Due Diligence Lesson

The lesson I have learnt today is regardless if you are doing business for $1, £1 or $1,000,000.00, £1,000,000.00 alway and I mean ALWAYS perform Due Diligence with a person you have never met and is not local to you, whereby you cannot check them out through Companies House if you are in the UK or physically pay them a visit. Each country has their own Company House Database.

What I mean by this regardless if they pass Companies House Verification they still may be scammers, as I have just got off the phone from a person claiming to be a New York Attorney that said his client wanted to sue me for selling artwork that belonged to him.

However upon trying to do my detective work this person is not on LinkedIn and his telephones do not match nor does his website work (times out).

Even with passports and other forms of ID one cannot know for certain if the person one is dealing with on the other end is a fraudster or not. Even if their Company is Verified does not stop them being unscrupulous. I had one person that had his passport cloned and was visible online. So there is no way for certain to know you are dealing with the actual person unless you phone the head office and perform detective work online.

I thought by checking with companies house that the said individual was kosha and it seemed that he was until all the inventory he was selling at the beginning part of the year mysteriously disappeared off his site where by he failed to update me. This in turn has put egg on my face as I told the Attorney that the artwork could be found on my client’s site and it is no longer there. The emails I have which I never deleted will prove he was selling the artwork….

So on the safe side I have taken the website down and will not be doing anything in future with this site other than selling the domain.

With this in mind I had to pulled the whole website down and all the inventory that belonged to the two muppets that I have been dealing with, with one of them still in my LinkedIn connections.

But then again if something does not sit right you should leave it out, as my gut feeling was like many months ago when I worked tirelessly to get leads for one of the muppets only to be told the leads I had given him were not good enough and did I get a penny for my trouble?, of course I did not. I even had his organ grinder telling me I was over thinking. If something does not sit well with me I will air my grieviences. This is also another lesson when someone asks you to find leads which are bon-a-fide leads and you find them, invoice the person for your time finding the leads as they could say the leads were no good even though they were, just to get out of paying you. Get the money upfront for finding marketing leads.

I have to say I must be soft in the head as I let someone else this month take advantage of me, by me designing a logo with about 20 changes, I also built him a website but made the mistake of giving him a cooling off period where after he had agreed on the amount of pages he then decided to move the goal posts and increase the pages for the same price. So when I mentioned there would be a price increase he decided to use the get out clause. So from now on I am never going to do that again. Do not use a get out clause for web design. Take a set up fee upfront instead and then invoice once the client is happy with the site.

I have since looked at the muppet’s site and it has been changed only to show bitcoin and cryotocurrency by coincidence, yet I have all the emails that he sent that I can forward to the owner of the artwork to prove the muppet was selling the artwork and not me per se. I was merely marketing what he told me to market. These pieces of art one could not ask for proof of receipt if you get my meaning if you know what pieces of art I was marketing.

This now shows me in bad light even though I did not know that the inventory was not legit, like why would I know or how would I know as these were high ticket assets and I trusted both muppets.

My reputation is on the line because two idiots whom seem to think it is ok to take advantage of people. “You have had your fun if you are reading this now so it’s now my turn and I will no longer be associated with you”…

I am a mere web designer and internet marketer but at least it shows my marketing skills reached the people that needed to be reached even though the inventory was debatable. So what has this taught me other than avoid all idiots at all costs? and that is I am good at my job even though I could do better by doing more to protect myself in future from people who can cause no end of problems.

Trust no one !

My lesson today is perform Due Dilligence with people regardless if the are selling £1 or £1M especially if you do not know them and if it means you loose the lead in the process, you would have saved yourself trouble in the future. Also do due dilengence on the inventory (especiall high ticket assets) as it could have legal implications.

I am sick and tired of the scammers out there and I will name these people if push comes to shove.

“I am fuming and words fail me today regarding this”.

Good job I never performed SEO on this particular website, imagine the digital footprint I would have had to delete and merely used it as an online business card/tool which I have now taken down and all associated links.

To the person whom contacted me today you will see the website is now taken down and to the muppets that got me into hot water, karma has a way of paying you back !!

Regardless who was trying to scam whom, I have knocked the nail on the head and severed all ties with everyone assoicated with this inventory.

Fuming!!!