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The alleged fraud in this story was by some Hashrocket execs as part of a separate company. If all of this turns out to be true, I still wish the best for the programmers at Hashrocket.
Mark Smith funded and funds Hashrocket. Hashrocket isn't profitable without Mark Smith. If Obie had no knowledge of this scam then I feel sorry for him and this situation. I guess "The Rails Maturity Model", the Hashrocket Way and BizConf includes taking scam money and pretending to be profitable.
Hashrocket isn't profitable? Why not? Consulting is a pretty straight-forward business model, and they're pretty well known, so they shouldn't have much trouble charging enough to cover their costs.
1) Hashrocket has absolutely nothing to do with the criminal complaint 2) In the USA people are innocent until proven guilty
Now if you're interested in this case, read on...
There are hundreds of independent yellow pages (including Yellow Pages United) that legally use the term Yellow Pages and the "walking fingers" logo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Pages
My partners have been doing direct mail and publishing a real, actual, yellow pages "Business Book" for something like 10 years. I've personally known them for almost 4 years and they're not crooks. They are important figures in the community and employ a few dozen people here. Their legal counsel for compliance with postal regulations is some of the best in the business and they have been operating without ever having any fear of being subject to criminal fraud prosecution.
Their detention hearing was today. After 5 hours of testimony the federal judge from Florida's Middle District decided to release Mark, Marian and Chris on bond, basically disagreeing with the Atlanta court's request. What I witnessed during the hearing was political grandstanding, a run-amok federal prosecutor trying to make a name for himself and sheer cluelessness on behalf of the government. A ton of "facts" in the criminal complaint simply don't make any sense. For instance, they claim that the FTC consumer complaint database has over 100,000 issues in it related to United Directories. That is plainly false and we heard testimony in court today that the FTC regularly investigates companies once they exceed 5-10 complaints. That the FTC would ignore 100 thousand complaints over the course of 5 years is complete bullshit.
Also, the $425MM figure being widely quoted in the news is based on deposits figures from United Directories' (UD) sweep account. SWEEP ACCOUNT. They summed up all the money ever deposited into the UD sweep account and spent hours claiming that the money had disappeared. It hadn't disappeared -- it never existed in the first place!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweep_account
In an almost funny episode, the federal prosecutor admitted he did not know what a sweep account was, later calling the explanation "trickery" on the part of the defense.
There's so much more to this case than what the media is reporting and we're going to do our best to make sure that our side of the story, the truth, is heard. All of Hashrocket is pretty distraught, but we'll do our best to soldier on and support our friends in whatever way possible.
Importantly: 1) Hashrocket has absolutely nothing to do with the criminal complaint 2) In the USA people are innocent until proven guilty Now if you're interested in this case, read on... There are hundreds of independent yellow pages (including Yellow Pages United) that legally use the term Yellow Pages and the "walking fingers" logo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Pages My partners have been doing direct mail…
Obie tweeted about this: "Hashrocket is NOT connected with any wrongdoing. The gov is doing its best to railroad my partners but they are fighting back!! (PLS RT)" http://twitter.com/obie/status/17608288414
I understand the desire to publicly defend your biz partners, especially if they're your friends. So if you trust your friends enough to put your name and business on the line for them, then I guess ignore my advice. IAMAL, so what do I know? :)
Importantly: 1) Hashrocket has absolutely nothing to do with the criminal complaint 2) In the USA people are innocent until proven guilty Now if you're interested in this case, read on... There are hundreds of independent yellow pages (including Yellow Pages United) that legally use the term Yellow Pages and the "walking fingers" logo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Pages My partners have been doing direct mail…
Importantly: 1) Hashrocket has absolutely nothing to do with the criminal complaint 2) In the USA people are innocent until proven guilty Now if you're interested in this case, read on... There are hundreds of independent yellow pages (including Yellow Pages United) that legally use the term Yellow Pages and the "walking fingers" logo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Pages My partners have been doing direct mail…
I have little doubt this is essentially what happened-- quite possibly operating completely within the law. Perhaps they do publish a book. But we've all heard about "directory" services like this and I dare anyone to keep a straight face and say they don't greatly benefit from deceiving people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have little doubt this is essentially what happened-- quite possibly operating completely within the law. Perhaps they do publish a book. But we've all heard about "directory" services like this and I dare anyone to keep a straight face and say they don't greatly benefit from deceiving people.
They produced, published and mailed out a real 1000+ page book, twice a year, and I'm aware that it cost them millions of dollars and lots of manpower to do so. We can debate the usefulness of paper-based yellow pages in this day and age until the cows come home, but either way it would not mean they committed fraud.
Obie tweeted about this: "Hashrocket is NOT connected with any wrongdoing. The gov is doing its best to railroad my partners but they are fighting back!! (PLS RT)" http://twitter.com/obie/status/17608288414