Mike 'Deadbeat Dad' Gannon guilty of contempt for not paying child support.  See it Here
Looking like a pattern?
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I though we were moving on until I got a phone call from their attorney.
Read about it, the email he sent, the 'Mutual Agreement' and my response HERE!
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Moving on ... My final email to Mike. Click Here!
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Everything here is in reverse chronological order. Read the post below before reading the ones above.

All they had to do was to pay the bill, but no ... they had to be DICKS!
So we are clear on which company we're dealing with.  Here's the logo from their websites:
d/b/a

I turned off server access because I believe TextAlaCarte is trying skip out without paying their bill.
They called the police claiming some interstate commerce violations and more. 
As they chose this path, I have decided to make public what will be my statement to the police ....

I'll give a brief prelude to clarify my thinking at the time, and in trying to understand their mindset I'll include some of what I've heard about Mike, Touchton Industries, the divorce and how it seems, to me and others, to be affecting his decisions at TextAlaCarte.  The voice mail where Mike tells me to call him within 30 minutes or he will call the police and tell my neighbors about my criminal history, etc.  I'll also get into why I think Chris' financial and IRS issues make him so loyal to Mike despite the way Mike treats him ... "Pit Bull" loyal to the point of making a direct threat, "Maybe I'll just come up to Mt. Juliet to see you.", after having just addressed me by my full legal name, street address and city.

A few months ago I got involved with a new technology company, TextAlaCarte Inc d/b/a Kaizen Communications, providing internet services for them.  Mike Gannon, Chris (Sonny) Liston and Bill McMeekin contacted Jason to do build a web presence and do some development work. Jason contacted me.  We built the website and I wrote a little program that would let someone maintain a database of subscribers and send scheduled SMS messages their cellphones. People liked the first demo and people started to get excited.

As a startup, they were budget conscious and, along with programming skills, I was able to provide servers and maintenance for just $50 above my cost. After a small shake-up (Bill moved on and Jason stepped in as CTO) things were starting to look up. 

About a month ago Jason's approach to the business was not meshing with Mike's old school management style and they had a falling out.

The buzz was that while typically putting in way more than 40 hours per week, Jason was not working typical 9 to 5 hours. Anyway, they say that's what set it off and a heated discussion followed with the result of Jason being replaced as CTO. Most agree that this was an unfortunate turn as it was felt that Jason was the 'spark' that moved them from sending a simple coupon to a company with some really good ideas for mobile marketing.

Some seem to believe that Curtis, a 25 yr old kid with C# programming skills and now the 'new' CTO, was a catalyst to more frequent disagreements between Mike and Jason.  Further, it was suggested that because I work from home and was a 'Jason' hire, I should tread carefully.

Shortly thereafter I got an email from Curtis requesting that I submit an hourly time sheet each week. You can read the email and my response below, but this seemed to reinforce what I had been hearing.

It soon became clear that Curtis' C# programming skills had to be his strong point. He was deploying websites in a cut and paste fashion and then just bolting on an application.  The work he was/is presenting to the public is shoddy both visually and programatically.

One of my jobs was that of WebMaster (a responsibility given to me by Jason and Curtis).  While Jason was there, Curtis and I got along great.  After Jason left he became guarded and our conversations reflected that.  Curtis stopped asking me to build them and wanted me to just fix the ones that he created.

I say all this as a forward to the following event(s) so you have an idea of my frame of mind when I cut their administrative access to the servers.

I guess the way to go best explain is to use the email records with some narrative tossed in to clarify my thoughts.



While this is a valid request, and I acknowledged that, Curtis was already well aware of the hours I put in and had never had a problem calling me even into the evening sometimes.  I sent him the following response



I never got a response to that email and when I submitted my next invoice he simply said, "ok".
Fast forward to Tuesday, March 16 when I get this email from Curtis.

It makes sense that Curtis would like things consolidated. I was a little confused because things were already consolidated, but I also knew that this request had nothing to do with consolidating services to one account.
I had to convince him I was not an enemy and that things were running smoothly, and, as I was really busy trying to overhaul the presentation of the dashboard sites (the ones the customers use), I decided I'd explain it to him later and keep working on the sites.

The next day I tried to process a recurring invoice using the debit card on file. It was declined.
When I called Marion (the bookkeeper that was called in after Jason left) she did not offer a replacement card, but instead simply gave me the run around with a vauge promise to pay at a future date.

I went back to work on the dashboard sites because I noticed a few days ago that they acutally launched them looking as they do now. (see screen shots below) when I remembered I needed to respond to Curtis' email above.  The timing was incredible.

Just as I was wrapping up my response to Curtis I start getting alerts about the services begining to fail, only to discover Curtis was busy trying to pull a 'midnight move'.
Anyway, here's the email.  You can see where I was interrupted by the server alerts.



Mike called the next morning and left a message stating he knew all about my criminal history and that if I did not give Curtis access to the servers in the next thirty minutes he was going to call the police.  He knew all about my criminal history and he would be sure to alert the local police and all my neighbors if I didn't comply.

I called Mike and told him what I thought was happening, that he was trying to leave without paying the previous day's declined invoice. He denied that was the case, but instead the new policy was to pay by check.  I told him I didn't accept checks and he said he would use a credit card to pay it ... but first I had to restore server access to Curtis and let him finish.  Then he would pay me.  I told him to pay the due invoice and then I will retore access.  He said no, that Curtis was standing right there as a witness to his promise to pay ... after Curtis was done.  I told him because of Curtis trying to sneak out and then lying to me, he would have to pay the invoice before I restore access.  At this point he was to upset to talk to as he kept talking over me saying he would pay me after Curtis was done and that he would bring the whole f#$%king office in as witness if I liked.

I decided to meet him halfway.

I restored access to the servers and told him to go have Curtis log on to the server and confirm it ... I would wait.

Curtis reported that he was logged on and had access so I told Mike, "There you go, pay the invoice."

He turned to Curtis and asked how long it would take.  Curtis said it would take a few hours then added a list of things he needed me to do as well.  Mike said when all that was done and Curtis was satisfied, then he would pay me.  He said he didn't trust me not to cut the access after he made the payment.

I expressed my surprise that after the past 24 hours he would talk to me about trust issues.
I cut the access to the servers and told him he would have to pay the invoice 'before' I restored access again.  Then sent him the following email.

I little while later I was talking to Chris Liston.  He tried everything.
First, he answered the phone by addressing me by my full legal name, city and state to intimidate me.
Then he told me the police and FBI had been called.  I was breaking the law.  We have 20 people sitting around doing nothing because of this.  I was in Tennessee and Kaizen is in Florida so there are Interstate Commerce violations that make it not only a crime, but a federal crime.  The egg is broken but I can put it back together again if you stop this. ... Then he went into ..
You don't need to do this to yourself or your family.  I know you've probably had a rough life, why do this to yourself?
Next it was about all he had done for me, fabricating/embellishing a story how he went out of his way to help me out of his own pocket when I needed money.  The truth was he was doing 'Kaizen' a favor by paying an overdue invoice out of his pocket as Mike tried to structure all this out of sight of his wife's divorce attorney.
Then it was back to bully mode as he told me he might just come up to Mount Juliet to see me.

At his point you can imagine I'm not really conviced they will pay me after they leave.
A short while later I sent him the following email: