Summer “Vacation” part 2, Aug 2013

or why i will be turning in my US passport …

so as many of you may remember or not back in 2007 we sold geotrax to 3si and a year later i set out on my trip around the world. we sold the company because we discovered our business partners had stollen 800k out of the company bank account and the only way to recover it was to sell the company and take the money out of their proceeds. we sold geotrax for 9m and our investors had invested 1m and loaned the company 1.6m. they owned 50% of the company so this gave them a return on their investment of 3.7m or 375% in 4 years. as part of this deal we all had to agree to work for 3si for 1 to 3 years and teach them how to run the business, in exchange for this work we where to get bonus payment from 3si presuming we kept them happy. ironically phil and glenn pushed us to do the deal and even threatened world war 3 and lawsuits if we did not do the deal.

apparently this 375% return was not enough for phil because over a year after the sale after getting most of their money phil sued us claiming they never saw bonus agreements we had negotiated with 3si. this was completely false and when we provided documentation showing these agreements going to phil 4 or 5 times over a 6 month period he changed his claim to he never read the bonus agreements, because i had verbally threatened him if he did. he went on to claim he “reserved his rights” in some email he sent urging us to do the deal, which apparently meant he could sue us over a deal he entered into with full knowledge of. you would think this would be laughed out of court but alas as we would learn the us legal system is not about justice but just an expensive game played by bullies with money and a complex set of arbitrary rules designed to make lawyers more money.

so fast forward to fun in the sun in az, jon and rich and i arrived a few days before the trial was slated to start. out of the gate we discovered that we would not be allowed to present any evidence of phil and glenn stealing money from the company that occurred before a certain date. that date was about 3 months after we discovered the theft and corresponded to the date we finally sorted out how much money had been stollen and phil and glenn agreed to deduct this amount from the loan owed to them. this was in spite of the fact that that even after this date phil and glenn continued to misappropriate money. i went to a pre trial hearing the day i arrived and it was obvious that the judge had already decided who was going to win and was just looking for a way to make it happen.

on a lighter note jon and i discovered none of our cloths met the “minimum” requirements and i needed another hiar cut and jon needed a beard cut. so we spent the day “shopping” and “spa-ing”. fortunately my hairdresser was hot, unfortunately jon got a dude to shave him. we ended the day with a few beers downtown having dumped $400 on “shopping” not my idea of fun.

the trial started we went though 7 days of bs listening to phil and glenn tell a new set of lies. the new story was all about how we had “hidden things from them” and not been “straight forward” with them. which was completely true as this was just when we had just discovered they where criminals. every day i would list all the new lies phil and glenn had made and then when i was on the stand i would rebut as many of the lies as i could.

we had filed a counter claim against phil and glenn stating their actions taking money had harmed geotrax and us. the judge tried very hard to find a reason to throw our claim out. in the end he latched on to a claim by their side stating we had not calculated damages properly. this was bs but before we ever got to counter this claim he threw the case out and left all the lies standing uncorrected.

they even brought in the old company council and she perjured herself with this made up story about an email she received telling her not to read bonus documents. here story was she then deleted this document and presumed that meant she and phil and glenn could never read the bonus documents. she went on to lie about the meaning of the deal. of course by this point it was too late to get our lawyer to fly down and the judge limited what she could testify about via phone to such an extent we where never able to counter her lies.

the final bs came in the closing when their lawyer turned our lawyers words around and called the whole bonus agreement a shame because of the fact they both covered our employment. they had the last 30 minutes because the judge had thrown out our counter claim so this was left hanging in the air. our lawyer did not help our selves here not anticipating their bs and countering it when he was doing his closing.

in spite of all this we still thought we had a shot at not loosening as there where 3 jurors that where professionals and seemed to understand that phil knew what he was getting into all along and was making a bs claim. alas 3 other people on the jury where so adamant (ie paid off) that phil was in the right that one of our guys agreed to a compromise (giving a reduced award to phil) so they jury would not have to come back the next week.

so in the end we ended up paying the lawyers 600k, phil is filing to get his legal fees paid (500k) and he was awarded 190k. so we could get a judgment against us for 700k. the original claim was for 750k, so it looks like we will be back where we where at the start 5 years ago, minus the 600k for the lawyer. but the good news is we can always appeal and do this all again!!!

i must say this experience has convinced me america is at the end of its era, we have created a huge system for taking money people don’t earn from other people. you should have seen the elaborate office complex where we met with our lawyers absolutely disgusting. all money taken from either people who did nothing wrong or people who where taking advantage of the system to take other peoples money they did not deserve.

good news i hear obahma wants to reduce law school from 3 years to two so we will have more lawyers. according to our lawyers recap of why the case went south, it is my fault as i came across as too arrogant the jurors did not like me. perhaps my distain for glenn routinely lying to me as he continued to pay his own bills out of the company account came through.

so bottom line i have made my last trip to CONUS, if you want to see me again it will not be there. good news is i hear Antigua is amazing 🙂 photo of jon on our “spa” day post beard.

cheers,
Roger