
Hashrocket execs (not Obie) charged in $425 million mail fraud case - rmoriz
http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/401574/abel-harding/2010-07-02/hashrocket-executives-charged-425-million-mail-fraud
======
aresant
Wow, busted.

Appears their DBA was "Yellow Pages United" - hah!

Their fake-directory was called "The Business Book" and members also received
submission to <https://www.yellowpagesunited.com/>.

Compare that logo to the one at <http://www.yp.com> and you can see the
beggining of the problem.

These guys had a true pump model - they're even a testimonial for a high-
volume FAX website - [http://www.faxcomanywhere.com/customers/united-
directories.h...](http://www.faxcomanywhere.com/customers/united-
directories.html) \- which you can be sure was used to fax-spam the country.

~~~
cookiecaper
yellowpagesunited.com is down now. Anyone with a mirror of the logo?

~~~
milesf
Take out the <https://> and you're redirected to <http://www.bizyellow.com/>

~~~
rmoriz
What's technically interesting:

<http://www.bizyellow.com/> looks at first view like a .NET app (.aspx) but
after a closer look it's definitly a Ruby on Rails app.

~~~
Encosia
Out of curiosity, what makes that look like a .NET app to you? The cross-
domain links to ASPX pages or something else?

Not disagreeing, just interested.

~~~
bombs
.aspx is to ASP.NET what .php is to PHP and .cfm is to ColdFusion.

~~~
Encosia
Right, but it isn't an ASPX page. It just has a couple links to ASPX pages on
another site/domain.

------
obiefernandez
Importantly:

1) Hashrocket has absolutely nothing to do with the criminal complaint 2) In
the USA people are innocent until proven guilty

Now if you're interested in this case, read on...

There are hundreds of independent yellow pages (including Yellow Pages United)
that legally use the term Yellow Pages and the "walking fingers" logo.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Pages>

My partners have been doing direct mail and publishing a real, actual, yellow
pages "Business Book" for something like 10 years. I've personally known them
for almost 4 years and they're not crooks. They are important figures in the
community and employ a few dozen people here. Their legal counsel for
compliance with postal regulations is some of the best in the business and
they have been operating without ever having any fear of being subject to
criminal fraud prosecution.

Their detention hearing was today. After 5 hours of testimony the federal
judge from Florida's Middle District decided to release Mark, Marian and Chris
on bond, basically disagreeing with the Atlanta court's request. What I
witnessed during the hearing was political grandstanding, a run-amok federal
prosecutor trying to make a name for himself and sheer cluelessness on behalf
of the government. A ton of "facts" in the criminal complaint simply don't
make any sense. For instance, they claim that the FTC consumer complaint
database has over 100,000 issues in it related to United Directories. That is
plainly false and we heard testimony in court today that the FTC regularly
investigates companies once they exceed 5-10 complaints. That the FTC would
ignore 100 thousand complaints over the course of 5 years is complete
bullshit.

Also, the $425MM figure being widely quoted in the news is based on deposits
figures from United Directories' (UD) sweep account. SWEEP ACCOUNT. They
summed up all the money ever deposited into the UD sweep account and spent
hours claiming that the money had disappeared. It hadn't disappeared -- it
never existed in the first place!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweep_account>

In an almost funny episode, the federal prosecutor admitted he did not know
what a sweep account was, later calling the explanation "trickery" on the part
of the defense.

There's so much more to this case than what the media is reporting and we're
going to do our best to make sure that our side of the story, the truth, is
heard. All of Hashrocket is pretty distraught, but we'll do our best to
soldier on and support our friends in whatever way possible.

~~~
pvg
_1) Hashrocket has absolutely nothing to do with the criminal complaint_

If the people named in the complaint are executives of Hashrocket, then it has
something to do with Hashrocket, however indirectly.

 _2) In the USA people are innocent until proven guilty_

In the US criminal justice system, there is a presumption of innocence. That
doesn't have much to do with whether one is actually guilty or innocent, in
the USA or anywhere else.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_If the people named in the complaint are executives of Hashrocket, then it
has something to do with Hashrocket, however indirectly._

This seems pretty pedantic. If a VP at Google gets arrested for domestic
violence, that hardly means that it "has something to do with Google".

