rSlash - r/Prorevenge Don't Pay Me? I'll Destroy Your Scam Business & Take Your House!

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

r/Prorevenge In today's episode, we have 2 stories from developers who get hired to make a website for a client. Both clients try to screw over OP by making them try to work for free, and both times OP gets spectacular revenge! In one of the stories, OP manages to use his developer skills to utterly destroy the client's business piece by piece until the client has to close shop and even loses his house to foreclosure. How many times do I have to say it? Don't mess with the IT guy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to R-Slash, a podcast where I read the best post from a cross-reddit. Today's subreddit is R-Slash Pro Revenge, where someone decides to mess with an IT guy. Our next reddit posted from Inzi Devin. I used to be a freelance front-end developer and a search engine optimization guru. Back then, getting on the front page of Google was pretty simple. Link exchanging was popular, but risky. I never did that, but I did have one website that had serious page rank cloud due to it being linked as a trusted source, directly from one of the top and most trusted websites

in the world. I would use that website to boost the Google ranking of the other websites that I built. One day I was approached by someone I'll call Bob. Bob sold travel packages. He needed to revamp his basic existing website with a more complex one that had pretty tricky back end coding. I could do the front end, but I had to hire a back end developer to build the functionality. Bob had a major launch date coming one month from now, and it had to be ready. I usually asked for a 25% deposit up front, but Bob said no. He said

that he was burned by his last developer and he wasn't going to lose any more money. Now, from the moment that I met Bob, my gut was telling me that this was going to end badly. The problem was that I really needed the money, and this job was worth quite a lot of money for both me and the developer that I hired. I skipped the deposit on the promise that he paid in full before it went to a server. Bob agreed. For an entire month, me and this other developer worked days, and sometimes all night to get this done to his time frame. With one day to spare, we had everything done, and I'd never been so proud of what we had achieved. I was honestly excited to show Bob. The next day I sent in the link to my test server and he called me to discuss it.

Bob said that everything looked good, but he said that his servers were too old to run it. I assured him that he would, and he said that he was scared that it wouldn't work and we would just walk away. We went back and forth for a while, but he was insistent the site had to be uploaded and tested on the server before he parted with one penny. I talked to the other developer. He didn't like it either, but he agreed that we would upload our work onto a server.

Bob gave me the server log in and I uploaded the site. I told him it was live and then...nothing. I sent several emails and then phone calls. The emails went unanswered and the phone went to voicemail. Sensing a major problem, I rushed to my computer to delete our work from his server, but access was denied. Bob had locked us out, and the following day he went live with our work. I tried calling him for several days until one morning he answered the phone and said,

Listen, I'm not ever going to pay you and there's nothing you can do about it. Then he hung up on me. Rage was a good word for my feelings. I was shaking while I still held a phone in my hands. For the next hour, I was just getting angrier and angrier. As I sat there figuring out what to do, it hit me. Revenge would be mine. I registered a new domain name, which was Bob's Travel Domain, plus the word Sucks at the end. So if Bob's website was bobstravel.com,

I had purchased Bob's Travel Sucks.com. I uploaded our work, basically an exact mirror of his live website onto my new domain. I used my mega powerful Google ranking page to link to this new page. Within one month, my website jumped above his and Google for pretty much every conceivable search phrase you would use for the packages that he sold. No matter what you typed in, my site was the first result and he was always below mine. During that month, I created a second website, which was Bob's full name with the word Sucks at the End. On the second website, I posted what happened, screenshots of his emails, and I warned everyone what a con man he is.

Bob had a somewhat unusual first and last name, so again, within one month, my website was above his own personal website. Then I forgot all about it. About four months later, I got a cease and desist email from a law firm. A quick Google search confirmed that this law firm was made up and just didn't exist. I replied back with, I'm not ever going to take this down and there's nothing you can do about it. Every now and then, I get emails from people that he had conned by taking their money for

a travel package, but never booking their package. I would put those on both of my websites, making sure those juicy, important keywords, such as his full name and the company name, were spread across each negative review. A few more months pass, and I get an anonymous email linking to a new domain called MyNamesSucks.com. I'm told to remove my two websites and he'll remove this new one. I do a quick search. And what do you know? It's not even showing up on Google.

No one could find it. I reply back, I'm not ever going to take these websites down and there's nothing you can do about it. As each month passes, I'm getting more and more people emailing me saying they've been ripped off. I keep adding these updates to my websites. It turns out that the travel agency world is very well regulated and they start investigating Bob's company using my website as their main tool.

I get a call from Bob. Bob is not happy. In fact, Bob is pretty desperate. As I look at his text messages now, I can almost hear the despair and resentment in Bob's voice. Bob pleads and literally begs me to pull the sidestown. Not only is he being investigated by the Travel Agency Association. But he also had some very important friends that didn't appreciate the bad press that he was causing in their circles. He offers to pay me the money that he owed me. Nothing more, just what he owed. For the third time, and with a massive smile on my face, I say, listen, I'm not ever

taking them down, and there's nothing you can do about it. A few months listen, I'm not ever taking them down and there's nothing you can do about it. A few months later, I discovered that his travel company has been removed from all travel associations. No matter what you typed into Google, my website outranked his and all the bad reviews on my site were the first thing that his potential customers would see. It crippled his business so badly that it went bust. During the collapse, one of his ex-employees contacted me and told me how hard he worked

to get my website off the first page of Google. He had registered dozens and dozens of other domains and the hope that some would jump ahead. Little did he know that only the top dozen websites in the world could jump what I was already doing. Apparently, his home property was tied into loans in the failing business, so he lost his house. It took me just about a year to turn his business from a cash cow to a dead cow. So the moral of the story, if you're ever thinking about messing with the developer, don't.

