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Compensation for Bandwidth Costs is Extortion?
Tha_Big_Guy23 asks: "According to this article, a man who created a website for his local Sheriff's department is being charged with extortion. This was caused by taking down the website after repeated attempts to get compensation from the county to cover the bandwidth costs. As a result, all his personal computer property, and company computer property was seized and he was jailed."
"After being jailed he was charged with extortion, larceny by conversion, using a computer to commit a crime, and obstruction of justice. This website explains in more detail the circumstances surrounding the situation. Has anyone on Slashdot ever had an experience where a client was unwilling to compensate you for either your work, and/or the resources required to do your work?"
While the end result of this situation is a shame, let this situation serve as a warning for those of you who work, without a contract in place. While it is the general hope that people will behave in an honorable manner, sometimes this is just not the case, and contracts exist to protect both parties, when things go sour.
While the end result of this situation is a shame, let this situation serve as a warning for those of you who work, without a contract in place. While it is the general hope that people will behave in an honorable manner, sometimes this is just not the case, and contracts exist to protect both parties, when things go sour.
This guy gives website designers a bad name. I'd say he definitely belongs in prison. 3.5 million hits per month? Oh, yeah, right. I get the feeling that this guy was planning to pull this stunt all along, but I bet he wasn't counting on getting arrested. Another clue is the fact that he set the domain name up as his own property so the town would be unable to switch to another server. What a noble thing to do. And then there's his final bill... $300,000?! To offset the "huge expense" of running the website? WHAT huge expense? How much was he paying for hosting? DIdn't want to lose any more money? Why didn't he just set it up on a different server and let the town pay for it themselves? I think this guy wants to the town to pay for the loss he's taken running his business in the first place, and shutting the server down while handing over such a massive bill is, IMHO, extortion, and should be treated as such. I hope they throw the book at him, and throw it at him hard, to serve as a warning to anyone else thinking of pulling a stunt like this. Whew, I'm outta breath. Gotta go lay down for a minute.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
I could see something getting out of hand with just verbal communications, misunderstandings, etc.
Anyone providing or buying services ought to insist on a written contract that both parties sign. Then, there's no question of consequences if someone doesn't pay within 30 days, etc.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
My knee was jerking furiously until I read your excellent post. I can rest easy now knowing that there's two sides to this story and we have another sensationalized /. article.
everyone on his MSN contact list was placed under observation.
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
An article from today on this topic.
Perhaps this should be a lessong to all to work out your contracts a bit more clearly in advance.
$300,000 for three years is...
$100,000 for one year, which is...
$ 8,333 for one month of hosting.
(blatant_plug)
Well, don't host with that guy, come host with Tigerhost.com. We only charge $100/month for businesses! (And $16 for personal sites.)
(/blatant_plug)
Seriously, though, at those rates, he could retire on just that one site.
libertarianswag.com
Since the site shut down Jan. 1, the sheriff's office set up its own site, www.macomb-sheriff.com. The new site is bare bones compared to the original one, but Hackel said it provide the most important function -- public communication with his office in the form of e-mail.
I see why they needed somebody else to build their web site -- they think they need a web page in order to receive email!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Now this is weird, I _just_ took a break to read slashdot from desiging the website for the police service in my city.
Thank god I'm not going to be hosting it.
He's going to be pissed once he realises he's been slashdotted.
If it didn't have the bandwidth problems before, it sure will now!
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
The only hits this guy's getting now are if he runs a webcam in jail! 300 grand for a website... did he neglect to mention hosting the site on a SunFire 5k with 25 CPU's in it or something?
stuff |
Read the article and then tell me that anyone in their right mind would defend this web designer.
First off, there was no contract.
Second, he told them that he'd discuss pay at a later date since they were to busy to handle it to begin with. If I donated 2 years of my time, I'd sure as hell want compensation.
He did what any normal person would do: shut off their service since they didn't pay. In fact, he did one up on what most would do. They didn't pay for TWO YEARS and he let them go on that long. Try not paying YOUR hosting bill and see what it gets you. A shutdown site, that's what.
How the hell is this extortion? Not even REMOTELY. People are stupid. They don't realize it takes time and money, not to mention VALUE of what he had turned the site into.
Granted he didn't have a contract, but both parties are at fault. You can't NOT have a contract then call "extortion" and throw him in jail. Sorry, that's not how it works.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
and the law won...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
First of all, $300,000 is extravagant by any standards. He should have charged his actual costs, after all, he did agree to do the site in exchange for publicity. Thus, the designer should have asked to have the county pay the real cost. I simply cannot imagine the ISP involved was charging that much.
Secondly, the designer should have never shut the site down without sending the county properly served due notice. In other words, registered or certified mails, preferably coming from an attorney.
Finally, the designer should have sued the county, and then through the litigation a settlement would have been obtained -- most likely through binding arbitration.
But, at the same time, to settle a civil disagreement through criminal prosecution seems to be abuse of power at most naked.
Both of the parties should be spanked by their Mamas.
...for hosting and their rates have really skyrocketed since their purchase of SCO licenses.
It does appear the webmaster is a scumbag, and probably had evil intentions from the getgo. However, the sheriff's office made an oral agreement, no written contract, with this person.
The evil webmaster then said, after 3 years and however many hits later, I need some cash. Pay me a lot of money or I'll shut it off to cut my costs.
Sheriff replies "Screw You!" and throws him in jail.
This is a Civil Issue, not a bullshit criminal case.
Don't be a zoa (zealous overbearing ass), be happy!
Odd. I would say that it is proof positive that you should not, in any circumstances, commit a crime against an entire police department.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
The article lists www.macombsheriff.com as the offending web site.
.com TLD? Was it a commercial web site? I'm sick of .gov and .mil sites using .com because it's k00l3r. These sites should use the proper TLD, and of course it should be impossible for a _person_ to own these domains.
.org because he felt like supporting Verisign, what with all of their sitefinder-related legal fees.
Which begs the question: Why does it have a
Of course, when I rule the world there will be different TLDs for individuals, companies, military, government, and nonprofits - and a commercial site would never be able to even claim an individual's web site is infringing (or whatever) since they will live in different namespaces.