~~~
pvg
It is, only if you make up an example quite unlike the one at hand. If an exec
of a firm gets charged with fraud, it's not a piece of information you'd
ignore when doing business with that firm, even if the fraud charges are
regarding another venture. Suppose you're negotiating a deal with some company
and in the process they tell you 'Oh, a couple of our key executives were just
charged with fraud. But, really, this has nothing to do with us'. Your
business partner mumbles 'Hmm, I'm not so sure about this...'. Do you reply
'Oh, quit being pedantic!'? Probably not.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I concede the point :)

------
marcusestes
This bit from the Atlanta Journal Constitution shares more details on the
case:

"From June 2004 to December 2008, United Directories deposited about $425
million into bank accounts -- all of the money from businesses submitting
payments for ads, Johnson said. The company did in fact publish an advertising
directory. In 2008, the company received payments from about 162,000
businesses, yet its directory contained only about 55,000 business names,
Johnson said.

According to the criminal complaint, United Directories also misled businesses
into thinking they were paying to renew advertisements in the actual Yellow
Pages directory."

~~~
heresy
Wow. If the association with Hashrocket continues, Hashrocket's name is toast.
I feel sorry for Obie.

The scale of the operation is impressive, though. If some of those accounts
were personal, they made some serious bank.

------
adam_lowe
The facts of the case are being skewed far from reality. It is sad that
innocent until proven guilty seems to have been lost in the rumor mill. Even
in a court room at times today that seemed to be the case. Mark and Marian
provided seed money for Hashrocket and founded the company with Obie. They
also own a separate company called United Directories that provides a paper
and online business listing service. The companies are completely separate
entities. None of this has anything to do with or any impact on Hashrocket.
Hashrocket is a stand alone, profitable consultancy. That being said, I have
always known Marian and Mark to do everything they engage in with the utmost
integrity.

Hashrocket and United Directories are in the same office building. I was in
the conference room next to the United Directories space when the police came
to serve their warrants to United Directories. The police officers proceeded
to tell the United Directories employees, "You no longer have a job. This
company does not exist anymore. You will not be receiving a paycheck." Again,
what happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Then came the bail hearing today. It lasted 5 hours. I was shocked and
disheartened at how few actual facts were presented by the prosecution in
order for them to drag someone into court. I was further disturbed when there
was almost no basis provided or facts provided to how they were making the
jump from what information they did have to trying to accuse Mark, Marian and
their employee Chris of the allegations against them. The prosecution then
further showed a total lack of ability to understand a basic business banking
account or simple math. The judge made the decision at the end of the day to
release Mark, Marian and Chris on bond but the prosecution forced his hand
with a legal technicality to delay the decision.

At the end of a very long and tiring day I have no reason to doubt my friends'
character. I am saddened at what I saw transpire in our law enforcement and
legal system over this past week. Hashrocket is self-sufficient and will
continue to build awesome web applications for our clients. We would
appreciate everyone's support in promoting facts over rumors.

Thank You,

Adam Lowe

~~~
MarkHoffman
Well, Adam, the facts are that your friends are running what can best be
characterized as a shady business. Perhaps they didn't break the law, but I
find it saddening to see Hashrocket folks fall over themselves to defend
business practices such as these. Makes one question what kind of business-
ethics Hashrocket encourages, doesn't it?

I think it's a bit much to suggest that your friend's business is just an
innocent victim of an overzealous and incompetent law enforcement system. The
complaint has enough facts contained in it to at least suggest that there is
something shady going on. The very nature of their industry is suspect.

