If you've been looking at my flickr photostream for the last few days you will have noticed it's just about the most boring computer related stuff you can imagine. Bear with me. I'm not uploading all these because I think they're fun to look at.
Most of you know that my previous CEO, Dr. Moe Elgamal, screwed quite a few of us out of money he owes us. I know he owes me over $9,000, a little less then a thousand to Tim, and over $3,000 to Chris and Mike. As usual with Moe, he plays the innocent card and claims he has no idea what we're talking about. Well, I've decided to take things to the next level a little bit with him. Since I was the Project Manager for the GECOL and VEBA (Petro Canada) projects, I was privy to most all the information about the projects. Over 90% of the projects were designed by my team during the two years we were working for Applied Technologies.
Further, I was an independent contractor, not an employee, as were my fellow teammates. Unfortunately for Dr. Moe, the law is a little more on my side than on his in this instance, or so he's about to find out. Since I invoiced him for all the materials and back payroll, and since he's never paid those invoices, the materials remain my property until such time as I'm paid up. And since he owes millions of dollars to just about everyone he's ever known, I stand little chance of recouping the monies he owes us.
I've decided that since this material is all mine to do with as I please, that I'm going to publish it, everywhere, en masse. Quite frankly I have enough information in just a few little file folders to bring down the entire electrical grid of Libya if one were so inclined; photos, equipment manifests, computing infrastructure, precise GPS coordinates for all the equipment, usernames and passwords, software platforms, key personnel information, and just about everything else one would need if one were so inclined. I have the full network and fiber maps for the country's electrical backbone, mainly because we installed it.
I've been debating on this for almost a year now, as to whether to try to fight him in court for the money he owes me. To be frank, I don't have the money for a court battle. Additionally, by the time the court battle was over the US Government will probably already have him in prison for the crimes they are investigating him for, so there wont BE any monies to recoup at that point anyway.
Meanwhile, Dr. Moe is overseas trying to drum up more business from companies in Libya. Libya and many of the other African countries aren't exactly on the top of the technological food chain, so they do what many other people do when they want to learn something... they Google it. Before yesterday, there was very little to Google about Applied Technologies, or Moe Elgamal, except a few press releases from back in the early years of the new century. However, when I'm done anyone who is considering hiring ATI Wave for work will have no problem finding all the unethical things he's done and been indicted for.
I'm going to systematically publish every photo, every email, every correspondence, chat log, sms message, and other communications that were turned into me between the time of the GECOL and the VEBA projects. I'm sure the Libyan government would love to learn that Dr. Moe knowingly and criminally exported equipment to a country in which it was illegal to do so. I'm sure they'd love to know he asked us to install illegal operating systems and server platforms for the Libyan Centers for Disease Control because he didn't want to have to pay $1500.00 for two licenses legally. They'd REALLY love to see all the "don't tell the customer..." emails we've exchanged over the years I worked for him.
New prospects will love the idea of knowing he doesn't actually have a staff of employees. He hires a guy or two here and there to help him creatively manipulate enough of a proposal to get them interested and then tries to flub his way through it, while skimping on parts, licenses, legalities, and payroll. He tells his clients he has offices in three continents.. he doesn't even have ONE office. The only office he's had is the one he had to rent in Raleigh in order to impress VEBA when they came to town to inspect his facilities.
Since he's adamantly refused to even acknowledge the debt owed to his former employees, I'm going to launch a smear campaign on the web to make sure everyone he ever does business with is able to easily become intimately aware of the depths of his illegal and unethical practices. The emails he sent after the FBI raided his office were sent through my server, which I own and pay for, which makes those emails my property, not the property of ATI. (and no, I never was asked to sign a non-disclosure or non-compete agreement).