Ironically, the alleged extortionist's domain is justice4pat.com, seeming to suggest that this is a business venture for him.
Or maybe he just decided not to use
The response of the Sheriff's Dept. is clearly overblown, but this guy was clearly not operating on the level.
To be honest, I wouldn't want to do business with either party.
This site is ranked 4,978,900 in traffic.
l s? q=&url=macombsheriff.com
It never broke the top 100,000, so there is no way it had 3 million hits, unless each page contained 1 million invisible gif images.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_detai
If an Indian firm had built the site, some podunk sheriff couldn't abuse his authority over a contract dispute. Offshoring: good for civil liberties.
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
The real issue is whether he's owed money or not. As someone pointed out, he's basically asking for over $8,000 per month hosting what should be a relatively small local site (I'd like to see how his hits were measured -- if those are unique visits, I'd be pretty surprised). The article seems to imply that he already had a verbal contract to provide the service for free in return for publicity (as suggested by the article). If that's the case, then he's essentially trying to change the terms of his agreement unilaterally while holding the site hostage, and that's what's getting him the extortion charge.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
Have you seen their website? http://www.macomb-sheriff.com/
Their new web designer should probably go to jail too.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Well, that does sound a bit absurd, but I sure betcha the copy of the site in the Wayback machine will probably surpass that in this one single day thanks to ericspinder's helpful little url link in the parent :-)
"Welcome to the Springfield Police department web site."
"Press YES if you have committed a crime, and wish to confess. Otherwise, press NO."
[Click]
"You have selected NO, which means you have committed a crime, but do not wish to confess."
"A padywagon is now speeding to your location."
"In the meantime, please look at our online store. You have the right to remain...Fabulous!"
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
No he didn't take anything away from the sheriff, the web site was his property. If the sheriff valued the web site, he should have had a contract that spelled out ownership. Since he hadn't given any money for the site, how can he claim ownership? It shows that the sheriff valued the site a $0.
It's the sheriff who unjustly took property away.
The fact is that he did, based on my reading of the statue commit extoration.
The lesson to be learned:
1. Have a contract in place, don't do things on a handshake and a nod.
A contract - and the exercise of building one - isn't just a legal play. A good contract is an agreement on what X will do for Y, and what Y will do in return for X. It is like an API definition.
2. If you have a dispute, don't take it into your hands.
He should have sat down with an attorney and have had them put together a letter of the following form:
"Dear Sir,
The service I have been providing to you per our oral agreement of December XX, XXXX and subsequentally afirmed in various conversations and by you use of the service, is currently costing me $XXX.XX a month to provide due to the traffic level of XXX,XXX visits per month.
To date I have not received payment for this service. Given the current situation, I can no longer continue to provide this service beyond (today+30 days).
If you aren't willing to pay for the service I am providing, will work with to transition to another service provider within these 30 days.
Please note, any assistance in such a transition, doesn't indicate a release of my claims for services provided for XX months at a cost of $x,xxx a month.
Yours,
Joe WebMaster
3. Didn't anyone every teach him "you don't spit into the wind, you don't tug on Superman's cape, and you don't anger the local Sheriff!"?
I haven't read a single comment that is at the heart of this issue. The reason the Sheriffs department considers it extortion, is because they claim they own the content.
Demanding money to give a person something that he/she owns IS extortion. But does the Sheriffs department own the content, or does the hoster (since he was hosting it for free).
It should probably have been a civil case first to resolve the IP. The owner of the IP would then have had firm legal ground for whatever action they wanted.
But I don't agree with slapping him with a criminal suit right off the bat.
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
The guy couldn't jail county officials or seize their property. This is a perfect example of why we need lawyers and huge damage awards, contrary to businesses and Republicans would have you believe.
3.5 million hits per month, not year, is what he's reporting. Not that it justifies the $300,000 but the number you've got is off by more than an order of magnitude.
NERDS!!!!
The quotes you state are from the Justice 4 Pat campaign, an apparently biased source drumming up support for Pat.
Personally, I'd trust a newspaper over blatant assertions by an activist site any day.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
- If you do decide your work is worth something then don't jump from free to $300,000
You shouldn't offer things for free if you really want to profit. All you'll do is make yourself miserable at best. If you're really stupid you might even lose touch with reality and demand $300,000. Did he really expect them to pay? Unbelievable...
"Never tell me the odds"
I'm a programmer. My friend works in IT at a local USDA lab. One of the scientists there told my friend they needed to automate some of their "blasting". They needed to take DNA they found in plants and compare it to a bunch of national databases and depending on the results take it to other national databases, etc. etc (these national databases were all websites so it was A LOT of text processing). The final results needed to be put into an excel spreadsheet. I worked for a couple of months and had about 4 complete rewrites. It worked fine at my house, but it did not work at their labs.
What happened was, they had many many computers being natted with one ip address. These websites would see one ip address flooding their servers and cut them off or give one of MANY random errors. It was almost impossible to reproduce anywhere else. I got almost no co-operation on their part to get more ip addresses for the boxes doing the dna blasting. All they would say is "It doesn't work right". That was the extent of my bug reporting. "It doesn't work right".
It was basically impossible to get meetings with them and the project lasted about 5 months with only 5 meetings (each lasting less than a half hour). After not seeing one penny of payment and MANY thousands of lines of code later, I told them I'm not going to work on it anymore until I get some payment. That's about when I couldn't get a hold of them anymore.
That was my first and last time working on code without a contract before hand. I did not recieve a single penny for my months of work. They acted like they were in it to help out a young programmer. The USDA was in it to help the USDA. About the end of it all they hired a "programmer". One of these people who had many degrees and could "program" in many languages, but couldn't write a simple program on the spot. From what I understand they tried to get him to write it because he was supposed to be this experienced programmer with many degrees. It made me feel good that after 6 months they still don't have anything from him.
They were greedy. They taught me a lesson. Don't work for ANYONE, without a contract before hand. No matter how much they pretend they are looking out for your interests, THEY'RE NOT.
IAAL. Oral contracts are just as enforceable as written ones. Of course, it's harder to establish what the terms of the contract were.
