Crime doesn’t pay (start a company instead!)
By Nigel (Chief News Junkie)
On the day we launched our site, Hubdub, into public beta, I received the following email:
Nigel,
We have a problem. I have here a postmarked and sealed a 22 slide Power Point presentation regarding my concept, dated well before your launch today that I just heard about on the news, and I have been seeking legal representation since November 2007, so it is well documented this was mine before you even founded it in November 2007….Now I believe this concept has been stolen from me. I don’t know how you want to handle this, but I do expect a resolution. I will await your response.
Regards,
Cole Bartiromo
The email fell into my spam bin and I’ve only just found it. I thought “Who the hell is this guy? so I googled ‘Cole Bartiromo’ and came across some very interesting news clippings from 2004 about a Californian 19 year old of that name going to jail for 3 years for eBay fraud. Apparently, he’s got previous having as a 17 year old scammed $1 million off investors by selling “risk-free” investments. CBS have a nice picture of him (although he appears to be playing baseball with an invisible bat).
So Cole, you asked for a response and here it is: Give up your life of crime. You are young, obviously smart and clearly highly entrepreneurial. Take Jason Calacanas’s advice, “The life of crime is too much work for too little benefit; start a company!” (Twit 130, last 12 minutes). I’m not sure if you could raise outside money (well you probably could, but you might need to tell them where the money is going!) but a guy like you should easily be able to bootstrap yourself to profitability. At the end of the day, the company of hairy assed pizza eating developers is always going to be better than the company of hairy assed pretty-boy worrying cellmates!
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Tags: calacanas, cole bartiromo, fraud, sued, twit
