

Ask HN: I think I've been scammed - what now? - jiganti

Hey guys, I posted on HN back in August last year asking about meeting potential technical cofounders. After recently moving to San Francisco, I wanted to make a few of the ideas I was thinking about happen. I got a number of emails, including help from HN'er 'mahmud' and eventually partnered with someone. We created a first site www.crushtease.com, which I paid a reasonable sum for 50% equity.<p>Our product didn't initially go viral, and I mentioned another idea to my cofounder, who thought it was interesting as well. We ended up working on this second project (wikizu.com), while shelving the first project for the time being, identifying a few errors to the concept and presentation. I paid for that, plus some sort of marketing campaign that I knew far too little about.<p>This was back in November, right before Thanksgiving. From then until now, I have been asking him about the status of Wikizu and he has given me a variety of excuses. I believed them until a few friends started questioning the situation. Today I confronted him about it and he dodged every question I posed.<p>I suggested he send back the advertising money (which I sent back in November, thinking we were launching very shortly) to prove my friends wrong. He concluded I was being "annoying", said he had work to do, and mentioned contacting a lawyer a few times. I can upload the chat conversation somewhere if anyone wants to read it, but this is pretty much what happened.<p>I understand that I was horribly naive, and blindly trusted what I was told without really understanding what was going on. I sent money to someone I didn't know simply because we had long IM conversations and he seemed to know what he was talking about. He even made the sites functional with facebook, which I thought meant for sure there was no reason to question him.<p>I don't know what to do at this point. I'm out a good chunk of change, but I'm also frustrated that I've spent six months waiting around instead of implementing some of my ideas. I even posted on here earlier today asking about doing another project with someone, since I was tired of waiting around.<p>The alleged scammer posts on HN, and to my knowledge has a minimum of two accounts, one that he has posted as recently as this week on. A google search including his name and "scammer" brings up results, as does one with a pseudonym he uses for various sites. I'm not sure if I should out this information at this time. Any help would be appreciated.
======
lrm242
You met someone on the internet. You sent them money. Presumably, you have no
contract (at least you didn't mention it). The person who has your money isn't
doing what you want. You've realized doing this was amazingly stupid.

Consider the money you've spent and the time you've wasted extra credit for
your "how to do business" degree. Seriously, you should know better. If you
want to start and build a company stop looking for people to implement your
ideas and go find a true collaborator. Find someone you can sit down with over
coffee and look in the eye. Find someone that shares your vision and
complements your skills. Don't just be the "guy with an idea and money"
because those guys get taken by slime balls like this. Be the guy that
recruits a team, manages the business, forms the company, drives the team,
finds early customers, gets the logo designed for nothing by hustling hard--
the guy that does everything else. This guy is useful to coders. IMO, your
money and your ideas are worthless to people with good intentions. You have to
bring more to the table than that. The good news is "all the other stuff"
requires only that you have a brain and work really hard to make things
happen.

Don't waste another moment worrying about this. Drop it. Move on. Spend your
time and energy on creating something positive and always remember why this
happened.

Assholes are everywhere. Starting a business is risky and hard. The ONLY risk
you can conceivably reduce (never eliminate) is the interpersonal risk between
you and the people you choose to spend your countless hours of blood, sweat,
and tears with.

~~~
Locke1689
He should probably post his identity, though. If for no reason then to make
others from making the same mistake.

~~~
lrm242
See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158590>

------
mahmud
Hi there, you mention my name, even though I just gave you free help, but you
withhold the name of the person who scammed you? Not cool man.

If you know this person is a known scammer and has minimum of two accounts, as
you said, PLEASE OUT HIM. Sheesh.

~~~
galuggus
at least make it plain this guy had nothing to do with scamming

~~~
gpjt
Agreed, I read the original post too quickly and until I saw this comment, I
had the impression that mahmud was the scammer. A clarifying edit would be
good.

~~~
jiganti
Sorry about this. It looks like I can't edit it anymore. Mahmud helped me in
the early stages, but was not the person I partnered with and has nothing to
do with the issues. At this time I don't know how much information my alleged
partner has about me so I am going to refrain from outing any information on
him. It looks like my best bet is to just walk away at this point.

~~~
lrm242
jiganti, as I mentioned it is your perogative to not out this user. However, I
have done some poking around and posted my findings here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158590>

------
lrm242
At the risk of adding to the intrigue here, I think it's best if this
community knows that there might be someone unsaviory amongst us. It is
jiganti's perogative whether or not to out the person responsible for this.
However, nothing stops a bit of detective work.

