One of my challenges was to prove that the majority of the money I gave the defendant was a loan and that he acknowledges that he had a debt. Cheques came out of a business and personal account. As mentioned, a major challenge was that none of the cheques actually said loan on them.

For the most part, I say most because he does deny some, to my knowledge he doesn’t fully deny taking money from me or the amount of money I have loss. Instead he alleges it was for work and that he incurred way more damages than me financially to kind of circumvent the whole situation. At the same time, he obviously tries to label himself as an “employee” to try and shy himself away from any business agreements. Just for the record, an “independent contractor” is the same category as a partnership agreement from what lawyers have told me.

So in that sense there shouldn’t be too much argument about the actual funds and cost of resources and so of course I submitted cheques that got returned to me once they were cashed from the business account and bank record statements from my personal account:

As you can see, for the business account a minimum of $20,700 came out of there while from my personal account a minimum of $5,800. So at minimum, you know he took at least $26,500. This is not including resource loans and other things.

Now for him the funny thing was that on his statement of reply he says that he took about $30,000 from me. To prove this, he submits his bank record statements. Not only that, on these bank record statements he marked down which payments were allegedly from me and ones he borrowed/received from his dad or other sources. Okay, pay close attention to this as to me this exposed his plan further with these false details and is an example where the evidence he submitted helped my case even more. I will go over each page he submitted. (Some of the writing might be a little washed out due to the scanning). On a related note, to my knowledge courts always want to know “motives” as to why someone would do something. I think the bank statements reveal this more, but that has to be left to the reader to determine themselves if it is relevant or not.

1) He alleges that on September 8, 2004 this $1890.28 came from me. What would your potential conclusion based on the facts so far with this detail?

2) He alleges that on January 13, 2005 that $2070.97 came from me as well. Remember too, on his statement of reply he alleges that he started doing the business with me on January 2005 and so this was again suppose to be his way of confirming that.

3) On May 24, 2005 he alleges that this $2,300 was from me. This is true as even when you look at my personal bank record statement it shows up as being cashed the next day. Long story short, this payment was for work.

4) On September 21, 2005 he alleges that $3556.75 came from me. If you look at the business cheque it confirms that he cashed in the $3500 cheque. The other $56.75 probably came from something like a GST credit cheque. So no real argument where he took the money.

5) On Nov 18, 2005 he alleges that this $2000 came from his dad. I submitted the cheque dated on November 15, 2005 to show it was from me. On the back of the cheque it has dated stamps as well to confirm when the person cashed it in and indeed it shows that he cashed this $2000 one on November the 18, 2005.

On this same statement page he alleges that on November 28, 2005 this $2000 was from me. What would run through your mind so far in trying to use these facts presented in an effort to uncover what is happening?

For reference, my version of what happened as stated in court was that he wanted to go to Japan to visit his girlfriend and he alleged that he had no money left and asked to borrow more.

6) On the same statement, on April 20, 2006 he alleges that this $3500 came from me. That is true and if you look at my personal bank statement it matches. Long story short, this payment was for work.

7) On August 10, 2006 he alleges that this $2000 came from his dad. If you look closely too, it appears if at first he wrote my name there and then changed his mind to indicate that it came from his dad instead. This situation is similar to point number five. If you look at the business account cheque you can see that I wrote him one on November 15, 2005. Again, this was a loan with my version.

Was this simply an error on his part? Again I say no as I believe the tactic and intent was similar with point number five. I personally believe this should show anyone as clear as daylight again on the point where it looked like he was simply trying to construct a story as oppose to telling the truth. But in general, as it stood he completely denied taking this $2000 from me.

8.) On the same statement, on October 13, 2006 he alleges that this $3500 came from me and was specifically for a project called Vanhousing. First, you can confirm that this cheque was indeed from me as you can see by the cheque I wrote to him on October 10, 2006.

Now this cheque showed a lot too in terms of revealing the whole story I thought. For one thing, the majority of the payments here indeed was for a project called Vanhousing. However, it was mixed in with loans again too with my version. The interesting detail about this to consider that on his bank record statement he specifically marked this one with a name of a project and so did I on the cheque. Why is that? Is it just a coincident?

Again, my version of the story in court is that the majority of the money he received from me was a loan and that he manipulated me using our friendship where if I specifically marked the cheques as a “loan” or that he writes me an “I owe you” it meant that I didn’t trust him as a friend. Therefore, for these loans I wrote generic stuff such as “Web programming” or “web work” where he can acquire paying web development clients and completing the project to pay me back as the commission he would have normally earned would go back towards the debt he owes me.

9) He alleges that on December 28, 2006 that this $10,000 came from me. This is true. As stated in court, I said that this was the last straw. I lent him $10,000 to get his act together in life as that was more than enough to survive on for him to pay me back. Again, instead of writing it as a “loan” I just wrote a generic word and in this case I said “Pre-comp set work”.

10) On August 23, 2007 he alleges that $251.00 came from me. This is true as it was for this networking event that I agreed to pay for initially in 2006 where I claim he promised to pay me back for and so I followed through with my agreement.

In total with his version of the story thus far, he alleges that in terms of his statements I gave him over $28,000.

The other method used to prove that the majority of these funds were not payment for work is that I submitted tax return records. Our agreement as stated in point eleven of the written agreement was that payment is based on a percentage of revenue received from paying clients only. Example, tax returns in 2005 show that the gross business income was $3,595. At minimum there was usually three people that had to get their fair share. So like in 2005 how in the world did he get $7,800 from me? Was everyone else just like a charity case?

Eventually, he submits his tax return records too for a different purpose. He submitted them as a strategy to show how little money he was getting to present his poor victim story. It was a pity that I wasn’t able to get him to reveal his 2005 tax return. But he did submit his 2006 tax return and as you can see he indicated that for the whole year he received $7000 from all sources. Notice anything wrong or funny with with that?

So with just these types of financial related evidence alone in a pre-trial setting how long would it take you to do some basic fact checking based on the submitted evidence? One minute? One hour? One year?