High maintenance customer

[Kenneth Brody]

Quoting Mike Schwartz (Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:44:30 -0600):
[...]
>     All in all, I probably lost about 1% of the money I earned.  I did more
> damage to myself taking in old hardware that I never was able to resell than
> I did on getting ripped off by non-payers.  I feel bad that I had to work
> harder and charge others more to make up for some of the money that I
> rightfully should have gotten, but, all in all, I can sleep at night.
> Hmmm...  Apparently the people who ripped me off can sleep at night, too...

It's amazing what one could do without those darn scruples getting in
the way.

>     My advice is stay away from real estate brokers and mortgage brokers,
> especially independents.

Amen on the latter.  We had loaned some money out for short-term loans
through a mortgage broker, and got some pretty decent returns.  (This has
nothing to do with filePro or computers, BTW.)  Then we got scammed by
their senior loan officer (the owner's son), and he paid us back with
forged company checks.  (We should have gotten suspicious when this loan
wasn't done with the usual "official" paperwork.  Live and learn.)

To make a long story short, we sued and got back most of our money back.
(We settled for monthly payments, the first 50% or so guaranteed by the
company, and agreed to hold the company not liable for the rest.  Of
course, once the company-guaranteed payments were satisfied, we didn't
get another dime out of him.  We have a summary judgment for the full
amount, plus interest, expenses, etc., but can't collect [yet] since he
doesn't have any assets.)

We found out later (now that our county has such records online -- if
only they had that earlier) that he and the company owner (who, as we
found out later, is an "ex-lawyer" [which we knew about -- we thought
he had simply retired] because he was disbarred[*] for messing with
client's funds [which we didn't know about back then]) have numerous
judgments against them.

So, we had an ex-lawyer and his son as the mortgage brokers.  Word to
the wise -- avoid double-whammies like the plague.

They probably figured we'd never take the suit as far as we did (it
was "only" several thousand dollars -- typically not worth the costs),
but having a cousin who is a lawyer (hey, they're not all bad -- it's
the other 99% that give the 1% a bad name) work pro bono (unbeknownst
to them) helped.

And, finally, the guy who scammed us is now on 5 years probation for a
felony conviction for something about loan fraud.


[*] Well, technically, he "resigned in lieu of disbarment".  Another one
     of those "the lawyers make the rules" back doors.

-- 
KenBrody at BestWeb dot net        spamtrap: <g8ymh8uf001 at sneakemail.com>
http://www.hvcomputer.com
http://www.fileProPlus.com