I still don't understand what crime he committed. He shut down his own website. He designed it, owned copyright, and hosted it. I don't see why he can't stop whenever the hell he wants.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
To all of you posters claiming he should have had a contract, I say why... he offered to run the site for free, a site the HE OWNS and worked on. Was he supposed to contract with himself ? Or maybe a contract that states that he would work for free until such time as he didn't want to any longer ?
I don't get it ? Is there really any legal reason he can't pull down HIS OWN website ? If he approaches the Sheriff and suggests that he need money for bandwidth or he's turning HIS WEBSITE off, how is that extorting ?
All you William Hung fansites take note... don't take them down or else !
An arrest, possible prison sentence, confiscation of equipment... if anyone doesn't see this as a small-town Sheriff abusing their position they are missing the point.
It's not illegal to ask for money to support YOUR website...
Wouldn't that make Slashdot guilty of extorting money by withholding stories from non-subscribers ?
Nuts...
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
How many before being slashdotted? 10?
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
My brother-in-law is an experienced contract lawyer. He has made the point to me that the key issue when working with somebody is that good faith must be present on both sides. Irrespective of what any contract says, if it gets nasty and either party starts "enforcing" that contract, the only people that win are the lawyers. I thought that was extremely interesting.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
putting aside the blatant extortion, since when was "using a computer to commit a crime" a crime? Commiting a crime is bad in itself, but when you use a computer to do it, it's even worse? Does that make sense?
IT BURNS IT BURNS!
I was going to say it looks like a 10 year old designed it. But my 10 year old came in and said "Gee dad, that sure sucks.".
I hope they get this guy before he defaces any other web site.
What he did wasn't criminal. The proper venue for this disagreement is civil court.
I really can't see how this can possibly be criminal extortion. Findlaw defines extortion as requiring the use of violence, damage to reputation, vandalism, or unfavourable government action.
The proper owner of the website was the web designer. He said "Pay me, or I take it down", they didn't pay, he took it down. Since the website was his to take down or not, I don't see any element of extortion that can apply.
....at least not by the web designer. The Sherrif's dept. might not be so lucky.
Pierre
One way or another, this is an interesting situation. Not because of what he was charging or the details of the setup to the action, but of the action itself.
Essentially, we have a non-contract situation, and the provider decides to terminate the arrangement, and the ownership of the content and name are in dispute (who would win such a dispute, no matter how obvious the answer, not the point).
For any private citizen, the only recourse would be litigation in civil courts.
Since the customer was a police department, the matter is taken up as a criminal case. His property is seized (the customer took posession of the files in question), and he's jailed, finger-printed, and now has a criminal record of arrest.
Does a senator get to fix his daughter's traffic tickets?
Does a judge get to let his friends off?
Does the dog catcher get to kill his enemy's uncollared dog as a stray, when he knows full well whose dog it is?
The police engaged in kidnapping, battery (by placing cuffs on him), theft and libel.
Not because it was the normal action, but because they COULD. He may be a scumbag, but he's not put in a position of trust by those he's elected (or hired) to protect. He doesn't take an oath of office as certainly the judge who authorized the warrant did, and I suspect the officers did, too.
The wrong fellow's out on bail, here.
I know a bit myself, but have no interest in really sharing anything as my memory might not be perfect on all matters detailing some of the things this 'sheriff' has been involved in.
Needless to say, I am certain that one could find something searching goole, The Detroit News or Detroit Free Press and other Michigan, Detroit Area publications.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Wait, please RTFA. He OFFERED to run the site for free initially, I quote:
Doesn't sound like he was getting screwed to me. Sounds like he pulled a turnaround when he asked the county for $300,000 all of a sudden.
I've actually been in a situation when we've had to shut someone's site down because they wouldn't pay. It took us more than 6 months to do it though, because we were professional and considerate, and it wasn't even a big site, just one of our small clients. But we had to do it after a while because he was just totally ignoring our bills and communications. He did eventually pay a reduced sum that we agreed to through negotiations. We then surrendered his domain gladly. But my point is, we gave him a long time and we tried really hard to communicate with him before shutting him down. It was the most drastic thing I've EVER done to a client, and I still feel a little weird about it.
This sounds different. Sounds like ye old bait and switch to me. And it doesn't really sound like they were out of communication--something I'm sure should have been worked out before the drastic step of shutting down their site happened. ESPECIALLY considering this guy offered to do it for free initially. You don't just shut down someone's site, especially not a high profile client like this. You just don't. There are other avenues way before that happens.
Of interesting note... The domain justice4pat.com (The 2nd link) has their DNS hosted by runningwolf.com servers... Runningwolf was the name of Pat's company. Hmmm....
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
The way the website offer should have started the process was by sending them a registered letter informing the sheriff that he no longer could afford to offer the county his services for free, and that as of a certain date he intends on terminating the service unless another agreement can be made.
He could then conclude the letter by informing them that he is willing to provide services to the county at less then his normal prices, and would be willing to consider a request for an extention of the deadline for a reasonable time if needed to ensure continuity.
Extortion charges are a bit extreme, but if he's trying to show his power over the site to the sheriff, he shouldn't overreach. He managed to get the sheriff to overreach as well, and while the charges will likely be overruled by a court, that isn't a fun thing to have to go through.
This case is a perfect illustration of the biggest problem with donating ones time or money; even when it appears to be a good cause. All too often, the recipient comes to rely on the gift and view it as an entitlement.
- scsg
They guy was frikkin arrested, his equipment impounded, and he's being threatened with 20 years in jail. For a dispute that should be settled in civil court. Is the guy snow white innocent in the whole affair? Probably not. Is the police department committing a huge abuse of authority? Hell yes!
- Extortion. Threats of harm or injury to another person or his property? Just what is it he has supposedly threatend to harm?
- Larceny by conversion. This assumes that you took something of value and used it for yourself rather than its original purposes. Just what is it that this guy supposedly took? And how is he using it for his own purposes?
- Using a computer to commit a crime. This assumes a crime is committed. It's also a stupid law. Might as well make it illegal to use a stick to commit a crime. Committing the crime is a crime, no matter what you use to do it.
- Obstruction of justice (bad link). This is based on the guy lying to the police about who owns the web site. Dumb thing to do, but "justice" doesn't figure prominently in this story in any case.
