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Excellent advice, Atticus. Always a pleasure to read your posts.
Harry.
Absolutely! A Prosecuting attorney..and I would bet..a very good one.
HD
Excellent advice, Atticus. Always a pleasure to read your posts.
Harry.
... people's true natures surface. He probably didn't intend on this at first. As things got tighter, he saw opportunity and started dipping his hands in to all of those easily accessible deposits. Seen it in my line of work. Someone gets behind, starts robbing Peter to pay Paul, then everbody else is left holding the bag.
I got nervous as soon as I paid in full. I noticed all of the signs too late, and ignored my own intuition. But, yeah, it's pretty glaringly obvious in hindsight.
You mean PayPal, right? [huh]
Admittedly, I’m still climbing the front side of this information curve, but please let me caution everyone to choose their words carefully. From what I have read, Mark Moye has breached some contracts, but I’m not sure I see criminal conduct. I would urge folks not to use terms like “fraud” and “ponzi scheme” too casually.
So far, with one glaring exception, I see a course of conduct I normally see when retail businesses become insolvent. Contrary to popular belief, such businesses don’t usually go from being profitable to losing money overnight. And there is often a significant time lag before the owner understands that what he thought was a temporary downward cycle is actually pending insolvency. More normally, when things begin turning sour, the owner begins “robbing Peter to pay Paul” and starts stringing along customers and generally doing whatever he can do to stay afloat…in the honest hope that better times are ahead. And, yes, this includes lying to customers and suppliers out of the rational fear that bad information will scare away future business and frighten creditors. For Moye’s business to have taken a couple of years to finally devolve to this point is not, in my opinion, terribly atypical.
The glaring exception? I can’t find a bankruptcy petition. That’s why I went to the effort to look for one.
Honest business people who find themselves in a hopeless financial situation sooner or later come to grips with the fact that they need protection by the Bankruptcy Courts. Dishonest people in the same financial situation know that they can’t file for such protection. The process one must go through in order to gain the protection of Chapter 7 or 11 is specifically designed to uncover fraud. Had Moye found himself two years into a downward spiral, and he couldn’t honestly see his way out of it, I would have expected him to have filed for bankruptcy. But, as I stated earlier, he may have done exactly this, but in a jurisdiction other than South Carolina...so I'm not quite ready to put much weight on even this bit of information.
AF
I just wish I had called or emailed Scotland for an update. On my first order with Mark (which I received), I emailed Amanda about my order to ask some kind of questions about my order. Amanda copied Mark on my email, and Mark was upset that I had gone around him to ask a question. Even Amanda seemed to be wondering why I would contact them directly. Because of this, I didn't contact Scotland about my current order, and just assumed the factory was swamped as per usual.
The reason Amanda, and I previously assumed Mark, would have discouraged coming to us on an order placed with him is because it can become confusing for us to be involved in his orders, but the main reason is that the orders that we send to him do not have any customers names attached to them. We would get a list of say 5 jackets ordered from Mark, and that's all we knew. We knew they were often made according to spec set by an individual customer, but not who that customer was.
Holly - I am not faulting Amanda at all - I only brought her up to show that both parties felt it best that I deal exclusively through Mark. I think her response was absolutely correct.I am simply pointing out my reasoning for nver contacting you at Aero Scotland to check up on my outstanding order. Mark had been upset with me for going over his head on my previous order, so I never contacted the factory with my current order. I just wish I had decided to stop caring about his feelings. I should have checked up on my order, and got burned for it. I'm going to give my bank a call today and try to get them to do a chargeback for me. Paypal told me it would take 10 days to decide the case, but I'm not holding out much hope on that front.
Holly - I am not faulting Amanda at all - I only brought her up to show that both parties felt it best that I deal exclusively through Mark. I think her response was absolutely correct.
I am simply pointing out my reasoning for nver contacting you at Aero Scotland to check up on my outstanding order. Mark had been upset with me for going over his head on my previous order, so I never contacted the factory with my current order. I just wish I had decided to stop caring about his feelings. I should have checked up on my order, and got burned for it. I'm going to give my bank a call today and try to get them to do a chargeback for me. Paypal told me it would take 10 days to decide the case, but I'm not holding out much hope on that front.
THAT expains why Butte got his jacket when others didn't, Scotland were made aware of the order so there was no way not to continue with the order without the alarm bells going off.
Holly:
Do you have a handle on how many people are involved in this problem?
To be honest, sometimes this wouldn't guarantee things, as I explained before, when actual formal orders come in, there is no name attached to them. There has been various cases of someone asking Amanda for advice, and the orders still not being placed. She wouldn't know which order was which, or if the customer ever did follow through and place their order with Mark.
We're currently sitting at around 80 customers, some with multiple jackets. Every day there are new customers coming forward having only just realised what has happened.
Holly
Not to stray too far from the subject, but Aero USA's announcement has generated almost no interest over on my home forum (VLJ). Only twelve posts since March 22nd. Odd. Maybe everyone over there deals exclusively with Aero UK or with Goodwear?
AF
Not to stray too far from the subject, but Aero USA's announcement has generated almost no interest over on my home forum (VLJ). Only twelve posts since March 22nd. Odd. Maybe everyone over there deals exclusively with Aero UK or with Goodwear?
AF
The vlj site has gone very quiet in recent timesI noticed that as well. I'm not sure I've even posted there, but I do peruse the site and thought there would be more discussion.
With so many cross-posters, I'm not surprised. How many folks want to post in two places about the same thing. FWIW, on COW, they pointed here too - likely due to less interest and to cut down on drama there.Seems smart to keep it in one place.The vlj site has gone very quiet in recent times