[cdsmith]

The above poster is so far out to lunch on so many points it will take me a while to address them all. But I understand where he/she is coming from, because not everyone is expected to know the entire history and the truth of this extensive and rather pathetic story.

For now, until I can get my day organized... suffice it to say that back about 3 years ago Paul (aka: Hungryman) ran a design brokerage. Clients would order designs from him, he would then offer the work to a real designer who would do the work for a fee which usually amounted to about 50% of the total work order. In other words, the client would pay Paul say $2,000, and he would pay the designer $1,000 and pocket a thousand himself for basically doing nothing but the referral.

I would have no problem with that except for the fact that Paul often chose NOT to pay the designer, and after almost a year of them waiting for their money they had no recourse but to take it to the boards. There was a huge... HUGE outcry, a bitter argument went on for weeks. At this time I wasn't involved but watched from the sidelines, until a friend of mine admitted that she too was one of the designers owed a substantial amount of money. Hey, $1200 or $1500 may not be much to you or me, but to some people just breaking into the industry it can mean a lot.

At that point I read that Paul and the other design brokers involved (yes there were others!) were going to make this right finally. I waited 4 months...... then I acted. This was last year, I took up the issue for Rikki Lee and posted on about eight webmaster boards about Paul and one other designer who both owed Rikki Lee a chunk of money for her hard work that she did in good faith for them.

Her work remains in their portfolios..... not paid for.... to this day as far as I know.


So, we're at a year ago...... Both designers contact me and become reasonable and take a sensible tone with me..... smart. They both cry that they are broke and barely getting by. I, not wanted to squeeze blood out of anyone, sugges that they make small payments to Rikki Lee to at least show a modicum of good faith and lower the debt bit by bit. Can they afford maybe twenty bucks a month? I know people on welfare who can come up with a lousy twenty every month or at least every other month.

The other designer made one payment..... then nothing. He has now, as of yesterday, made arrangements to start paying again, there was a misunderstanding on both ends that Rikki Lee tells me is resolved.

As for Paul, he hasn't made good on his word, and hasn't paid Rikki Lee a penny of his debt. He all but cried to me on the phone that he still had no money, barely enough to live on, wasn't working, his sites weren't making him money etc etc etc, saying "if you trash me and I don't make any money how will I be able to pay her?"....
made sense at the time... but I have remained silent for a year and let him do whatever it is he does to earn money, and to this day not one fucking DIME has come her way from him. Do you think this is right?

If she were to charge him back interest (as most ocmpanies would) he would owe much more than he did almost 3 years ago. She has resigned herself to the fact that Paul will never pay her, but I'm not going to let him freely conduct business openly on this or any other webmaster forum without letting my fellow webmasters know what he has done to other good honest hard-working talented people in our business.


If you want to bury your head in the sand and ignore the truth and pretend mr Hungryman is a great guy, by all means delude yourselves. But don't presume to sit there and tell me I'm making a mistake.... If Paul can afford an attorney then he can afford to just cover this debt and make things right once and for all. You want to call my first post a rant? Unbelievable. I am honestly astounded by that. People, it's about doing what is RIGHT. Think about it some more, because you would feel vastly different if it was you who had been screwed over like this.