Whois on both wikizu.com and crushtease.com reveal:

    
    
        Registrant:
            Sink Float
            P.O. Box 820
            Beijing, Beijing 100837
            China
    
        Administrative Contact:
            Float, Sink  sinkyfloaty@gmail.com
            P.O. Box 820
            Beijing, Beijing 100837
            China
            +20.13352074153      Fax --
    

A few tests of user profile pages shows us there is a user here named
'sinkfloat'. Strange, but not conclusive by any means. Another search using
searchyc.com using 'sink float' reveals another user, 'pinksoda' making some
outrageous claims about sites he/she has built [1] [2]. Also, a link to a new
business they started, www.sinkfloat.com [3]. Ok, now we're getting somewhere.
Whois on sinkfloat.com reveals the same contact information as wikizu.com and
crushtease.com.

Knowing that jiganti mentioned this user has at least two handles here, a lot
of evidence points that pinksoda and sinkfloat are one in the same and likely
the person jiganti partnered with on this venture.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299723>

[2]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299094>

[3]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1269276>

Conclusive? Maybe not. Certainly enough, IMO, to make anyone thinking of doing
business with pinksoda or sinkfloat think twice. Unsavory business practices,
scammers, etc are not welcome here, as far as I'm concerned. I welcome
pinksoda and/or sinkfloat to chime in here if this analysis is wrong. If so, I
apologize.

~~~
profquail
If you examine the DNS records for wikizu.com, you'll find:

    
    
        wikizu.com		SOA	
        server:	ns1.linode.com
        email:	talkburst@gmail.com
        serial:	2010102781
        refresh:	14400
        retry:	14400
        expire:	1209600
        minimum ttl:	86400
            86400s
        wikizu.com		NS	ns4.linode.com	86400s
        wikizu.com		NS	ns1.linode.com	86400s
        wikizu.com		NS	ns2.linode.com	86400s
        wikizu.com		NS	ns5.linode.com	86400s
        wikizu.com		NS	ns3.linode.com	86400s
        wikizu.com		MX	
            preference:	10
            exchange:	mail.wikizu.com
            86400s
        wikizu.com		A	69.164.209.157	86400s
    

So, that gives you an email address (maybe). Then, if you lookup which domains
are hosted on the same IP as the mail server there (the MX record), you'll
find:

    
    
      * crushtease.com
      * earcavity.com
      * seoette.com
      * sinkfloat.com
      * wikizu.com
    

Two of those we haven't seen yet. I'm not going to post anyone's personal info
here...but if you're the kind of person that likes to do whois searches (and
who isn't!), you'd find some relevant contact info. You might also then search
DDG for the site name and look at a few of the top results.

------
solipsist
This reminds me a little about about what happened with Mark Zuckerberg and
the Winklevoss twins. Communication was cut off for a while and many excuses
were made. However, if it makes you feel better, the twins now have a $150
million stake in Facebook. [1]

Anyways, I'm not sure if I have much advice. First thing should definitely be
hiring a lawyer, though. You should probably refrain from posting anymore
information here on HN as well. I've seen you've already removed some, which
is good. We only need to hear the gist of the situation (for future
reference).

Hope everything turns out well!

    
    
      -
    

[Added in edit]

I traced back to when you were first starting this project. One of the people
commented and wrote:

    
    
       I see these types of posts and it astonishes me that people will look for
       cofounders "on the street."
    
       I can't imagine that [ increases the odds of being successful -- but maybe I'm
       wrong. Employee number 5 can be an unknown quantity,
       but employee number 2? That would terrify me. [2]
    

This should be a warning to everybody else.

[1] - [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/04/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/01/04/businessinsider-the-winklevoss-twins-stake-
in-facebook-is-now-worth-150-million-2011-1.DTL)

[2] - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1625890>

~~~
John212
> first thing should definitely be hiring a lawyer, though

I guess this depends on how much money you lost, if you are willing to throw
good money after bad, if you had any sort of agreement that you can show your
lawyer and if this bloke has any assets.

You may spend a lot more time and money than you lost pursuing this...

------
ibejoeb
I don't think I follow the whole story. What exactly did you pay for? Did you
pay him for his time, because when you say "I paid for that, plus some sort of
marketing campaign..." I wonder what _that_ is. If you paid for advertising,
who got the contract? Is there no invoice?

Are you sure the terms were clear? If the other party kept the money in
exchange for his efforts--and that seems likely--then I don't think there's a
lot too this.

If the money was for an advertising campaign, I'm not sure why you feel that
you're owed the money. What you're doing comes with risk of failure.

Perhaps I missed something in there. I think it's awfully aggressive to make
public accusations of wrongdoing without explaining the arrangements that were
made.

\----

I re-read your account, just to make sure I didn't miss the point, and I
pretty sure I did not. This really sounds like you offered money for a stake
in something that didn't take off, and you admit that you were not diligent in
entering into this deal. That's the game. I suppose it's up to how your
contract is written.

