Conned

That's sad to hear. I hope whoever it is finds a way of getting her money back.

That's sad to hear. I hope whoever it is finds a way of getting her money back.

Thanks Pete, so do I. Saga in drips.... Part 2: So who was he? Some handsome smooth talking charmer, or an evil calculating [email protected]#$%rd... neither, he was simply a friend. And who was she? Mrs calculating rich b*tch, or Ms Lights-are-on-but-no-one's-home... neither, Mrs Ordinary.

Thanks Pete, so do I. Saga in drips....

Part 2:
So who was he? Some handsome smooth talking charmer, or an evil calculating [email protected]#$%rd... neither, he was simply a friend.

And who was she? Mrs calculating rich b*tch, or Ms Lights-are-on-but-no-one's-home... neither, Mrs Ordinary.

Both are knocking on in years, both had their own business in the past, both live in modest 2 bedroom houses and drive second hand cars. Both live off a bit of freelancing photography related income. Both are likable friendly people. Lesson 1: Being alike and friends is no basis for going into business together.

Both are knocking on in years, both had their own business in the past, both live in modest 2 bedroom houses and drive second hand cars. Both live off a bit of freelancing photography related income. Both are likable friendly people.

Lesson 1: Being alike and friends is no basis for going into business together.

Mr Friend tells Mrs Ordinary he is about to start a business, has it all set up and just needs to get a bank loan. Mrs Ordinary, who has never used a credit card, had a mortgage, or hire purchase, is horrified when he tells her the interest rate. You must understand, she is a bit of a tight old biddy. 5 years since she went to a hairdressers or bought a dress, seldom wears makeup, doesn't buy pre-packed food; but when she does spend, she only gets the best and makes it last. Whenever she makes any money she puts it into property, so there are economic times when she is literally penniless. Nevertheless, she has a bank account in which she saves what she can toward the time she won't be able to work any longer, not being entitled to a pension. It was greed that prompted her. If she got 17.5% interest on the money she had put by for her old age, it would be grand. Lesson 2: Greed is a dangerous animal.

Mr Friend tells Mrs Ordinary he is about to start a business, has it all set up and just needs to get a bank loan.
Mrs Ordinary, who has never used a credit card, had a mortgage, or hire purchase, is horrified when he tells her the interest rate. You must understand, she is a bit of a tight old biddy. 5 years since she went to a hairdressers or bought a dress, seldom wears makeup, doesn't buy pre-packed food; but when she does spend, she only gets the best and makes it last. Whenever she makes any money she puts it into property, so there are economic times when she is literally penniless. Nevertheless, she has a bank account in which she saves what she can toward the time she won't be able to work any longer, not being entitled to a pension.
It was greed that prompted her. If she got 17.5% interest on the money she had put by for her old age, it would be grand.

Lesson 2: Greed is a dangerous animal.

So she checks up on what he has told her and agrees to invest the amount he needs, making sure he understands this is her pension fund. She has some trouble as she hasn't used the account for some time the bank has frozen it, but after a couple of weeks the money is transfered. They both worked their sox off! She converts her dining room into a workshop and goes back into manufacturing for the business. By July he tells her in that month alone they have grossed nearly double her original investment. And thy are getting over 50% mark-up. August she asks for the half year accounts. He forgets. September he says they have so much stock he needs to rent storage space. October, she wants to register for VAT and hire an accountant. Their first big disagreement. She's spending her all photography money on materials for the workshop and has to employ some help to keep on top of things. Lesson 3: Being run off your feet and shifting stock is no excuse for not keeping proper accounts.

So she checks up on what he has told her and agrees to invest the amount he needs, making sure he understands this is her pension fund.
She has some trouble as she hasn't used the account for some time the bank has frozen it, but after a couple of weeks the money is transfered.
They both worked their sox off!
She converts her dining room into a workshop and goes back into manufacturing for the business.
By July he tells her in that month alone they have grossed nearly double her original investment. And thy are getting over 50% mark-up.
August she asks for the half year accounts. He forgets.
September he says they have so much stock he needs to rent storage space.
October, she wants to register for VAT and hire an accountant. Their first big disagreement.
She's spending her all photography money on materials for the workshop and has to employ some help to keep on top of things.

Lesson 3: Being run off your feet and shifting stock is no excuse for not keeping proper accounts.

Mr Friend tells Mrs ordinary that they have so much stock now they need to rent a lock-up. Mrs Ordinary realises she has no idea of how much stock they have...apart from what she has sent him. She sends him a spreadsheet and asks him to fill it in. He says he will...and where does she want her money to be deposited. Mrs ordinary (but greedy) is soothed. Everything must be OK. She says keep it to one side until I need it. The spreadsheet is forgotten. All her photography income goes on materials for the workshop... then the car breaks down and her phone is cut off. She emails Mr Friend who immediately deposits enough for the phone bill. He's such a nice guy! Lesson 4: Concentrate on the essentials and don't be fobbed off.

