Alert! Rian Edwards of Dos Cabezas Writes Bad Checks

Getting Screwed on Craigslist is not the same as Getting Laid on Criaigslist

Many of my Drupal projects have been interesting gigs with good clients. Recently, however, one turned out to be a lemon. This is the first in a series of posts that tells the story of how I turned the lemon into lemonade. Before we dive in, please let me share a short public service announcement that tells it like it is:

Edwards' "MO" is to place an ad in web/HTML/info design jobs, indicating that he needs help right away to finish a project. In my case, his advertisement indicated that he needed help theming a Drupal site. He posted this late Friday night (02/26/2010). I responded the next morning at 10:42am PST. When I asked about the Monday deadline mentioned in the post, he said "Monday! Did I say Monday? I need it today!".

Watch Out! Rian Edwards' Twitter Avatar with appropriate warning labels added.

We started with a $500 project and agreement of work to be done. I have found that I can someimes pick up small gigs like this on the weekend on Craigslist and make a few, much needed, extra bucks. I had recently helped a number of good folks out in this way and was beginning to feel like this was fun weekend sport when it was raining as it was the weekend I saw Edwards' post.

But when you help this guy out and he screws you. In my case, the $500 payment never arrived and he ended up stiffing me for a total of $2772.00. Ouch. Needless to say, this rarely happens at a good time, financially speaking.

So grab a cool drink, settle in and let me share a few details and explain how the power of social media networking helped turn sour into something sweet.

Red Flags Rising on a Drupal Project

While working together on Skype, Edwards frequently claimed he was about to send a payment shortly, but then several days would go by with no checks coming to our company postal box. When his excuses start to sound hallow, he may eventually send a check that bounces. He may actually send a token payment, but leaves the majority of the bill unpaid.

He asked for more help, building up the billable hours with additional work and making claims that this could lead to more projects like this with his client (more about them in a later installment of this series). At some point, he explains that he has a weekly expense limit of $1000 from the client and asks to be billed in weekly installments. Once the work is delivered, he tries to take a powder by not returning calls and bouncing checks.

Working on the assumption that he was acting in good faith like my other satisfied and fast paying customers, I continued to respond to his requests for more "rush" work. His meeting with the client came and went and it seemed like they had approved the front page and had given the go ahead for theming the rest of the site.

The job grew over the next three weeks from helping on one the front page to completely theming the entire views and panels-heavy site including front-page, user profile pages, taxonomy pages, node pages and comments, plus several grid views containing media (images and video). Most of the work was CSS, but eventually I had to create theme template files to meet the requirements. I also set up the a Flash player that Edwards was not able to get to work (Tip: the embed tag goes inside the object tag if you are still coding 1997 style). Edwards claimed to know HTML and CSS, but his work was very poor in quality and most of the work that he wanted to integrate was actually using iframes to included content and images from his own servers instead of checking in properly to the sandbox. At one point, I had to perform a significant cleanup of of his work in order to get things to align properly. I also removed the iframes and brought the content into Drupal where it belonged.

Internal Issues Between Rian Edwards and the Client Begin to Surface

The site was set up and manged by a developer who worked for the client. There was a custom module written by that developer and I could see many Drupal sites being served on the systems Edwards gave me access to so i could work on the sandbox and staging sites. Ultimately, I had to take over editing of several views that had been set up by the programmer. I also took charge of syncing dev and staging, after the dev database was overwritten with staging during an update by Edwards to the subversion code base.

One of the many red flags that made me uneasy was when Edwards would ask me to document any 'programming' type work that I did and, generally, he asked me not to fix things. Rian spoke disparagingly about the client's developer and indicated that the developer was not providing the expected level of support and responsiveness he needed. I could easily see that this did not jive with the server setup and the many Drupal sites visible on just that one server. They were clearly managed by someone who knew their stuff about Linux and Drupal. I found it hard to believe that such a person was unresponsive when it came to managing project on these servers. I was begging to look forward to meeting and, hopefully working with, a fellow experienced Drupaler.

After several days passed with more request for changes, I informed him that the first payment had still not been received. He said he mailed it and then suddenly discovered that he had addressed it incorrectly by leaving off crucial pieces of information such as the address number and name.