If all they want is the site name, they don't even need the courts. You can't keep someone else's name without a valid reason. That's what all the cybersquatting cases were about. The Macomb Sherriff could simply argue to ICANN that Pat Richard doesn't have a valid claim to the name "macombsherriff.com" and they could get it back. (Technically, it should be "macombsherriff.gov" anyway.)===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Ugh. And in response to the old 'designer', the only way you'd be getting 3 million hits on some small town sherrif page is if you're posting 'The Strip Search of the Day" gallery. It just doesn't happen.
This is just another in a long line of public battles of idiots, rife with overreaction and failures to communicate.
Just like the internet and small town politics.
Don't try to rip off cops, MORON!
*laughs*
What was this fool thinking. And then the save pat website tries to make it appear as though all he asked for was them to pay for the bandwith.
There are definetally two extremely different sides to this story. Somehow, I sincerely doubt that the police are going to lie on a case they intentionally drew public attention to.
Regardless, I'm most certainly not going to donate money to help this persons legal fund - I find the statements made there to be very misleading and untrue.
The Sheriff's side seems to have quite a bit of supporting evidence. Most of which you can read on quotes in previous comments.
An oral contract is enforcable, but this isn't a contract, since a contract must have payment or goods/services on both sides, and must have a term -- a start and end date. You can have a contract for eternity.
If you argue that the police were essentially selling advertising space, perhaps there was reciprocation.
But you can't find a term here. Hence, not a contract -- oral, written or otherwise.
To suggest that a newspaper, or for that matter any "press" source should be considered unbiased is is patently... foolish.
I challenge you, or any other reader to name a truly unbiased source for this or for news in general! At best you'll find sources that listen to "both sides"... But remember, these media "balanced" news outlets choose who they will interview/cite to represent these sides. And that is BIAS my friends.
CNN - Biased
FOX - Biased
ABC - Biased
CBS - Biased
NBC - Biased
BBC - Biased
Times (london) - biased
NYTimes - Biased
WSJ - Biased
WashPost - Biased
WashTimes - Biased
SticksvilleDaily - Guess
You may prefer a particular bias. But there IS bias.
There are two sides to this story, of course, but let's presume that the defendant is innocent (since that's what we're supposed to do in the U.S.).
One could counter that the accused will have his day in court and be able to sort it out before a judge. True, but the accused has lost his time, legal expenses and reputation, not to mention his computer gear which the police are not required to return.I've heard of a DA charging a robber with kidnapping because he forced the homeowner (at gunpoint) to walk to another room in the house. That action technically fit the wording of the kidnapping law. The robber was convicted of robbery, but the kidnapping charge was modded -1 Stupid.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
Couldn't the above story be considered entrapment on the part of the police since they seem to have never intended to pay but still require the results that incurred costs on his part? Obviously he'd eventually cut off the service since they weren't paying him.
Not supplying a free website isn't extortion. I
Hosting something for 3 years, under an agreement that you would do so for free, then trying to charge for it retroactively is definately improper, and a violation of the existing contract.
If he would have merely tried to charge from a set point in time, and perhaps for the content he had created it, he would be safe.
Back charging in violation of the existing contract, this really isn't defensible, and he isn't entitled to that money.
Removing a valuable public service, and withholding all information from that service, unless you receive money you aren't entitled to is just not a fair way to play.
The man did it out of his own pocket and asked to be paid back. The Sherrif's weren't FORCED to become dependent on the web site; they CHOSE to use it and they CHOSE to allow Pat Richard to continue to pay out of his own pocket, despite repeated attempts to negotiate payment.
It's Pat Richard's property, and if the Sherrif's office wants control of it, they need to compensate the man for the time and money he spent on it. The "priviledge" of developing a web site for a Sherrif's office such as one that would arrest a man after abusing his resources for so long must be quite an honor!
Macomb County Sheriff's Office: FUCK YOU. Freeloading losers.
Fountainhead Media (MACOMBSHERIFF-DOM)
19950 Denby
Portsmouth, VA 23708
US
Domain Name: MACOMBSHERIFF.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Stanley, Michael (36687838P)
fountainhead_463@hotmail.com
Fountainhead Media
19950 Denby
Portsmouth, VA 23708
US
999-999-9999
Welp, I have read over the parent story, the 2 linked stories, and the replies on this site. While there is not enough to make a final judgement. With that said...
Conclusion:
1. Pat ran the risk of any business, investing time and money.
2. He registered the name in his own name, as customers do not understand domains, UDAI, and why am I getting this bill from this odd company.
3. Pat tried to get recompense for 2 years of work
4. Pat is a poor business man who doesn't know contracts, TOS's etc.
5. Pat is inexperianced.
Also from this page, presumably, the average Slashdoter:
1. Is a talented web designer. Not to mention developer.
2. Is brilliant at business, draws up brilliant, watertight contracts for every job.
3. Is paid $1.50 per hour. And wouldn't have it any other way.
4. Believes crimes against soft entities(murdered, raped humans) is a darwinian consequence, whereas being a bad web designer, and business man deserves death( with preliminary torture session for resistering domain name in his name).
5. Is relieved to see IT worker pay structure is somewhere around street sweeper, and lawyers, copyrighters, graphic designers, govt employees are sooo deserving of the high pay they get.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Never piss off people who can legally carry guns.
Seriously though, let's look at the charges:
Extortion: How could Pat Richard extort anyone by shutting off his own server? Imagine loaning your car to someone, then deciding you cannot afford paying the gas, the insurance, and the up-keep. You give him an ultimatum, either buy the car or I'll take it back. Under what system of justice could you be charged with extortion under that scenario?!
Larceny by conversion: How could he convert his own property? Via this charge the Sheriff's Office is essentially admitting that the website was theirs, but on the other hand, they refuse to pay for it. They should not be able to have it both ways.
Using a computer to commit a crime: Turning off your own server is a crime?!
Obstruction of justice: See above.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The article about the ex-sheriff rapist mentions a William Hackel.
h tm, which states that Mark Hackel ran to be sheriff four years ago after his dad was removed from office and arrested for rape.
The webpage for the current sheriff at http://www.macomb-sheriff.com states that the sheriff is Mark A. Hackel.