Mr Friend tells Mrs ordinary that they have so much stock now they need to rent a lock-up.
Mrs Ordinary realises she has no idea of how much stock they have...apart from what she has sent him.
She sends him a spreadsheet and asks him to fill it in.
He says he will...and where does she want her money to be deposited.

Mrs ordinary (but greedy) is soothed. Everything must be OK. She says keep it to one side until I need it.
The spreadsheet is forgotten.
All her photography income goes on materials for the workshop... then the car breaks down and her phone is cut off. She emails Mr Friend who immediately deposits enough for the phone bill. He's such a nice guy!

Lesson 4: Concentrate on the essentials and don't be fobbed off.

Mrs Ordinary starts to get suspicious when a quite expensive item of her equipment breaks down and she orders a new one from their business asking for it to be taken out of her money. Mr Friendly sends her a second hand one of his own, to save her the money... he's so nice! But it's not what she wanted, and after checking finds out that that particular expensive range of items are not theirs but simply filler stock being sold for a commission. How come she didn't know? She sends him a business stock report and asks him to fill it in. Mr Friend is too busy for silly forms and needs another 10,000 from her for stock for the run up to Christmas. He has also had another idea which requires her to do a great deal of travelling, research and photography. She is starting to worry. Lesson 5: When trust breaks down in a partnership it's time to get out. (I'm obliged to leave for Rhodes today, not sure for how long, will continue this sorry saga ASAP. Hope Mrs Ordinary's foolishness makes anyone about to make the same mistake, hesitate. Best, Patricia.)

Mrs Ordinary starts to get suspicious when a quite expensive item of her equipment breaks down and she orders a new one from their business asking for it to be taken out of her money.

Mr Friendly sends her a second hand one of his own, to save her the money... he's so nice!

But it's not what she wanted, and after checking finds out that that particular expensive range of items are not theirs but simply filler stock being sold for a commission. How come she didn't know? She sends him a business stock report and asks him to fill it in.

Mr Friend is too busy for silly forms and needs another 10,000 from her for stock for the run up to Christmas. He has also had another idea which requires her to do a great deal of travelling, research and photography.

She is starting to worry.

Lesson 5: When trust breaks down in a partnership it's time to get out.

(I'm obliged to leave for Rhodes today, not sure for how long, will continue this sorry saga ASAP. Hope Mrs Ordinary's foolishness makes anyone about to make the same mistake, hesitate. Best, Patricia.)

Mrs Ordinary is stupid enough to provide more funds, and a month later pays Mr Friend a visit. She finds the lockup store room doesn't exist, he has rented premises and set himself up with a nice little photographic studio. The meagre amount of stock that's left is still in boxes in his bedroom and he doesn't even know exactly what he has. He's spent her share of the profit that he was supposed to be putting to one side until she needed it and her original investment has long gone. He strings her one set of lies after another, not realising that she has become hard-faced enough to check each story out. Mr Friend is no longer Mr Friend and is being taken down the legal road. Mrs Ordinary is no longer Mrs Stupid but nevertheless is devastated by the entire situation. Lesson 6: It's easy to get carried along by success, but be cautious, all may not be as it seems.

Mrs Ordinary is stupid enough to provide more funds, and a month later pays Mr Friend a visit.
She finds the lockup store room doesn't exist, he has rented premises and set himself up with a nice little photographic studio.
The meagre amount of stock that's left is still in boxes in his bedroom and he doesn't even know exactly what he has.

He's spent her share of the profit that he was supposed to be putting to one side until she needed it and her original investment has long gone.

He strings her one set of lies after another, not realising that she has become hard-faced enough to check each story out.

Mr Friend is no longer Mr Friend and is being taken down the legal road.
Mrs Ordinary is no longer Mrs Stupid but nevertheless is devastated by the entire situation.

Lesson 6: It's easy to get carried along by success, but be cautious, all may not be as it seems.