OP, you're for sure a better person than I am, because when he came back offering to pay, I would have taken the payment and they just kept the websites up. What gives? I pay you so how come you're not taking the website down? Listen buddy, I don't think you understood me when I said it. I'm not taking it down and there's nothing you can do about it. Thanks for the money though. Our next credit post is from Axel Reffen.

I've worked as an independent contractor in the IT field for over 20 years, doing all manner of things, from creating simple HTML sites to managing a big hotel's complete IT infrastructure. One of the many clients that I had back in the day that I was coding big custom websites for was a rental company. Now, I'd heard a lot of people warn me about not working with a guy that owned this place. He had a reputation that he was sharp as a tack, backstabbing and conniving. He was a lawyer after all.

So I agreed to work with him with that in mind. He wanted a new website for his running business. People would list their homes for rent and winners would sign up and pay a subscription to the site. Nothing out of the ordinary there. So we make a pretty good deal on paper, we sign it and I get started on the project. Coding goes well, but he suddenly starts demanding that I start showing him progress within one week. He wants to see their front end of the website right now. And this is just a

tip of the iceberg. I tried explaining to him that I have to do six weeks of back end work before I can even get started on the front end, and the only thing that I have to do six weeks of back end work before I can even get started on the front end and the only thing that I had to show right now was pure code. The contract that we signed clearly states this. He then gets on his high horse and demands that I put everything on hold to do the front end first and the back end second. I, being really young at the time in Fairly Nyeave, agreed to do this without asking for it to be added to the contract as an addendum, and I started working on the design right away.

Now, the contract stated that I was given free reign of the design decisions, as long as I maintain the same color scheme and use the same logo on the website. So I make the first draft, and I show it to him in two days. He was not impressed and demanded a different direction and set up a list of demands.

I, as always, aim to please the customer and just do what he wants. I design a new layout with this list of demands, but he doesn't like that one either. That's how the next three months go. It's just a never-ending circle where he's never happy with anything. At this point, I'm close to four months into this project. He demands to see a working showcase of the back end. I point out that he himself changed the order of how the project was being done and how he demanded that I do their front end design first and the back end second.

Then this guy turned on me and said, yeah, but the contract that we both signed says that you'll have a working back end to show me at the end of the month. If you don't honor that, then I'll have to take my business elsewhere and see compensation for your lack of professionalism. Okay, so I now have 12 days to do a back end for the website. So I got a friend to help me, and we worked tirelessly through the weekend. Mind you, at this point, the client has only paid me 5% of the total price, and he shielded himself from paying more by saying, well, if you can't honor the contract, then why should I? Finish such and such work first, and then I'll pay you as per the contract.

At this point, I was thinking about all the warning signs that I'd heard about this guy. So I decide to add a special function to the code, just to be safe. More on that later. So it's the end of the month. We now have a front end designed that he's okay with. A backend that's about 85% finished and I still have one month to finish everything else. So it was time to show the client. I was working on this website in my own dev server and I showed him this in a browser on his computer. I mentioned to the client that since this was on my server, it might lag a little bit. But once the website went live and it was moved to his hosting company,

it wouldn't lag at all. He says that's okay and I continue with the demonstration. As I'm showing him both their front end and back end of the website, I can see that he's immensely happy with it, although he would never say that out loud. He starts trying to hide his smile and his eyes gleam with all the ways that he can start making money from this website. Anyways, he starts saying the site is too slow, this part is wrong, that part is wrong, blah blah blah. He said to me, I want you to put it up on my production server so I can see how the speed is. Okay, no problem, I can make that happen. Please pay 50% of the contract and I'll get right on it.

I wait a few days and then I get an email from him where he includes a forwarded message from the bank detailing a transaction from him to me in the amount that I asked for. So I move the website to his production server so we can take a look at it. I then send him an email stating that he can try the system with the supplied credentials. What he doesn't know is that I knew that he had been fishing around for another programmer to do this project. To pick up from a lazy didbeat who couldn't do anything right. So I knew that he would most likely try to screw me.

What I also suspected was that the email he sent me with the transaction proof was a fake and I ended up being right. Pro revenge number one. Remember that small function that I mentioned? Well what it did was if the client's account tried to remove my account from the system without first changing one important setting, then the system would delete and purge the database and then remove all the documents in the webroot. Well not even five minutes after

he reads the email from me, he does just that. He tries to delete my admin user from the system to lock me out. Guess who has nothing of the project left? He does. Pro Revenge Number 2 Since it's considered forgery to spoof an email, especially from a bank, I sent the information to the authorities and he was investigated by both the cops and the bank's lawyers. Pro Revenge number 3. I sold the website that I built to his competitor for a better price than originally contracted to him. And last I heard, he was now blacklisted from owning a company and he lost his law license.

I only got that 5% that he paid me at the very beginning, and I worked for over 5 months on this project. However, the knowledge of his downfall will keep my heart warm for the rest of my life. Down in the comments, someone asked OP what happened after he reported this lawyer. OP replied, yeah so he did try to contact me after the fact. He threatened a lawsuit for damages and more. However, I did everything within the contract, so I was completely covered. Since he didn't pay for their products, the rights were still mine.

It was mine, and I could do whatever I wanted to with it, including the extra function in there. He did try to build my bank for roughly twice the amount of the contract, but I got that thrown out when I disputed the claim. That was our slash per revenge, and if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcasts because I put on new Reddit podcasts episodes every single day.