Since the FBI raid two years ago, I have been subpoenaed to Washington DC three times to testify to a grand jury about what he's done and what he almost got us in trouble for doing. Hell, I even have the shipping manifests and fed-ex receipts for when he illegally shipped 22 servers and 2 power vault DELL's to libya because Dell told him it was illegal. Rather than just bother to understand his field of work,he just ordered the equipment sent to himself and then air-freighted it to Libya. I've got the receipts, the pictures of the materials being delivered to the sites, everything!
So, this is why there are a ton of new photos in my Flickr account over the last two days. I'm not going to post all this here on my blog because that's not the point of my blog. Rather, I'm going to post it all in chronological order on a new blog. The address of the new blog, if you are interested in following the account, is http://moe-elgamal.blogspot.com.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to start the process of collecting my money...
PS: On the chance that you, the reader, are thinking "wow, what an asshole this guy is for publishing this information like this" I beseech you to read all the materials before making such a conclusion. We have been trying for over a year to get the money he owes us. We were underpaid to begin with, cheated on Per-Diem , and left in a foreign country with no way to purchase the materials HE demanded unless we purchased it out of pocket. Not knowing any better, we purchased the materials for him with the understanding that he would pay us back immediately when he came to visit in Libya. That was August 18th, 2006... I'm still not paid back. So, know before you judge me that I've done everything under the sun possible to avoid this scenario, but now I'm taking it to the next level. There are family issues at stake which make it imperative that I get this money as soon as possible, before it's too late for it to matter.
Exciting! Vigilante justice at its best! :)
ReplyDeleteI've met Moe numerous times. Never would have guessed this from him ... and not sure what to believe.
ReplyDeleteI question a couple of things. Why you continued working for ATIwave without compensation? ... and ... Why you injected your personal funds into a project when your only vested interest was as a hired consultant and you were aware the company was having financial hardship?
I hope that you resolve your matters as a situation like this does not look good on any party involved.
Good and fair question and they deserve an answer, especially since I'm making claims against him. The reasons are as follows:
ReplyDelete1) Why I continued working without compensation: Because I was told we would be paid our full amount if we would "just stick with it" until the money came through. We felt that if we quit the project, he'd never get it done, and therefore NO ONE would get paid. It was in our best interest to see it through until December, when we were promised to be paid. At this point I hadn't been truly screwed over yet, and I had faith that he was a good man and would honor his promise. Instead, when money DID come through he paid less than half of us, less than half of what we were owed, and the rest were so in the hole at that point that it made better sense to stay and continue trying to make enough to get OUT of our debt before finding alternate employment.
Why I vested myself and money in to it when I was only a hired consultant:
Two reasons. 1) I had a team to support and we were 6,000 miles from home with no support and no other options. If we wanted to have food to cook and a place to eat it, we had to have supplies and clean towels, plates for the kitchen, bowls to prepare food in, etc.
2) I've never been "just a hired consultant" on anything in my life. I think any of my team will tell you I pour my heart and soul into anything I take on. I had brought people over from other companies to run this project, people who had followed me here on my word that we could make this work. And we DID make it work, just not with any support from Moe. We DID deliver his project even when he didn't get us our supplies. We got our own supplies. Regardless of the financial situation ATI was having, we could absolutely NOT let the customer know this.. they had to be serviced and work had to continue. If the client lost their faith in Moe, then they were losing faith in what I was doing, what I had worked very hard for, and I've never fallen back on a promise to deliver a product so I wasn't going to start then.
I hope this made sense. Thanks for your comment.
This is awesome!!! I worked for Moe back when he was doing business under the names DuplinNet and GSI. I was straight out of college and promised network training and help gaining licensure. But instead, I was stuck behind a desk giving internet tech suppport. I didn't get screwed out of any money, I was screwed out of promised training and consequently left the field. I actually always wondered if he were a closet terrorist. Good luck bringing him to justice!
ReplyDeleteWanda
Wow. I was given an offer to join the GECOL team back in '05/ '06 and turned it down. It looks like I'm glad I did. Just got to googling this stuff since Libya was in the news the other day. WOW.
ReplyDelete