To cut a long story short she took him to court and won a the case for 12,000 +costs of 210 pounds for goods and funds supplied. She did not make any claim for a full year of work or for any interest. He did a flit. She has been inundated with people owed money for goods supplied to his website and even now, today, he is still giving his old address out to people who are asking for payments for goods that where supplied to him and that he sold for a huge profit. To top it off he is still blogging and lying, and begging for sympathy. This is one of his blogs. Judge for your self.......... """Well, that’s the end of the Noughties, and what a nasty decade it has been! For me, it started off with a major heart attack in 2000, followed by being laid off from work a week before I was due to go back! The industrial tribunal awarded me £17,000 for wrongful dismissal, but the company conveniently then went into liquidation! I got zilch! Now, the funny thing is, because I had had a heart attack, nobody would give me a job! Even firms that proclaim to have the disabled at heart wouldn’t give me a job answering the ‘phone! For some reason they thought I would drop dead in their time... Now, if I’m going to drop dead, I’d prefer to do it in my own time thank you, but that’s life and insurance for you. By the middle of 2001 I was back to reasonable health and worked for myself for a couple of years, but that was all manual labour and didn’t do me a lot of good. By 2004 I was back earning nothing again, and now struggling to walk and bend. I needed to do something that would earn a few shekels while I sat on my arse. Not through laziness mind, purely because I couldn’t manage anything physical! I’d picked up one of these new-fangled digital cameras while I was working for myself, and immersed myself learning all the new things about a hobby I’d dropped some 25 years before, Photography. OK, I had a head start on some, as I already knew most there was to know about the hobby in its old guise, and I still learn pretty fast for an old git! I got offered some work testing lenses for pin money and grabbed at it. At £30 for two days work wasn’t going to earn me a living, but it kept me occupied and led to a few other jobs that helped a little. Life was getting to be a struggle though. My wife’s was now the main income, and with a sixteen year old son, that wasn’t going far. The photography had given me a few ideas though, and one or two of them looked promising. A so called ‘friend’ offered to back the ideas with £10,000, a flattering offer! I turned it down and stated that a smaller investment would soon see if the ideas were really worthwhile. I accepted £3000 and put all my effort into the project. It started going well for a few months and looked like, with a little more investment, it would take off and turn into a reasonable living for me with a decent return for my ‘friend’! With the few months figures from the initial venture, I proposed that I would go and get a loan for a further injection of capital that would get the turnover up to a level that would sustain the business. Don’t do that, said my ‘friend’, I will supply the extra capital that is needed, but let’s patent the idea first. Fine said I, but I don’t have the money to patent it, and the capital is needed by September in order to get the stock manufactured and marketed in time for Christmas. No Problem! That was the end of July 2008. By December of that year nothing was forthcoming, and the banks by now were in crisis! There was going to be no Xmas boost to earnings, as the stock wasn’t in place, and I was now in danger of losing my home as well. Then another £3000 turned up at the end of the month, but by then it was too late, as the bank grabbed the lions share to cover the debts that had built up over the previous 3 months, along with their prohibitive charges! But my ‘friend’ has a patent on my ideas! By the March of 2009 I had an eviction notice and another Heart attack! Since then I’ve had nothing but harassment from my ‘friend’ for the ?? £12,000?? that I apparently owe them, while I get an allowance from the government of £91 a month for the disabilities I now suffer from! You can see that I am a little sore about the Noughties, that have been rather nasty to me. If the next decade (assuming I live that long) are called the Teenies, then I hope they are a teeny bit kinder!""" This man has been offered the chance to pay back what he owes at 25 pounds per week, again without interest. As yet he has not responded. I would just like to ad that TRUST AND FRIENDSHIP ARE TWO OF THE MOST PRECIOUS THINGS WE HAVE TO GIVE IN OUR JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE. THOSE WHO ABUSE IT DESERVE LESS THAN NOTHING. Lets hope he makes an effort to rectify the lying and cheating and abuse of frienship and trust in 2010.

To cut a long story short she took him to court and won a the case for 12,000 +costs of 210 pounds for goods and funds supplied. She did not make any claim for a full year of work or for any interest.

He did a flit.

She has been inundated with people owed money for goods supplied to his website and even now, today, he is still giving his old address out to people who are asking for payments for goods that where supplied to him and that he sold for a huge profit.

To top it off he is still blogging and lying, and begging for sympathy.

This is one of his blogs.

Judge for your self..........

