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[Rant] Why to always use contracts

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 3:24 am
by John Cartwright
I'm sure there are several of users among these forums that have been ripped off, and for those of you that have surely have learned the same lesson I have.

A couple months ago I was "contracted" to design a credit card gateway to tie in transactions with a couple bank accounts. Now I've heard all kinds of horror stories about people getting ripped off, or contractors disapeering or whatever, so I always made note to be extra careful to make sure there was some form of written consent of what money was involved, and other terms involved in contracts. Now my contractor didn't deal with programmers from Canada, which is where I am located so he was unfamiliar with the specifics of Canadian Law's and such, so he told me it would take a little while to write up a contract. Yet, this contract never came, even after multiple requests of it over several weeks. I was getting furthur and furthur into development and the checks were coming in.. so I thought no biggie. Everything was going smooth and the money was flowing, up until a day where I was nearly finishing the final stages of development where the alleged contractor of mine ran out of funding, even though he stilled owed me for some more hours of work. Not a big deal at the time, because new financing was coming in the following month.

So now I'm sitting here for a couple weeks (I havn't really been in contact with this company), and I finally got in touch with another person I was working with, who claimed he was owned a couple thousand as well. To make a long story short, it was found out that this guy was using a relatively elaborate scheme to skim money off the top, and essentially steal from the people financing. It was found out and confirmed that this guy has stolen over $150,000 dollars 8O.

The good news is, I have all his contact information, his home address (he lives in the same town as most of my friends -- perhaps a visit is due) , and a list of people who have been ripped off.

The bad news is, there is nothing legal I can do to get my money back, because no contract was ever signed. :evil:

The moral of the story, always have a signed contract before you write one line of code.

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 4:28 am
by JayBird
Image

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 4:53 am
by mickd
sucks and sad to know that in todays society you need a written contract...

Re: [Rant] Why to always use contracts

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:18 am
by onion2k
Jcart wrote:The bad news is, there is nothing legal I can do to get my money back, because no contract was ever signed. :evil:
Presumably this scam has come to light now and the police are involved? Get in touch with your solictor (lawyer? whatever it's called over there.. legal bloke) and try to get onto a list of the guys creditors. If he's declared bankrupt or put in prison for fraud then there's still some chance that you might be able to get some money. That would certainly be possible in the UK so long as you can demonstrate that you've done the work in question.

Also, if you know who they are, get in touch with the finance people who were backing the guy. They might still want to finish the project .. and as you've nearly finished the code they may deal with you directly, or at least put you in touch with whoever is going to replace the criminal.

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 6:58 am
by Charles256
do IM's consititute legally binding? I've heard e-mails do in a lot of cases..wonder if the same applies to the IM...

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 7:21 am
by m3mn0n
Yeah, I was told by the FBI online fraud team that e-mail conversations can constitute as an electronic version of a verbal/spoken agreement. This was a few years ago when I was ripped off for the last payment of a staggered payment contract, so I'm not sure if it still applies, and if Canadian courts/online fraud task forces would recognize it. Though personally, I don't see why not since it IS circumstantial evidence documenting time and by lying about that evidence ( saying the e-mail was fake ) it could wind him/her up in even more trouble if it was proven to be true by a 3rd party mail provider for example.

So as long as you have the logs, it could (a big could) assist as circumstantial evidence if you were to take action against him. At the very least, it's good to report him so it's been documented that he has done such things, even though nothing happens. Then if it ever happens again, and a complaint is filed, they will see it as more of an issue they need to handle because it's now 1) a repetitive crime , and 2) it could happen yet again to someone else

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 9:21 am
by evilmonkey
All the chat logs are user editable (a lot of them are stored in plain txt files), and good luck trying to get Microsoft or AOL or anyone else to put forth the copy that is logged on thier servers. Frankly, if they log chats, I'm scared for my privacy. That's like a phone company recording your calls. I seriously doubt that anyone would be able to prove that they didn't doctor the logs, and any judge would take that evidence into consideration. Sorry guys.

In Canada, civil law is based on the preponderance of evidence, so if you have something besides chat logs to substanciate your claim of a contract, than you're in a position to sue. If all you have is chat logs (for this part of the case), I'd say you're stuck...

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 9:32 am
by RobertPaul
Charles256 wrote:do IM's consititute legally binding? I've heard e-mails do in a lot of cases..wonder if the same applies to the IM...
IM? 8O Frankly, I wouldn't write a line of code until there's a mutually signed contract in my hands by either fax or mail.

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 11:20 am
by John Cartwright
Ah yes the FBI has been contacted, since this company is US based, UK police has also been contacted since his other company is UK based (and the other programmer mentioned he has a lot of dirt on him, and confident he can get that company audited), as well as Canadian authorities. It just boils my blood that these people can think they can get away with this kind of behavior.. it is simply amazing.

All of his clients are being contacted and asked to do the same :twisted:

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 11:43 am
by shiznatix
this is a 5 part solution involving 3 ingredients.

needed:
-a bullet
-a gun
-the accused

what to do:
-place bullet in gun
-find accused man
-place gun to accused man's head
-pull trigger
-run fast fast fast

now you may not get your money, but you sure will feel better that you rid the world of another piece of (&*^%#

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 2:28 pm
by Charles256
um..AOL does log chats..and if you think hotmail ain't keeping your e-mail stored somewhere for a brief amount of time you got another thing coming..and if you're using Google's IM service there is almost NO doubt they store those IM's for a while....congratulations,you're being tracked ;)

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 3:26 pm
by evilmonkey
Charles256 wrote:um..AOL does log chats..and if you think hotmail ain't keeping your e-mail stored somewhere for a brief amount of time you got another thing coming..and if you're using Google's IM service there is almost NO doubt they store those IM's for a while....congratulations,you're being tracked ;)
Why am I not surprised? :roll: Isn't that technically illegal? Again, I point to a phone company recording and listening to your phone conversations. Ugh, I can't wait to finish my law degree, and deal with crap like this....

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 3:27 pm
by timvw
I don't think they log the content. They only (are allowed to) log the connections you make (Eg: starting a session with someone) Well, that's what we do at the university overhere..

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 3:33 pm
by Charles256
nope, I'm 99.9% (leave .1% just in case)sure AOL logs the content..I've heard cases where they've used the log conversations to track down killers of kids. (i.e. the courts made AOL turn over the logs). I think they hold em up till a year after you leave them. Google used to keep a record of your search results (I guess through IP. not the most reliable method but if you got a statis IP...) and now that you log in as an account that's a descent way to keep track..we all know teh U.S. can tap into your phones at random just to see what's cracking :-D Read CNN...either way...don't worry about it..just don't break the law :-D

Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 3:36 pm
by Burrito
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!