It’s no good thinking he will get a judgment against him. His company as of today no longer exists and he has no social security number to record it. It is as if…he doesn’t exist.

Further investigation shows that during this time he seemed to be trying to establish a new life in Pennsylvania. It cannot be a coincidence that a man by the same name has set up a company called Silver Solutions, in Shippensburg, PA, though information is sketchy.

http://www.salespider.com/p-36427/lodewyk-deysel

 

A Pattern of Deceit and Fraud

In February of 2014, Lodewyk knew his authors had united and were not going to be fobbed off anymore with lies. After his usual long period of silence, in early March he sent out a blanket email stating that he was liquefying his assets in South Africa and closing that division.

It was a clever move in that he knew that if he bankrupted that company, the hefty payments he’d been paying the three authors he’d made secret deals with would be null and void.

He told us he was selling the US division of Silver Publishing but would not reveal who the buyer was.

His former landlady said he knows she lost her home but has never attempted to repay a penny. He is obsessed only with his company and she has confirmed there was never a buyer for Silver Publishing. He TOLD her he was going to recreate the company under a new name and that he would stay on as publisher.

One has to wonder why ANY reputable investor would get involved with Silver. A Google Search shows an immediate array of damaging blogs.

Once he came up with the clever idea of selling his tarnished company, and since he is a virtual hermit with an Internet addiction, he quickly discovered he could create a new LLC dirt cheap in Wyoming! Not only that, Wyoming is a haven for tax evasion that protects against pesky creditors – creditors like his authors.

He planned on reinventing himself continuing to use other authors to keep raking in money.

Using the name Empire Entertainment, he quietly established his new venture in May, 2013 (and also creating the Silver US division.) As things got slowly worse at Silver, he planned his bold move to announce his company sale, and the closure of Silver’s South African division.

Repeating his pattern of long silences, ignored registered letters and emails, he sent out two blanket emails that made no real sense and caused a lot of confusion.

He claimed that existing authors contracted with the US division (contracts signed after May 2013) would be kept on with the new company. Most Silver Authors had no idea which Silver Publishing they were contracted to…

It is unclear why he never bothered to create a website for his new company and why he failed to cover his tracks better, but – it seems he wanted to use the URL of www.empireentertainmentllc.com.

It was registered at the time to another company (it was on their FB page) but that business went under in Sept 2013. Knowing the domain was going to become available, he might have waited in the belief that none of us would turn detective.

He made a grave error in sending out a second blanket email to his authors posing as the new publisher, S. Hemmings, of Empire Entertainment, saying the company was a new one out of Wyoming. And yet the same Grosse Point address featured at the bottom of the email.

Authors went crazy trying to find anything about Empire Entertainment.

He will probably live to regret uttering the word Wyoming.

A careful examination revealed why he chose the Cowboy State. Another author and I posted our findings on the Silver Author and Silver Business Loops on Facebook.

Empire Entertainment LLC registered its shiny new business at 1712 Pioneer Avenue, Cheyenne, Wyoming. This address is a well-known shell company for 2000 fraudulent companies. The local police department told a Silver author who went in to file a complaint that they know all about this empty single-level building but cannot do anything about it.

After an author posted some information online on the Silver Authors loop on April 3, I also found some information. I posted it on the Silver Publishing loop.

These were the links – and what I posted at 10.22am.

It is all over the Silver Authors loop that the address for this alleged new publishing company is associated with heavy fraud and shell companies. The address is even listed in a fraud report. This is not an authentic company. What the hell is going on?http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/wyoming-corporate-services-inc/cheyenne-wyoming-82001/wyoming-corporate-services-inc-wyomingcompanycom-reuters-special-report-a-little-hous-1107690

No response from Lodewyk.

I then posted another link.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/28/oukwd-uk-usa-shell-companies-idAFTRE75R22L20110628

It took him over two hours to respond.