Doing a search for William Hackel brings up an article at http://www.freep.com/news/locmac/sher27_20000727.
Is it just me or has the volume of posters who admit to not RTFA gone down lately? Perhaps the outrageous slant used to announce stories is having a salubrious effect...
Welcome to Slantdot!
Well, that is true - but can you say that it gives Slashdot credibility? I guess it depends on what you define as Slashdot. I have noticed the phenomenon of which you speak more and more over the past year. It *almost* seems intentional at times. That would qualify as questionable journalism in my book, posting a misleading story just so your readers will hash out the details for you.
Think of it this way - *without* the faithful Slashdot readers, how good would Slashdot's journalism be?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Regardless, with the domain name it's IP, a civil issue. It's parked, so the sheriff's office can do the WIPO cybersquatting claim, but, AFAIK and IANAL, it's not criminal.
Who owns the content? If the sheriff's department does, holding the content hostage may be illegal. But then again, there was a private towing company that illegally towed my car from a private lot where I had a legal right to park, and would not return it. They violated two sections of the vehicle code in the illegal tow, then had additional violations (actually flaunting some of them) in the operation of their impound lot. What did the cops say? "This is a civil matter. Pay the impound fees and then sue them."
The cops probably threw him in jail to try to intimidate him, which forced the DA's hand to prosecute, or perhaps it's collusion between the DA and the cops.
The facts will come out at trial. Both sides will tell their stories, a judge and 12 people too dumb to get out of jury duty will decide who is telling the truth, and regardless of the outcome, a civil suit will follow.
Welcome to America, where our courts, fine instruments of law, capable of incredible intricacy and precision in legal thought, are used to bludgeon people like a sledgehammer.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
He's an idiot for claiming that the website cost him $300k. That I will agree on.
But... there were two links. One said he did NOT demand back-payment and just wanted forward-payment for his site. That is perfectly legal and if they refuse that, then he has the right to close it. It sux and is shitty business practice, but it's legal.
If he DID demand back-payment for that rediculous amount of money, he deserves trouble. 50 years is excessive. Give him 3 months and keep his computers...
Ever been in jail? Two nights feels like a month... trust me, he'll have plenty of time to think about it in a few months.
I think everyone should spend a weekend wrongly imprisoned in jail... just for the perspective. I did it (not by choice) and many of my opinions about the justice system changed drastically.
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Surely this is flamebait. He even admits to running counter to our 'view'.
Burn him!
I haven't read a single comment that is at the heart of this issue. The reason the Sheriffs department considers it extortion, is because they claim they own the content.
And the guy who did the website, on the other hand, has claimed that HE owns the content all along, because he WROTE it.
It's not "work for hire" because there's no contract provision to that effect.
And he put a copyright notice naming himself/his company on it from day one.
A LOT of companies have been burned by this - hiring a company or developer to put together a website, then discovering (when they want to move elsewhere for better service or lower costs) that, like a photographer owning the negatives to your wedding pictures and the right to make copies, the website developer owns the copyright on the website - and thus only he can make changes without an additional contract.
They might have provided the information. But HE wrote the HTML, scripts, etc.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out in court.
And whether any authorship or "content-provider" trade organizations will come to his aid, to prevent the establishment of a precedent that will weaken their hold on their own output. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Unless the sherrifs department had a contract that said otherwise, he can change his mind at any time. His demands are unreasonable, but it was a server *he* was paying for, site maintenance *he* was doing.
These charges are utter bullshit. So I do something for free for someone, I can't change my mind about continuing to do it for free?
First off, let's dispense with the "he said, she said" content here. My divorce lawyer once said to me: "There are three sides to every divorce: your side, her side and the truth!"
So, let's try to stick to the facts:
Fact #1. This guy built and hosted the web site and paid for the domain name. Last time I looked, it cost money for bandwith, so some one was paying something. The Sheriff's Dept. admits it wasn't them paying, so it must have been him. Bandwith for 3.5 million hits costs what? $1000.00/month? $5000.00/month? I don't know the exact amount, but this still is a tidy sum of money.
Next, someone paid for the computers to host this site, the rent for the place to house them, the electricity to run them, upgrading, maintenance, etc. Another fairly substantial cost.
Next, someone had to build the web site. It's likely quite slick to win all these awards, and took someone quite a bit of time, not to mention the cost of the computer programs used to create it.
Okay, no one disputes that the guy did all these things. Maybe in the beginning he DID offer to do them for free....
BUT.....(and this is a big but....)
A year ago, he went to the Sheriff's Dept. and told them he couldn't afford to do this for free any more. I'm sure that the bandwidth cost for millions of hits/month were getting pretty steep for him. I'm sure he had to provide mega large servers out of his pocket for hosting too. The Sheriff offered to help him by allowing him to sell ads on the site. It's fairly obvious that the Sheriff was getting MUCH MORE from this site then the guy was. I'm sure the site got much bigger then both of them ever expected it to... In any event, it's fairly obvious that the guy let the Sheriff know of his hardship at least a year before he actually pulled the plug. The Sheriff even admitted this when he allowed the guy the right to place ads on the site.
The way I see this is that it was unreasonable for the Sheriff to expect unlimited web hosting in perpetuity, especially where the costs of providing such hosting had obviously increased dramatically over when the offer was first made (of course, I'm assuming the web site didn't have 3 million + hits a month the first day it opened). There IS an implied contract here actually. That contract was to provide web hosting and email for a small county's Police Dept, NOT a mega site visited 3+ million times a month by people from over 60 countries. The fact that this guy offered his benevolence (and his money!)for as long as he did (in a major economic downturn no less!) should not be cause to put him in jail for extortion. The Sheriff should have known that the gravy train would eventually come to an end, and actually HAD a year's notice that it was fast approaching the station! This sheriff should be fired for several reasons. The first is stupidity. A high school student should have been able to see that this site was costing much more to run then one man can provide for free. Worse, the guy TOLD HIM it was a year BEFORE he pulled the plug! Second, is due to police brutality. There was NO criminal activity here! At best, this should have gone to a CIVIL court. Finally, for theft. The Sheriff had NO RIGHT to confiscate that computer equipment. By doing that (and jailing the guy), he likely put the guy out of business permanently. What a reward, huh? It's like giving the Sheriff a gun for his birthday and then having him shoot you with it!