------
jiganti
It appears like I was unclear. Mahmud had nothing to do with this, and in fact
was the one who gave me unconditional help in the early stages. I apologize
for the misunderstanding.

------
cperciva
_A google search including his name and "scammer" brings up results, as does
one with a pseudonym he uses for various sites._

This is pretty weak evidence. Google searches for "Colin Percival" +scammer
and cperciva +scammer find a few dozen results too.

~~~
baddox
Well, it's only weak evidence if you're not also a scammer.

------
citricsquid
What to do now? Send a stern email explaining the situation: you think he's
ripping you off, if he can't produce evidence of a product being worked on
_or_ provide an explanation of where the money is, request the money back, if
he can't provide that then I'd suggest contacting a lawyer (got any
contracts?). If he can't explain where the money is, show a product _or_
return the money, in that situation I'd suggest lawyering up.

It's possible he got sidetracked, or it was more work than expected, but money
given as "marketing budget" for a product that he can't show exists should not
have gone anywhere. If it was wages, or a fee for the work then sure he could
explain it away, but marketing money? Having been in this situation on the
other side, in my case I got extremely busy with work that was paying me
directly and didn't have time for the side-project work, but I didn't take any
money intended for post-launch and spend it in the interim... that crosses the
line from slow/lazy to wilfully ripping someone off.

If he had spent the money to keep himself afloat while he worked with money
coming in from other means later on that he intended to pay you back with (or
sneak back into the marketing money without you knowing) that could explain
it, but if there is no product to show that can't be the reason.

tl:dr; if he took money, can't account for the spending and refuses to show a
product (eg: it doesn't exist) lawyer up.

~~~
jiganti
I basically told him that I don't understand anything about computers, and
that I'd like some proof to appease my concerns. An easy way would be for him
to send the money back, and since initially he had claimed to be very well-
off, he certainly had the money to spend. He could have lied about being so
well-off, I suppose.

------
hugh3
Is this a genuine request for advice, or a passive-aggressive communication
with your alleged scammer?

~~~
jiganti
I suppose I didn't consider why I wrote this post; but just knew I wanted to.
Realizing 6 months of my life were based on a lie made me instinctively ask HN
for help. As I think about it now, it probably was first and foremost what you
described. But thinking about it now, I also respect the HN community and
think they will be able to point me in the right direction.

------
Nick_C
I end up on Google's page when I try to open either wikizu.com or
crushtease.com . Some sort of redirect happening?

~~~
jiganti
It looks like he took the sites down.

~~~
Nick_C
Perhaps you could use this for yourself positively, as an example of why
agreements in writing are necessary. One co-founder should not be able to
decide to take a site down (not technically, but legally).

Documentation is a pain, but it is like backups. You hope to never need it,
but it is absolutely necessary if you do.

------
olalonde
Out of curiosity, how much money did you invest in this?

~~~
csomar
I also want to know, because the sites look so unprofessional.

------
dtran
_He even made the sites functional with facebook, which I thought meant for
sure there was no reason to question him._

Why does adding a FBConnect button make him more trustworthy? I see several
things wrong with this sentence.

~~~
jiganti
I don't have a technical background; to someone like me this appears somewhat
reputable. It appears I've paid for my ignorance.

------
SeanNieuwoudt
I'm sorry about the situation you are in, but it is largely your fault.

Did you do any reference checks on previous work before you partnered with
him? Did you meet up in person to validate his personality? Did you google him
after speaking to him the first time?

The internet is rife with _scammers_ , but in this case you DID actually
receive two sites - albeit not extremely well built ones. Scammers would have
generally taken your money and produced nothing at all.

just my 2cents...

~~~
brudgers
Nonsense. Based on the story, it was the intent of the other party to separate
the OP from their money, and the other party apparently acted deliberately in
ways intended to gain the OP's trust. Misplaced trust does not make someone
responsible for the damage another person does to them, and naivety is what a
grifter preys upon.

~~~
jiganti
This seems accurate. Looking back, he was adept at making unverifiable yet
somewhat credible claims. I never asked for some substance, which is what I
should have.

------
Ramanean
Scary..This is why I make sites alone without partnering anyone..But that
takes too much off time..

------
rokhayakebe
If you truly believe the idea has some merit then you should launch it.
Looking at wikizu, it does not seem as if he is very far in development.

Unless you are out lots of money, you should let it be because lawyers cost
money and time.

~~~
jiganti
I have no programming experience. All I bring to the table is the idea, and
some money.

~~~
solipsist
If you still have the money, forget about this programmer and go find a new
one. Make sure you meet with the new programmer and find if he/she will be
committed to the project. Get to know them, then hire them.

------
leon_
<http://www.crushtease.com/> <\- you paid money for this? oO

------
Devilboy
Chalk it up to experience and move on.