Then he claimed to send another payment. Later, he claimed the first one was returned in the mail and that he would readdress it properly and resend. It never came. He even suggested that he and his kids would drive a few hours and pay me in person. Of course, he never followed through.

Time Passes and Rian Edwards Writes A Bad Check that Bounces

By this time, another week has gone by, hours continue to accumulate on the project and he says he is sending yet another payment. By now the tab is over three grand. Finally, a second payment shows up in the mail.

Then comes the first notice from the bank: the check has been returned for insufficient funds. This is a real drag, because it is not clear at first which check has bounced and whether or not the other payment is going to bounce as well. Obviously the bank takes the opportunity to add some hefty processing fees.

When I call him, Edwards shows as little surprise as he does concern. He simply mutters something about not knowing how that can happen and that he would send me another check first thing Monday, but he never did.

Next, Edwards stopped answering calls and I could only leave messages on his family's answering machine, which comes complete with greetings from what he claimed was his wife and three kids (ages 3, 9 and 11). As much as I would have liked to leave a few choice words, I could only leave a formal request for him to pay his debts and wonder how many times his family hears these kinds of messages.

Squeezing Lemons

So, today I am learning to fill out the forms for small claims court. Luckily, I've learned of a 'bad faith' penalty that I can ask for, plus fees and expenses required to resolve the matter. This adds another $3000-$6000 to the amount. I recently witnessed a small claims court case where this came up and found out writing bad checks qualifies for this.

I'm still bothered by why someone would do this. There were no complaints about my work and I kept Edwards informed throughout the project about how hours were accruing and he approved it all, generally just asking for more tweaks and additions to the site. We never argued or had a harsh word. It seemed like I was helping him meet his deadlines and I looked forward to working on more projects like this one (it was a fan site for a TV show).

I wonder to myself if he might be going through tough times like many of us, but that does not explain writing bad checks. This guy obviously has no balls or he is just a cheat. Why he could not simply tell me he was having financial trouble is beyond me. Instead, he choose to take advantage of me.

People who know me often say I can be once of the most sweetest guys around. Many have actually remarked that I'd give the shirt off my back to someone if they just asked for it. People that know me well also know how I get when someone takes without asking. Edwards is going to get to know me very well in the next few weeks and months,

In an upcoming post, I'll detail how I have started to turn this around. How I got in touch with the key players at the company that had contracted Edwards and how I got Edwards to call me again. Of course, he only repeated his lies again and promised that he was sending another payment right away on a late Friday afternoon. I laughed and said I'd believe it when I saw it clear. Of course it never even arrived.

Dear reader, has anything like this ever happened to you? Share your story in the comments. Got a story about getting your day in small claims court? Got a legal opinion. Please share. I have some ideas about a web service to help people better protect themselves when trying to be responsive to rush job requests. I'll share those in a future article, but I hope to hear your ideas about how to jump on a gig fast, without leaving yourself open to this kind of deadbeat.

To be continued...

Coming soon in this articles series:

* The problem of taking rush jobs on Craigslist and a solution.
* Contacting the client, making new friends and turning lemons in lemonade.
* What happens when clients find out contractors grant access to strangers from Craigslist.
* Filing for judgment in small claims court for the money owed and penalty fees.
* Leverage your small business status by reporting bad debts to credit agencies.
* Preparing for your day in court. It's all about documentation and compromise.
* A video tour of the completed Drupal fan site.

Stay tuned and please pass the word.

Additional Information About Rian Edwards Writing Bad Checks

Here's all the information I have on this low-life:

Rian Edwards
213.220.5177
818-786-1275
skype: iwannabeaboyband
redwards@doscabezas.com
5855 Burnet Ave.
Van Nuys Ca., 91411
Bank: US Bank 122235821 153492150542 1065
Balance due: $2772.00 + all fees and expenses.
Websites:
doscabezas.com
doscabezas-news.com
twitter.com/rian_edwards
linkedin.com/in/doscabezas

References

Original Craigslist post url: http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/web/1620059972.html . This will go away, but I have snapshots I will can post after the listing is removed.

Link to all of our Skype chats:

Skype Chats with Rian Edwards who writes bad checks

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