With friends like that Sheriff, who needs enemies?
Please Note: Pat Ricahrd never attempted to get the sheriff's office to pay him. He informed the sheriff that he could no longer afford to pay for it himself, and that the sheriff would need to come up with a way to finance the hosting/bandwidth. The sheriff refused, beleive that he could continue to have a top-notch high-bandwidth site for free. Have any of you ever had a top notch high traffic site that did not cost you anything? Of course not. Servers, bandwidth, and labor costs money. Pat Richard provided all three of those things for free for several years. He gave the sheriff 2 years to come up with a way to offset the costs of such a service. He gave him an estimate of the cost he had incurred in an effort to make the sheriff understand how costly such things were. When the sheriff refused to finance his own website, Pat was forced to discontinue his services. Period.
After all that Slashdoters say and do about how bad people are getting railroaded over simple little technical mishaps.. we get so many believing that this guy should go to jail??
IANAL, but I try to read Groklaw and so.. I think that if you are giving something away you can stop at any time. I run a mud at (www.mageslair.net cheap ad.. ) and if I wanted to I could stop it at anytime and those who are addicted (yep.. quite a few) could whine and complain but its MY mud and I only agreed to host it while I want to do so (going on 6 years).
This guy was spending lots of money and his advertising was not making up the difference. Its obvious it was a high quality website. Reading the Article(s) I get the impression he came and asked for money to continue the operation and the Sheriffs departnment said NO. 300k may be the monetary cost, but he had the right to CHANGE the deal at any time he wanted since there was no written contract (at least none stated). No contract is forever in perpetuity, there is reasonable costs associated to it as well.
So.. here is a guy who wants money to host a site and he may even ask for 1 million but he didnt.. and he is now in jail.
The Sheriff office made the decision to put the website addy on the car and the horse and buggy and the office pig. Why should he be held liable or CRIMINAL for stopping a service he was providing for free. The Sheriff office would obviously just STOP providing advertising for his company.. which of course they pretty much did not do anyways... and let the matter drop.
Police power gone rampant.
Support your local Police Department, Teach them that "Computers are your friend"
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
On the one hand you have a Sherrif that locks up people if they look at him funny. On the other hand you have a scheming web-designer that tries to rip-off the Sherrif's department.
Sounds like a movie remake of the Dukes of Hazzard to me. Well, after the Avengers, Charlies Angels and Starsky and Hutch what would you expect? Have the Duke boys solve the dispute, add car chases to taste and you have a working script.
Have you seen their website? http://www.macomb-sheriff.com/
:) Still, I think that sheriff site has them beat. It's so bad you have to think it's intentional...
Their new web designer should probably go to jail too.
Check this one out. It's a website for a local theatre - gaudy as hell with poorly presented content. I actually emailed them and complained about their poor design... didn't hear anything back though
Magnatune: Quality (DRM-free) MP3/FLAC/
A few comments: What the hell would over 3 million people a month (worldwide?) care about the macomb sheriffs department? I suspect some heavy stats tampering here.. I can't see them getting more than 50-100 hits per day, if that. The current macomb county sheriff's site has recieved around 20k hits since January.
I don't care how much bandwith or server space you think you have, you are ill advised to offer site hosting for free to anyone. If folks are really that cheap and need cost effective hosting they can pay $9 a month (see sig...). You won't have any trouble from them later on, and you probably won't end up in jail as a result. $9 is not a lot.
TallGreen CMS hosting
I think some of you relied solely on the poorly written and sheriff-friendly article at the Macomb Daily.
Why don't you see what a real newspaper like the Detroit Free Press has to say about the situation?
Mr. Richard did not ask for $300k. He only cclaimed that to be his previous investment. The only thing he asked for was help in the future.
He gave 12 months formal notice, and more than two years of informal notice, that he needed help financing HIS site. The sheriff refused to help. The site went down. Simple.
In the end, there are really only two ways this can all go:
;-)
1) If this person can prove that they had been trying to negotiate a payment plan with the Sherrif, and that these subsequent charges against him are because he then stopped supplying the service when no settlement could be reached, then he will have a great case; and will probably win more than he says it all cost him.
2) He will go to jail, and has lost all of his computer equipment forever, and may even be restricted as to their use when all said and done.
Personally, I find this all to be an over-abuse of police power.. at this point. IF it turns out that there was no 'demand' for money, only a 'request', then the extortion charge seems pretty steep. Most of the other charges are just being used as 'add-ons' to that main charge - this was what was used in the committing of that crime etc.. However, they ARE serious enough to adequately destroy someones life and livelihood.
Was it reeally called for in this case? Why would they particularly need to seize his equipment and personal effects? Taking these things really do nothing to solve the 'case'.. if anything at all, maybe they would have wanted to server so they cold pull evidence of access logs etc from it, but beyond that, siezing all of his computer and electronic equipment associated with it, is just strong arm tactics.. I'm surprised more people aren't mentioning due process and reasonable search and siezure rules.
Still, the press is not a good place for finding out the 'truth' about such things.. after all, if you where to believe the press, then the Macomb Sherriff's office has enough problems as it is anyway, what with the Old Sherriff Hackell who was brought up on charges for rape (I think it was), and now his son taking over.. who is the currect Sherriff probably involved in this.
Basically, there's more to this than meets the eye, but I still feel there is something wrong when peoples property gets taken without there even being 'good reason'.
But that's just me I guess.. and I'm a bit of a SykeOpath
Absence of evidence, is never evidence of absence..
At least this article get it right in that it states he was not asking for the $300,000 in payment, but just said that is how much it would have cost the county to have the site for those three years. He are the $300,000, but wanted the county to take over the future costs. Detroit Free Press Article Of course, the Sherrif says the money was a DEMAND. Well after a year or more of trying to come up with some sort of agrement and getting no response, he had to shut the site down. The article even points out what both sides agree on certain points: "Both sides agreed on a few points: that Richard started running the site for free a few years ago; that his site became so popular, the Sheriff's Department -- and the public -- came to rely on it. And that Richard decided the site was too costly to run for free any longer. " He got screwed. Period. No due process, no court orders, just a straight up jacking.
