A year in prison for owing $24,000 in back taxes for a couple years sounds extremely severe. I mean, any criminal conviction at all for owing $24,000 to the IRS sounds extremely severe, but I get the circumstance of the plea deal. Still, though.
> He agreed to start a company with Elbring and invest an initial $500,000 through his trust — in installments, to ensure certain benchmarks were reached.<p>This kind of offer is generally a warning sign, btw.
1. Jail over 24K in back taxes? That's insane<p>2. Getting sentenced to a medium security prison? I mean really, this is a big wtf...should have been light security...or better yet just house arrest
Peripherally related: one thing I've learned is to never partner on a web site with someone who doesn't have a lot (and I mean dozens, if not hundreds) of people connected to him via sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook. If someone's claiming to have been working on Internet projects for years, and can't immediately point to a hundred or more people who are least willing to connect with them on Linkedin or something, there's something deeply fishy.<p>A great question someone once told me for talking to a potential business partner: "Who were your past business partners, and can I chat with them? Also, how well did they do relative to you on those deals?" If someone tells you that all his past business associates were crooks or liars, walk away.
Like many who post here, I've often thought it would be cool to be able to go to a "Founder Match" type of site to identify possible co-founders.<p>What's interesting to me is that at once, this article speaks both to why a site like this SHOULD NEVER exist (you should really <i>know</i> your co-founder) but also why it REALLY MUST exist (some kind of reputation score could have helped here).
May this article give the attorneys at Lewis Rice many headaches. If I'm general counsel with a relationship to Lewis Rice I think I'd be looking for outside counsel that wasn't going to sell me out when I'm a little inconvenient.