LittleC, I have heard that you are a very intelligent woman - so why are you so quick to believe that JoeE is the one telling the truth and others are lying? Can't you see through it yet? or has he begged you to come to his defense in this matter because he can't do it for himself? If you had all the information, you probably wouldn't be jumping to his defense.
Your line there about the limo shows me that you have been fed a very big lie about the reality behind the situation. Nobody asked for limo rides, they did however ask to be paid for the time they invested into building the product that joe claims he 'purchased' for 30k (that's pretty darn cheap for a functional business, content, software, several months of wages for 2 people working on icecoldcash etc, wouldn't you agree?)
The only reason joe is saying he will co-operate with forest now is that he was caught out screwing him and everyone knows about it. Lucky for forest you are friends with both of them, and it looks like your influence will help sort out 1 of the situations where joe has tried to walk away from paying someone money - its nice of you to do that for them both.
But, you should understand the value of content & your business better than anyone ... ask joe how he thinks that 30k pays for someone's entire business, along with several months of wages, content, member & model database, etc etc. Would you consider your business to be worth considerably more than that? Just ask him if he has the 2257 documentation on file ...
People like joe rely on folks like you to defend them, but to do that he has to feed you incorrect information before you talk to the people who know the rest of the story.
Its a great technique, works for many business men who work like joe - get your partners/associates to fight with one another to make sure they hate each other more than they hate you. It works until the day those partners/associates get together and realize they've been getting fucked all along.
I feel bad for you Claudia, because Joe has fed you a great big fat line - and you can say all you like that you trust him, love him, want to kiss and hug him or whatever, but he is getting you to do his dirty work for him ...
And before any of you point out the obvious, that i'm defending someone else also, I must confess that I feel very responsible for my friends getting fucked over. They asked me a year ago for advice, joe was threatening to put them out of business by starting up a company in competition (nice bully tactic!), and offered them a chance to be involved if they brought their business to the table. I recommended to them that they should work WITH joe, because it would be harder to work against him should he choose to compete.
What they've walked away with is 30k and no business, with their key staff poached somewhere along the way ... I wish I had given very different advice, and i feel somewhat responsible.
have fun in court today joe
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