Try taking this approach with the utility company if you stop paying your electricity bill, and see how far you get.
You'd get pretty far in New York. In fact, some people got so far with it that it's actually ILLEGAL to cancel gas or electric service during the winter months. People need their heat to survive, and cutting them off just because they can't pay would be extortion (or so the train of thought goes).
Hey freaks: now you're ju
According to Dictionary.com extortion is:
1. The act or an instance of extorting.
2. Illegal use of one's official position or powers to obtain property, funds, or patronage.
3. An excessive or exorbitant charge.
4. Something extorted.
$300,000 is definately an excessive charge for the bandwidth and even his work. My website gets around three million hits too but it only costs a whopping $6/month for hosting. That pretty much means he wanted $10,000/month for his work. Only the courts will be able to decide whether it was an illegal use of one's official position or powers to obtain property, funds, or patronage or if it's just plain capitalism.
Kod*k hired me to do some work (support dual ported disks across two independant computers and maintain filesyatem consistency). Payment was set contractually, net 10 days. After they were 10 weeks in arrears (and owed the last billing in a few days for a total of 12 shortly), with almost 14 weeks unpaid I did what any sensible contractor would do after nearly daily getting nowhere with the management and accounting to get the funds authorized to be released and a check cut. I told them the end of the week would be my last day of work until paid, then when not paid I called in to work and said when a check was ready I'd show up. I asked that in light of the nature of the arrears I'd resume work when all of the unpaid work was paid in full. My boss tried a power game where all the appropriate checks where cut but he held back the last one having his secretary tell me I'd have to resume work to collect that last check. I said I'd resume work when all the outstanding work was paid for. Kod*k still owes me $3500 plus around 20 years interest. Rather than burn the bridges with all of Kodak since I did work for other divisions, I just refused contracts with that division or any other division that that manager worked for. In an interesting and twisted justification for keeping the funds when I delclined to return to work until they'd pay me, they sent me a letter saying that they were deducting the cost of training my replacement to rewrite a driver I had done for them (which is really funny since I took a stock Digital RSX-11M Plus driver and changed the drive designation letters to RO: so that the batch scripts could easily be read and have one know that was the Read Only port for the drive by convention). The really fun part was they said it was poorly written and lacked documentation! This after a full functional specification as well as a design document for all the parts of the system. Somewhat of a rarity back then.
So even contracts don't always keep things straight. Sometimes you can't afford to get too many folks at a longterm customer riled too much.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Have /. crowd heard about art of negotiation?
Just look at lawyers - sue someone for a 100 million and then settle for 100 thousand.
Him asking 300,000 is nothing more than starting point. What sucks big time is the sheriff refusing to come up with a reasonable agreement at all.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
I'm not very impressed by most of the responses. I got kind of a queasy feeling reading the articles and checked out the justice4pat.com site where I was surprised to find he linked to several articles that painted his side negatively. They were in fact the top links. Looking at the lower links I got different information. It sounds like when he offered to set up the site they said we'll work out payment for the maintenance of the site later. They never did work it out later because the sheriff refused to discuss it. More than a year ago he let the sheriff's dept. know he could not afford the ongoing costs and he'd have to take down the site if something wasn't arranged. The $300k figure was what he estimated he'd have charged a paying client for everything. That means his time for maintenance and upkeep, designing the site in the first place, and hosting costs, and whatever other costs may have been involved. (BTW http://web.archive.org/web/20020929171339/http://w ww.macombsheriff.com/ gives a much better idea of the site than the previously posted links.) My understanding is he wasn't asking for $300k, he was asking they take over the costs going forward.r ead/2452/ someone (Nevel) indicates he (Pugzly a.k.a. Richards) helped create that very site and hosted it as well. Then when the cost got too much, because the site grew, they worked it out and are still friends. They're even trying to help with his current situation. Having read all that I'm much more inclined to believe his side than the sheriff dept. press releases in the newspaper articles.
Apparently he's been in a similar situation before. In this discussion thread http://development.gurusnetwork.com/discussion/th
I'm not sure I would rely on this listing either. It does not give any detail on when exactly he changed the registration. Another question would be why would a VA company buy that domain name? Except for extortion purposes.
But, for all we know, he did the change request the day the article was first published, or even slightly before. Not saying he did it that way, but relying on this record to "prove" he didn't lie is a joke.
- No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades really cramps his style.
It sounds like this dimbulb is just trying to get free work from you. Too bad ... if they need you that badly they should have worked harder to keep you. I'm sure you were just trying to be helpful, but I would never have admitted knowing that password or any others.
But this isn't the right forum for such questions. Slashdotters will be happy to give you plenty of advice, but I'd take it with large grains of salt. If some idiot in a suit is making threats, go talk to a good lawyer, answer his questions honestly, and then have him send them an attitude adjustment via certified mail, return receipt requested. In any event, before this pointy-haired-CEO does something stupid, like actually suing you, get some good advice from a good attorney. In this country at least, nobody knows their rights unless they talk to a lawyer first.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I will preface this by saying that I manage a municipality's web presence, and have delegated management of the police department site to a dedicated and competent citizen volunteer, although I still retain control over and bear responsibility for his actions. Likewise, everything I do is subject to oversight and control by several layers of bureaucracy, ultimately ending with the voters. It's a good system.
Both parties in this dispute have grievances which could be legitimate; that will be up to a civil court to decide. I really doubt a criminal case will result from this dispute.
One only needs to glance at the new site and archived copies of the old site to realize both parties are quite clueless about what's involved in web publishing. Pox on them both for their stupidity, I say.
The original article says that the web guy was "a former reserve deputy in the sheriff's marine division." That raises a red flag to me, and perhaps it should have with the sheriff's department. I'm always suspicious of the motives of these "wannabe cop" type people. I wonder if a background check was ever done on him before he was given these "reserve deputy" duties.