Defend them all you want, but consider that it only encourages people to
associate the accused (and their ethics) with those with the people at
Hashrocket.

~~~
adam_lowe
My goal was simply to relay some of the facts that came out of sitting through
a round of court proceedings. One of the main things being that a lot of what
was put in the complaint seemed to be just plain wrong. That being said my
intent was not to defend the industry or the business model. I got out of
recruiting early in my career because I couldn't tolerate all the shady
practices and lack of ethics in that industry. I simply ask that everyone give
them the courtesy of due process and not condemn the hardworking employees of
Hashrocket for something they had nothing to do with. We are a separate
company in a totally different industry. We are self sufficient financially
and have been for some time now. We have always and will continue to pursue
the highest level craftsmanship in our development and complete transparency
in working with our clients.

------
ruhuvian
What is most disturbing is that these weren't far-away investors of
Hashrocket. One was the CFO and they were directly funding Hashrocket since
its inception. As Obie's business partners, that's pretty shady. And whether
its determined that they were within their legal limits or not, we've all been
made aware of how sleazy the whole operation is. Hashrocket would do well to
distance themselves from this stuff as much as possible, and declare that they
will no longer receive money from an operation that survives on scamming
people out of their money. The more Obie shouts to the world, "These are my
FRIENDS", the worse he looks.

------
MarkHoffman
Obie is probably right and wrong.

He's probably right about the prosecutor being a grandstanding twit with
little interest in justice, but only concerned about his own political career.
I've been involved in (though not a party to) two criminal cases and neither
case left me with much admiration for prosecutors. I realize they are just
doing their job, but it's clear their own interest are placed far above the
needs of justice.

But Obie is wrong about the nature of these types of directory businesses. As
a business owner, I've come in contact with these type of companies and the
most gracious description of them would be "ethically challenged". While they
may operate under the letter of the law, they rely upon naivete and/or lack of
scrutiny. They are no better than those companies that add a charge to your
phone bill and hope you don't see it.

I can understand why people are disappointed to learn that Obie has decided to
associate himself with people that are involved in these types of shady
businesses. I also see why people would be concerned that Obie has partnered
with these kind of people in building Hashrocket.

------
duck
I don't really care if a company wants to be "hip" or whatever, but title's
like "Chief Morale Officer, in charge of alchohol and fun activities" just
make you look like idiots.

~~~
catch23
Eh, not really. Companies like Zappos has titles like this, but nobody thinks
the author of "Delivering Happiness" is an idiot.

~~~
ac132
I dunno about that. They just sold to Amazon because they were running out of
money.

Exactly how much revenue does a competent CEO need to accumulate before they
can turn a profit and become solvent? Tony marketed his way to $1 billion with
borrowed money, but it's shameful to have the much revenue and run out of
funds.

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/201...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2012109500_btzappos14.html)

~~~
catch23
Well, to be fair, most of the borrowed money came from his own pocket, which
is why he ended up owning more than 40% of zappos (probably more that 50% if
you include venture frogs' 36% involvement).

Most boards hate companies who spend extravagantly on their employees. For
example, even though Google is doing great, quite a few of their board members
hate how Eric Schmidt feeds Google employees so well. According to a few I
know at google, they had to pull back a few items on the menu to keep the
board happy. Most boards are just after profits and don't really see the
connection to employee happiness.

In fact, there was a YC company board who rejected the purchase of an
expensive espresso machine just because the employees wanted it... that
destroyed employee morale for the next 2-3 months, and also caused traffic to
go down. Eventually the board gave in and bought the company the espresso
machine and it really paid off -- employees were happy, traffic rebounded, and
board members actually stated that they wished they knew this earlier. Won't
say which YC company, but it was a talk from one of the YC dinners during my
round.

tl;dr: Boards are always after the cash and rarely see the connection to
keeping employees happy, yet time after time they make the same stupid
mistakes.

------
oldgregg
If the claim of _HALF A BILLION_ dollar fraud is true it seems unlikely that
Obie would not know something about it. If my buddies and business associates
made that kind of money I sure as hell would know everything about it.
HOWEVER, this does not diminish HashRocket or Obie's work-- the Rails Way is
THE book that taught me Rails. Hashrocket has contributed so much to the
ecosystem I sure hope that doesn't change.

edit: It seems quite plausable that HashRocket people actually helped
developed the "fraud" site... If they can pull off a _HALF A BILLION_ dollar
scam just think that they can do for my company! The line between innovation
and fraud is often very thin.

~~~
marclove
I believe that's the relevance of the sweep account issue. If you're using the
"deposits" into a sweep account as the basis for measuring the supposed &
claimed "fraud", its an incredibly overinflated figure.

------
petercooper
This is an extreme demonstration of brand value and why some companies are so
quick and determined to cut out trademark misuse.

Selling listings in a "directory" at $300 a pop isn't easy. Stick the phrase
"Yellow Pages" and a YP logo on it, however, and you can clearly clear
millions of dollars over several years.

------
oscardelben
Here in Europe there's a company that sends out something similar. For example
in Italy it's called "Registro italiano delle imprese in internet". I
mistakenly registered with them and they started sending me invoices of more
than $1000 dollars each (which I never paid).

I did some research and they have been declared illegal in many countries but
somehow never got charged. If these guys are doing the same thing, then I
don't know if it's illegal or not in the USA but it surely is something
unethical with the only goal of spilling money from people.

------
milesf
Obie tweeted about this:

"Hashrocket is NOT connected with any wrongdoing. The gov is doing its best to
railroad my partners but they are fighting back!! (PLS RT)"

<http://twitter.com/obie/status/17608288414>