"""Well, that’s the end of the Noughties, and what a nasty decade it has been! For me, it started off with a major heart attack in 2000, followed by being laid off from work a week before I was due to go back! The industrial tribunal awarded me £17,000 for wrongful dismissal, but the company conveniently then went into liquidation! I got zilch!
Now, the funny thing is, because I had had a heart attack, nobody would give me a job! Even firms that proclaim to have the disabled at heart wouldn’t give me a job answering the ‘phone! For some reason they thought I would drop dead in their time... Now, if I’m going to drop dead, I’d prefer to do it in my own time thank you, but that’s life and insurance for you.
By the middle of 2001 I was back to reasonable health and worked for myself for a couple of years, but that was all manual labour and didn’t do me a lot of good. By 2004 I was back earning nothing again, and now struggling to walk and bend. I needed to do something that would earn a few shekels while I sat on my arse. Not through laziness mind, purely because I couldn’t manage anything physical! I’d picked up one of these new-fangled digital cameras while I was working for myself, and immersed myself learning all the new things about a hobby I’d dropped some 25 years before, Photography. OK, I had a head start on some, as I already knew most there was to know about the hobby in its old guise, and I still learn pretty fast for an old git!
I got offered some work testing lenses for pin money and grabbed at it. At £30 for two days work wasn’t going to earn me a living, but it kept me occupied and led to a few other jobs that helped a little. Life was getting to be a struggle though. My wife’s was now the main income, and with a sixteen year old son, that wasn’t going far. The photography had given me a few ideas though, and one or two of them looked promising. A so called ‘friend’ offered to back the ideas with £10,000, a flattering offer! I turned it down and stated that a smaller investment would soon see if the ideas were really worthwhile. I accepted £3000 and put all my effort into the project. It started going well for a few months and looked like, with a little more investment, it would take off and turn into a reasonable living for me with a decent return for my ‘friend’! With the few months figures from the initial venture, I proposed that I would go and get a loan for a further injection of capital that would get the turnover up to a level that would sustain the business. Don’t do that, said my ‘friend’, I will supply the extra capital that is needed, but let’s patent the idea first. Fine said I, but I don’t have the money to patent it, and the capital is needed by September in order to get the stock manufactured and marketed in time for Christmas. No Problem! That was the end of July 2008.
By December of that year nothing was forthcoming, and the banks by now were in crisis! There was going to be no Xmas boost to earnings, as the stock wasn’t in place, and I was now in danger of losing my home as well. Then another £3000 turned up at the end of the month, but by then it was too late, as the bank grabbed the lions share to cover the debts that had built up over the previous 3 months, along with their prohibitive charges! But my ‘friend’ has a patent on my ideas!
By the March of 2009 I had an eviction notice and another Heart attack! Since then I’ve had nothing but harassment from my ‘friend’ for the ?? £12,000?? that I apparently owe them, while I get an allowance from the government of £91 a month for the disabilities I now suffer from!
You can see that I am a little sore about the Noughties, that have been rather nasty to me. If the next decade (assuming I live that long) are called the Teenies, then I hope they are a teeny bit kinder!"""

This man has been offered the chance to pay back what he owes at 25 pounds per week, again without interest. As yet he has not responded.
I would just like to ad that TRUST AND FRIENDSHIP ARE TWO OF THE MOST PRECIOUS THINGS WE HAVE TO GIVE IN OUR JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE. THOSE WHO ABUSE IT DESERVE LESS THAN NOTHING.
Lets hope he makes an effort to rectify the lying and cheating and abuse of frienship and trust in 2010.

2011 update on this: Despite numerous promises to start paying her back, and his huge inheritance, he hasn't forwarded a penny. She had been sick from the worry and stress of it all, and received this from the court: ....................... As we have not had any success in recovering the above debt direct from the debtor we would suggest that we now enforce the County Court Judgment entered against him. Please provide all the legal papers with regards to the CCJ. The fee for the enforcement is £226.26 inclusive of vat. This includes a fee for the notice of change to the court and the fee for the sheriff of which only £50.00 can be added onto the debt. Please be aware that if the sheriff is unable to make contact with the debtor or if the debtor has no saleable goods or assets for them to levy on, there will be a further abortive fee of £60.00 + vat. Please let us know how you wish to proceed. Yasmin Ali MANAGER - LITIGATION CCI LEGAL SERVICES LTD ........................................ She has come to terms with the fact that he is a complete A.H. and she is not going to get any of her money or the year of her life that she wasted back, and hopes her sorry experience will be a warning to others. Thank you for all the kind emails... and the free offer to break his kneecaps... very tempting, but declined. Any other suggestions gratefully received. Happier New Year to everyone, and thanks again, Patricia.

2011 update on this:

Despite numerous promises to start paying her back, and his huge inheritance, he hasn't forwarded a penny. She had been sick from the worry and stress of it all, and received this from the court:
.......................
As we have not had any success in recovering the above debt direct from the debtor we would suggest that we now enforce the County Court Judgment entered against him.

Please provide all the legal papers with regards to the CCJ. The fee for the enforcement is £226.26 inclusive of vat.

This includes a fee for the notice of change to the court and the fee for the sheriff of which only £50.00 can be added onto the debt.

Please be aware that if the sheriff is unable to make contact with the debtor or if the debtor has no saleable goods or assets for them to levy on, there will be a further abortive fee of £60.00 + vat.

Please let us know how you wish to proceed.

Yasmin Ali
MANAGER - LITIGATION
CCI LEGAL SERVICES LTD
........................................

She has come to terms with the fact that he is a complete A.H. and she is not going to get any of her money or the year of her life that she wasted back, and hopes her sorry experience will be a warning to others.

Thank you for all the kind emails... and the free offer to break his kneecaps... very tempting, but declined.
Any other suggestions gratefully received.

Happier New Year to everyone, and thanks again, Patricia.