Have you turned over whatever you were contacted to do? So it's a real person who is actually conducting some sort of business? I suppose there's an outside chance you might be get some funds but doesn't sound too good. As you know now, the research would have been better performed in the beginning.
Yeah my work is up and live. He's on the record with complimenting it.
There is no way you can search thousands of court databases each time you take on a client. I just ran into someone who told me which dbs to search to pull up dirt on him.
San Frnacisco DA's office took almost a week to return my call. It went to VM. Been a week and I'm still waiting for the return call.
Also post his name and a scan of the check and the contract on the internet. Be sure everything you state is factual. Also, since you have not been paid, you have a civil claim against him for copyright violation. File a take down notice with his site's host.
If you want your money back, you will have to go out to California, get a claim against him, then locate and seize his property for the debt if you can. That's going to cost you more than $10,000 to do of course, so whether you get justice is up to you. Just don't expect you'll ever see that $10,000, the value of that work is gone.
It's possible you have a signed contract stating that the venue for disputes is your state of New York. If so, that is easy to get a ruling against him since it's unlikely he'll show up for the hearing and you'll get a default judgement. Then you take that judgement to California and try to locate assets to seize. Since you didn't mention this, it is likely you have no such contract and you'll probably need to fight the whole thing out on his turf. In the future be sure to specify that all legal conflicts must happen in your area.
Also very important. In the future you do not do one day of work until you have 1/3 cash up front. The contract then specifies you get the second 1/3 at a key milestone, and then the final 1/3 when you actually transfer the code. If you had done this (which is very standard with projects for unknown clients) then you'd only be out $3333 right now.
At this point I've cut my losses and understand I may never see the money. I am pretty sure I can get a civil judgement against him going by his history of not showing up. However, as you said it's still going to be a nightmare trying to enforce the judgement. I mean jeez his own lawyers who he didn't pay got judgements but aren't able to collect funds.
I'll keep pushing the DA's office. Unfortunately their VM says not to leave repeated messages so I don't want to annoy them.
About taking 1/3 advance, I donno how people do this without losing a lot business. Majority of my legit clients would not be able to pay 1/3rd in advance and just move on. In fact with agency work it's standard to wait 90 days for payment.
I wish you the best of luck in getting paid in full!
If he simply refused to pay then it would seem to remain a contract dispute. Writing the check only digs the hole deeper for no benefit whatsoever.
Luckily (for most of us - unluckily for bored police detectives) they don't. Writing a check may feel like a temporary solution, even if the crook knows it will bounce, thus it relieves a modicum of psychological stress. The crooks do it. It's like talking to the police - it makes one feel more innocent, even if it's rarely (never, according to some) the logical thing to do.
I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
Good luck to you. (At least you can be guaranteed you won't be coming up against a brilliant legal defense.)
I agree with this poster. Better to not give them any opportunity to countersue no matter how ridiculous a countersuit it would be. http://freelanceswitch.com/clients/what-to-do-when-a-client-...