~~~
bphogan
And as I said on Twitter... If I were in his situation I would keep my mouth
shut and would be directing all questions to my lawyer. Otherwise you run the
risk of increasing the guilt by association. This kind of stuff can ruin a
company.

I understand the desire to publicly defend your biz partners, especially if
they're your friends. So if you trust your friends enough to put your name and
business on the line for them, then I guess ignore my advice. IAMAL, so what
do I know? :)

~~~
obiefernandez
I talked to my lawyer and he was fine with me publicly commenting on it,
especially since the mainstream media is doing its best to turn this into a
huge story.

AND

I do trust my partners enough to my name and business on the line for them.
They are innocent.

~~~
jacquesm
There is a huge difference between innocent according to the letter of the law
and innocent in a real-life sense.

See the OJ Simpson case for a nice example of the two.

Your friends may be 'innocent' according to the letter of the law - when all
is said and done. But meanwhile they look guilty as hell in the eyes of the
general public of maybe not scamming half a billions worth of dollars but
still a significant amount out of the pockets of hardworking people and
corporations.

It may be 'legal' but it certainly isn't 'right', and by associating yourself
so strongly with these people you are not helping yourself or hashrocket.

Your lawyer has no stake in your public image but you do, your interests are
not aligned and I think you've been given some bad advice.

~~~
_pius
_There is a huge difference between innocent according to the letter of the
law and innocent in a real-life sense._

Definitely. As a matter of fact, courts in the United States don't even claim
to determine innocence; rather they determine guilt. You're either "guilty" or
"not guilty" beyond a reasonable doubt of a crime.

------
ericlavigne
I visited Hashrocket's Jacksonville office for a couple days earlier this
year, just to watch and learn from the programmers there. They seem like a
good group of people, and I'm sorry to see them getting caught up in this.

The alleged fraud in this story was by some Hashrocket execs as part of a
separate company. If all of this turns out to be true, I still wish the best
for the programmers at Hashrocket.

------
btmorex
"Hashrocket (Rails) execs (not Obie)"

Can someone explain this? What is Hashrocket? Who is Obie? I assume this is
related to ruby on rails?

~~~
jackowayed
Hashrocket is a well-known Rails consulting company, and Obie Fernandez is a
founder and is pretty well-known as well.

<http://hashrocket.com/>

~~~
sleight42
He's particularly known for writing The Rails Way published by Addison-Wesley
(<http://www.amazon.com/Rails-Way-Obie-Fernandez/dp/0321445619>) which he did
just prior to founding Hashrocket.

------
gruntruk
I think reading any/all headlines with the mindset of "interesting if it's
true" is worthwhile here. The facts need to materialize before declaring fraud
or any other type of malice. $425 million makes for a wonderful headline.

~~~
ewjordan
Did you see the actual advertisement?

Illegal, maybe not...but malicious? Certainly. An advertisement just doesn't
come out accidentally looking like it's an invoice from the Yellow Pages (the
real ones), that takes effort. The intent is crystal clear, it's not to
convince someone that they would gain something from your service, it's to
trick them into thinking that they already owe the money.

Really, now - can anyone honestly imagine any plausible scenario by which this
"business model" could have been devised other than "Hey, I've got a great
idea, Yellow Pages is not a trademarked term, let's print up an ad that looks
like one of their bills and send it to millions of small businesses, some of
them probably won't read the fine print and they'll pay up, thinking that
they'll be removed from the Yellow Pages if they don't!"