Its called 'Pleonasm,' - using more words than are required to express an idea usually redundant, ie "at this moment in time"
Baloney. The site belonged to Richard, he paid for it, and he had provided it free to the sheriff for three years. It even said on the site that it was owned by Richard's company, NOT the sheriff's department. Richard is perfectly free to do whatever he wants with it. He can ask anything he wants for the site (even a ridiculous $100,000/year) and the sheriff can either pay it or not. If he decided to charge for the site after three years in violation of a verbal agreement it is a civil matter, not a criminal matter. The OJ Simpson comment by the prosecuter is absurd - he is clearly incompetent if he believes there is a correlation.
Just because the sheriff was stupid enough to rely on a free site that he did not own does not mean that the developer (Richard) was a criminal. This seems to be an abuse of police power to me. It is clearly a civil case and not a criminal case. If a business in town went to the sheriff's office with a similar claim of extortion they would tell him to sue the guy and then show him the door. Just because the Macomb sheriff has arrest powers doesn not mean he should abuse them.
One point I'd like to clarify here is that before everyone goes into sticker-shock over $300k, understand that we're talking about more than bandwidth and hardware expenses. According to what I can see on the wayback machine, the website had a large amount of content. It was not a dubiously popular online business card and photo album. There were updated articles and stories every day. So, how did that content get organized into a website? Did Richard just turn on cheap hosting while the sherrifs demonstrated their web design and organizational skizzles? Maybe that's what they're trying now (from the looks of it) but at the time I would wager that Running Wolf bore the burden of translating police blotter feeds and random user requests into a website that was effectively a news portal.
Also, I don't think the PD imprisoned Richards, impounded his equipment, and charged him with 4 felonies so rapidly over a simple bruised ego. If the website was so important to their infrastructure, prosecuting Richard into the stone age won't bring it back. The important thing I see them doing is confiscating the equipment. Outside of spite, that would serve them no purpose unless there was data on the equipment they hoped to recover (apparently as quickly as possible). This implies that they were relying solely on Richard's free website to house all of their data, and they needed it back just to take care of business. So, if it was their data, shouldn't they have had backups? No seriously, I mean hard copies so you can get your job done during a power failure.. They obviously relied on the workings of the website desperately.
So, here's the rub. You just don't imprison people over shutting down a volunteer website. The PD can't claim to have any investment in the venture, since they never invested a wooden nickel. The PD may have volunteered their content, but Richards was vested with no responsibility of guarding that content with his freedom as a citizen. We could easily replace Richards in this story with Geocities. Sherrifs find nifty WSYWIG content manager and start a free website on geocities. Sherrifs post their nifty web address on cop cars and trust all of their content to this website. Geocities shuts off their account automatically for any odd reason, and all hell breaks loose.
The only other thing Richard had that the PD could chafe over needing was the domain name. but it's only a name. It only has value because of the promotion and acceptence of the website itself. Again, they could have just as easily came to rely on Geocities web and email addresses, printing them on police cars and letterhead. That wouldn't entitle them to any kind of squatting rights over the geocities.com domain, or to have geocities officials arrested on nutty criminal charges.
The truth is that the Police Department was simply freeloading the whole time. When the dust settles they aren't out a shiny penny, just all of their convenient functionality and a contact address or two. Richards is out 3 years of work, all expenses involved whatsoever (whether $300k or what) and a very real possibility of 20 years in prison with even more fines. The PD are the scam artists, not the web design firm.
The way I see it, they essentially sweet talked their way into free room and board at someone's house, and eventually raised hell over all the heartache involved at being kicked out. "But all my letterhead has this address. But all my belongings are here and I refuse to take them anywhere else. Maybe I forgot to get my name on the lease at any point, put people come here to see me not you, so it's my house. I'll now arrest you for not handing over the keys and leaving while you had the chance." It reminds me of that movie "Pacific Heights" with Micheal Keaton.
People willing to trade their freedom of expression for temporary entertainment deserve neither and will lose both.
Incident #1: An aqcuaintance tells me the law firm she works for needs some computer help. I tell her my fee is x per hour, with reimbursement for one hour's travel and parking. She asks if that's OK, and they agree (verbally) I show up on time, and work steadily and quickly throughout the day - always at the request of an attorney - in other words, none of the work I did was of my own initiative. I tried to leave at three o'clock, but the attorneys kept "tugging at my sleeve" and asking me to do one last thing, so I left at 5:00. I send them a bill for everything, and hear nothing back. I call about six weeks later, and they send only 60% payment. When I ask why they said, "they've never gotten such a big bill for computer work before." But she leaves me with the impression that maybe they'll pay the rest down the road. I call this woman occasionally to collect the rest - she always sheepishly apologizes, says I'll get paid. I finally have to write a severe letter, return receipt required to get someone to call me back. One of the senior partners calls me, reiterating that same stupid argument. I tried to tell him that all of the work was driven by their requests, that I tried to leave but couldn't and that I charge less than most consultants do. All of this fell on deaf ears. He was willing to pay some of the remainder, so I took what he offered. I thought I learned how to handle this. I decided that whenever I did a job and didn't get paid right away, I'd have a person with financial authority sign off on a pro forma invoice. Incident #2 - I'm called to fix a computer in NYC that can't send Outlook emails. I get there, and play with the settings for a few minutes. I suspect a corrupted .pst file, so I use the Inbox Repair tool - it takes over an hour to run, and doesn't work. The person using the PC had to use it a couple of times and kick me off, so that burned up some time. Then, I hit upon the idea of making a new .pst file, but I didn't want to make any changes until I made a "safety copy" of the drive. Ghost took an usually long time, over an hour to copy the drive. Setting up the new file only took about 20 mins, including copying emails to the new one.
I create a pro forma invoice and have the office manager sign off. I kept the original. He was surprised at the high amount (Charged for three hours' work and only .5 hrs travel), but signed anyway.
So I sent an invoice as a PDF to their HQ. I also sent a copy of the signed pro forma.
*It still wasn't enough!* They told me they'd only pay part of the bill because they claimed I took too long to do the job! I told them why it did, and reminded them that someone who was financially responsible signed off, but those counter arguments failed! We finally settled on a reduced bill.
I'm not even sure of how I can protect myself from this kind of crap in the future. I guess even having an office manager approve a pro forma isn't good enough.
The only thing I can think of is to do a pro forma with everything in writing and have someone who's *really* responsible for check disbursement approve it.