• I have spoken to one of the owners and they have told me that Wyoming Corporate Services is their registered agent but they are in no other way associated with the company except them being their registered agent. I was told that they are moving to a new reputable registered agent as they don’t want to be associated with the above company.

April 3 at 1:09pm · Like

AJ Llewellyn I am sorry Leiland but I am not reassured. I do not want to do business with a company as hopeless as Empire Entertainment when they don’t seem to know they registered with a shell company in the first place. Did you research them at all? Or did you just hand over your company to a group of people with no clue and no concern about your authors? This bodes very badly for the future.

April 3 at 1:17pm · Like · 1

 

Again a long silence: then,

Leiland Dale Of course I researched them. We discussed their business proposal and I reviewed the related documents. I would never throw any of our authors under a bus like that. But why would anyone review their registered agent. The registered agent does not have a stake in Silver. What matters is the company, not the agent. Every business, regardless of which state they are in, is required to have a registered agent. Besides, Empire informed me they’ve already taken proactive steps, even though there is no threat to the company or anyone from their registered agent, to change agents. Hopefully their proactive nature eases some concerns.

April 3 at 3:16pm · Like

Can you count the number of times he mentions registered agent?

I went berserk. I was sick of his BULL and said:

AJ Llewellyn Leiland I find this troubling. What kind of information were you able to find? They have no web presence at all except they are a company registered under a shell name – it seems highly suspicious to me. I can’t trust them at all. Nothing is clear with them. That’s what concerns me. They don’t have a website…nothing. No contact info. I’ve been in the business a long time. It’s all very disturbing.

April 3 at 3:25pm · Like · 3

 

Lodewyk’s responses to our findings have been underwhelming to say the least. There is no proof that the alleged S. Hemmings and Donna Michaels – purported investors in Empire Entertainment – exist.

Nobody has personally heard from S.Hemmings, and he and Donna do not appear to exist at all. There is simply nothing on either of them.

Lodewyk wrote his one email pretending to be S. Hemmings, but this person has never been heard from again. Neither has his alleged associate, Donna. Both were supposed to join the Business loop on Facebook to assuage authors’ fears.

“Donna” did interact with one author– stupidly – but apparently thought she was as dumb as he is.

She notified me that “Donna” was actually Lodewyk. No surprise really.

Here it is. Evidence that Lodewyk is Donna. There is no Empire.

Received: from c-68-41-72-220.hsd1.mi.comcast.net ([68.41.72.220]:51455 helo=LodewykPC) by lds263.securednshost.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from <transition@spsilverpublishing.com>) id 1WV1Qb-0004Ag-U3 for tierneyomalley@frontier.com; Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:20:46 -0400 From: “Transition” <transition@spsilverpublishing.com>

 

Received: from c-68-41-72-220.hsd1.mi.comcast.net ([68.41.72.220]:52537 helo=LodewykPC) by lds263.securednshost.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from <publisher@spsilverpublishing.com>) id 1WXGqm-0005aT-2I for tierneyomalley@frontier.com; Mon, 07 Apr 2014 17:13:04 -0400 From: <royalties@spsilverpublishing.com>

Meanwhile neither Donna nor. S. Hemmings ever showed up on the Facebook group.

They never showed up anywhere.

Lodewyk’s plot quickly dissolved.

As far as my skip tracers are concerned, he has no unease about monies owed or other people’s problems. One of them has advised sending an attorney’s letter with our findings to ensure we get our rights back. In fact, one skip tracer told me Lodewyk having been caught would probably claim the company’s sale to Empire Entertainment fell through (which he did on the night of April 8).

Her next prediction was that he would close down all together…

Which he has, with no notification to his authors.

Up until today he was still making money from the royalties even though books aren’t listed on his site anymore. They are still on third party sites and payments will be coming in…payments he will never give us.

He has hurt many, many people. Hopefully he will spend his ill-gotten gains well in South Africa. I doubt it.

Some people never learn. They just go on to run new schemes and scams.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

A.J. Llewellyn