If you really think this was more innocent than that, I've got a bridge to
sell you. Even if it's legal, this is some shameful shit, and that Hashrocket
is associated with (let alone founded by) these douchebags casts a long dark
shadow over its image...

~~~
lesterbuck
_An advertisement just doesn't come out accidentally looking like it's an
invoice from the Yellow Pages_

Of course not. They sent out almost 20 million pieces of email over the years,
so what were they doing?

Testing all the f*cking time!

------
xenopia
Read for yourself.

<http://bit.ly/united_dir_filing>

And while I wish I could say I was a super L33T hacker, I'm afraid these docs
are public record if you are set up to look.

~~~
xenopia
So on taking a further look at the court filing I think what we have here is
your basic "real world spam" business model. Unfortunately these things are
all over the place as they are a proven way to generate money by sending out a
firehose of solicitations for an essentially useless "service".

Looking at the solicitation it clearly covers it's ass with all sorts of
disclaimers, despite looking deceptively like a bill at first glance. I don't
think the solicitation itself will hold up in court as being fraudulent alone.
What they are alleging is that they did not even bother to put all the names
in the book, and they did not send out as many books as they said they would.

You might ask yourself how such a mailing could be successful. Well, it is a
sad truth that there are many aging business owners in many small towns across
this country who are not quite on the ball enough to read the fine print
anymore. Who falls for all those Nigerian emails? Obviously someone. Basically
what these guys are doing is vacuuming up small checks from old man Higgins
who is still running the ole' TV repair shop in downtown Podunk, even if
nobody much bothers to fix their VCR anymore and the new Wal-Mart has got em
for $49 anyways.

At some level this is along the lines of those "Who's Who" books that select
you to be in a book of awesome people, and wouldn't you like to buy a copy?
That kind of thing is pointless and deceptive, but not illegal. There seems to
be more going on here.

A few questions: Why get mail at a PO Box in Atlanta if this business is in
Florida and it is so legitimate?

Illegal or not, do you really think this is the kind of ethics you want in
your CFO? Or was it a deal with the dark side that had to be made?

~~~
marclove
After reading the complaint, I came to a similar conclusion. Was it fraud &
money laundering? That's for the court to decide and they have a presumption
of innocence.

Regardless of that outcome though (and assuming United Directories doesn't
dispute that Exhibit A is one of their advertisements), its pretty clearly a
shady business in my mind. While technically (probably) legal, its a spammy
business model that adds very little value.

Its not really fair to Hashrocket employees that this will taint Hashrocket's
reputation, but it unfortunately will to some extent.

Oh and totally agreed about the whole -- if your brother's already been
indicted for the same exact thing and is currently a fugitive you might want
to rethink the business model -- thing. That just shows a complete lack of
common sense.

------
Alvie
Deceptive marketing is not illegal per se, but intent to deceive (a question
of fact, based on the type of marketing used) is illegal. However, this is
difficult to prove.

------
xenopia
No comment. <http://twitter.com/li0n/status/17199037259>

------
xenopia
A summary of how United's "business" works:

1) Design an "order form" that looks deceptively like a renewal form for the
regular local yellow pages. The goal is to confuse the recipient that this is
a renewal for your local yellow pages that you already subscribe to. Make the
return address of your company say "YELLOW PAGES." Take advantage of the fact
that the term Yellow Pages and the walking fingers logo are not copyrighted.

2) Have your shady lawyer review your order form and add enough disclaimers to
cover your ass and comply with postal regulations. Everything is spelled out
in the fine print. This is not a bill. You are ordering a service to be
included in our book. We are not affiliated with your local phone company. We
are not even going to send this book to anyone except other "subscribers" and
a few libraries, etc. We will also put you on a website.

3) Mass mail this "Order Form" to your database of business names across the
country. The response rate is small. But as the $300 fee is relatively high
and your actual cost is negligible, the payoff is worth it. Note that by
ordering you are set up to auto renew your $300 order. The book is published
twice a year.

4) Send customers a bill. Charge credit card, get a check. __Note that this
could be an area where the prosecutor vastly overestimated the dollar amounts
involved __The total count of incoming mail was for _order form_ replies. A
smaller fraction of those recipients would actually have paid the bill which
presumably arrived later. -If customer uses a credit card to pay, set up auto
renewal, per terms of order form.

5)Have book of names printed. How many to print? Well, you actually aren't
obligated to print more than a handful, per the terms of the solicitation.
Here is the crucial number to optimize because printing those books actually
costs money. You need to print just enough to send to customers to show they
got something. Did they send one to each customer? The prosecutor is alleging
they did not based on records from the printer. Again though, they never said
they would publish any specific amount or that as a subscriber you would get a
copy yourself. Assuming they did actually send a book to each subscriber, then
the scope of the dollar amounts involved would be much smaller than alleged,
though still quite lucrative. So why print and mail books at all? Two reasons.
One is to maintain some defensibility to the business in case you ever end up
in court (cough.) The second is so you have something to show the smaller
subset of your customers who pay but end up complaining. When they try to file
a credit card chargeback you can send them a book and prove some service was
provided.

Now. Up to this point, we could be within the bounds of legality. But the
prosecutor seems to be alleging something more. Specifically that the number
of names actually printed in the book was far below the number of paid orders.
This would clearly be fraud. But maybe they did print every paid customer's
name in the book. Maybe the prosecutor indeed has his accounting wrong and
maybe United was hyper careful to keep their records in order. This is where
the crux of the case will probably lie. To get access to the books though, the
prosecutor had to get the indictment, and that's why he filed with the
information he had.

6) Test, optimize,repeat. Mailings aren't cheap. You've got to try to keep
that response rate up. Which zip codes do you mail to? Which customers can
continue to be charged year after year? Are repeat mailings worth it? How many
chargebacks can you handle before your credit card processor dumps you? Some
database work is required to keep that mailing list optimal.

7) Build a website so you can provide additional "service" to your customers
to increase response rates and cut down on the need to pay for all those
expensive printed books. Hell, maybe even creating a web directory for small
business might actually provide some value. Start looking around for people
who can help you build a website.

8) So now you've got this cash cow, but the problem is it is a deceptive
business at best. You want to be a respected member of the community, and
flash some cash out on the beach. No one can know what these mailings of yours
look like. So you put your PO box in one state under one name, and you put
your office in another state where you live under a name that sounds
impressive. United Directories. You can tell everyone at cocktail parties that
you are the premier publisher of B2B directories for specialized verticals,
yada yada.. But that's not enough. You want to be part of something really fun
and sexy, so you invest in this new software consultancy. Despite having very
little to add to the business other than cash, charisma and perhaps innovative
bookkeeping skills, you get to be Chairman and CFO. Finally. Respect.

<http://hashrocket.com/people/view/mark-smith/>
<http://hashrocket.com/people/view/marian-phelan/>

9) Everything's cool. Ignore those letters of inquiry from the FTC. You can
make this work. Your brother was an idiot and got too sloppy. Maybe it's time
for a new Porsche.

10) Somehow despite that fact that you are a total sleazeball, you've managed
to fund a great company and stand back enough to avoid destroying it. When the
shit hits the fan, it's time to call in some favors.

ego can help build empires but it is often their downfall.

Just my interpretation.

Here's the indictment. Guess I'm good at hacking something.

<http://bit.ly/united_filing>

------
fernyb
RIP Hashrocket

------
washed
Mark Smith funded and funds Hashrocket. Hashrocket isn't profitable without
Mark Smith. If Obie had no knowledge of this scam then I feel sorry for him
and this situation. I guess "The Rails Maturity Model", the Hashrocket Way and
BizConf includes taking scam money and pretending to be profitable.

~~~
duckpunch
You're confusing Hashrocket, the web development company, with United
Directories, the company being charged. The people being charged are
essentially initial investors. Pointing a finger at Hashrocket in this
scenario is not unlike blaming every startup that was invested in by an angel
or VC that later ended up involved in fraudulent activity. None of this means
that Hashrocket is not at all at fault, but based on the news that we all
have, you're drawing unreasonable conclusions. If however you have other
sources, please share them here, otherwise you're just trolling.

~~~
ww520
Aren't those people charged executives of Hashrocket as well?

~~~
duckpunch
On second look I have to concede that I could be under-rating their authority.
To be fair major investors will often sit on boards, but there's no need for
me to make further conjecture.

A fellow who comments here [http://avramc.posterous.com/united-directories-
federal-court...](http://avramc.posterous.com/united-directories-federal-
court-indictment-d) makes a similar claim from a much more advantaged position
of knowledge.

