Compensation for Bandwidth Costs is Extortion? 865
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.
Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:3, Interesting)
'Richard's Running Wolf Inc. operated the sheriff's office Internet site for nearly three years as a free service before shutting it down three months ago because the county wouldn't pay him.'
He operated the web site for free for three years. He probably hosted it as his own expense, too.
I get the feeling he designed and managed this website at his own expense, expecting payment. After a few years of no payment, he finally closed the website.
So, let me get this straight. He managed this web site on his own, withough compensation, then closed it. And because he mentioned that he needed to be paid to keep it open, that's extortion.
Re:Let's do some math here... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:3, Interesting)
Abusing the law by arresting this guy, just makes the LEO's look like the extortionists.
According to Alexa... (Score:3, Interesting)
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
An argument for offshoring (Score:3, Interesting)
3.5 million hits per month... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:4, Interesting)
This Sherrif's office are scum, no two ways about it.
Re:Yes, it is extortion (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the sheriff who unjustly took property away.
Re:Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:3, Interesting)
RTFA again:
A year or so ago, Richard started talking with Hackel's staff about earning income from the site. An attempt was made to secure advertisements for the site with profits going to Richard, but Hackel said that generated only a small response.
Richard then demanded $300,000 of taxpayer dollars from the county. Richard said the money would offset the huge expense of running the Web site for the 33 months.
300,000 for running a site for 2 and a half years? Even if you have your own server, with a T1 line it wouldn't add up to that. The guy lied and tried to cheat the dept out of cash. He got what he deserved.
Please, RTFA again and take off the tin-foil hat.
RTFA (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now if he wants to include the unpaid wages of a developer (himself) in that I can probably envision it (not necessarily agree, but I can see where the numbers come from) - but you got to use a LOT of bandwidth to burn through $9k a month.
Re:Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is an IP issue. (Score:2, Interesting)
As a book publisher if I'm loosing money by marketing your book and after a time decide to stop marketing it and remove all the copies from my warehouse, I'm not claiming to own your IP. I'm just no longer offering your IP to the public at my cost. If you decide to pay me (more), I"ll continue to publish your book, all I'm asking is to at least break even.
Re:Proof positive... (Score:3, Interesting)
sherriff a rapist (Score:1, Interesting)
Ex-Macomb sheriff Hackel is free today
April 24, 2003
BY ALEXA CAPELOTO
Today marks the end of William Hackel's three years as a prisoner, and the
beginning of his return to freedom following his rape conviction in 2000.
The former Macomb County sheriff is expected to leave the Charles Egeler
Reception and Guidance Center in Jackson at 8 a.m. after being granted his
first possible parole date last month.
He was transferred to the center in late March from a Kentucky federal
prison in preparation for his release.
His wife and mother will be in Jackson to greet him and drive him home to
Macomb County, said son and current Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel. He
said his father's immediate focus is on reconnecting with family.
"He just wants to be with his wife and my grandmother," Mark Hackel said
Wednesday. "I'll try to see him as soon as possible. He's my father and I
definitely want to spend time with him."
Even as the ex-sheriff, 61, readjusts to life outside of prison, he plans to
continue efforts to clear his name. Birmingham attorney and longtime friend
Terence Page said he has asked the Michigan Supreme Court to review an
appellate court's refusal to reverse Hackel's conviction.
The court has not issued a decision.
Meanwhile, Hackel can expect to return to countless friends and supporters
who say they still believe he did not rape a 25-year-old female acquaintance
at the Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort in Mt. Pleasant in October 1999.
Several of them are collaborating on a Friends of Bill Hackel fund-raiser,
scheduled for June 9 at CJ Barrymore's in Clinton Township. Jerry Medley, a
friend of Hackel's for almost 50 years, said he expects 700 to 1,000 people,
as well as the guest of honor, to attend.
"We had an event two years ago and there were police chiefs, police
officers, judges -- all friends of Bill Hackel," he said. Tickets for the
June event cost $25.
Hackel is no longer in the custody of the Michigan Department of
Corrections, but he is still under the eye of the law. His two-year parole
period requires him to register as a sex offender and to check in regularly
with a parole agent.
In addition, he is required to complete sex offender treatment and is
prohibited from contacting the victim or possessing any items related to a
law enforcement agency.
Hackel served as county sheriff for 24 years until he was convicted in April
2000 of two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct and sentenced to
3 to 15 years in prison. The crime shocked community members who said they
considered him a trusted leader who cared more about justice than power.
"I'm sure it's not going to be easy" readjusting to life after
incarceration, Medley said. "But knowing the person that he is, he'll get
through it."
Contract not much help (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:1, Interesting)
Another issue... (Score:5, Interesting)
Abuse of Power (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Check your WHOIS (Score:4, Interesting)
~D
Re:Let's do some math here... (Score:2, Interesting)
Pierre
Parity for private citizens? (Score:3, Interesting)
- Extortion. [michiganlegislature.org] Threats of harm or injury to another person or his property? Just what is it he has supposedly threatend to harm?
- Larceny by conversion. [michiganlegislature.org] 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. [michiganlegislature.org] 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.)Re:Whack the new guy too (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:2, Interesting)
Extortion or a broken contract? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Statistics..arn't that far off (Score:1, Interesting)
Now if you read the following link..you will find out why there was so much traffic to that website.
http://www.detnews.com/2003/metro/0303/07/d01-1
Sherrif Hackle is the son of the former sherrif of 23 years who is doing 5-16 years in the federal pen, for laws he violated while in office.....
Re:The Guy Made Mistakes All Along (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why is the site even a .com? (Score:2, Interesting)
Back in the day, cities usually would have a site such as "http://www.cityname.statenameabbreviation.us". As such they would frequently be very cumbersome to tell citizens over the phone - the chances were very good that they (the citizen) would hear/write something incorrectly and then not be able to get to the site which would cause them to call back to try and get the URL again...and again...and again...
Many cities (mine included) then decided to skip that and just get a
Had
So...if you want to blame someone blame the feds
Re:Wow what a site! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thankyou sir (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is, if this was any other business besides a government one (more specifically a police one), they would have to sue him like anyone else, not immediately seize all his gear. This is the problem with cops in general, they have the power to act and ruin your life, and ask questions later.
I don't care if this guy DID try to inflate the prices and such, I do not feel as though the police should have the right to do this to him without a court order.
Re:Thankyou sir (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree, and didn't mean to imply that he necessarily went about this with the best of intentions (not many people would blow $300k of their own money purely for the benefit of the county government).
But, I can't see any way that the this can count as outright extortion. Even if he did it for publicity or other non-monetary considerations, without a contract (which both articles make clear as one of the big problems in this situation), he has no obligation to continue providing the service.
So does the county "owe" him any money? I'd say morally yes, but legally no. But does he need to keep providing the service if they don't pay? Again, no. Not extortion, just basic capitalism. If I stop paying my cable, and my cable company shuts me off for not paying, I'd get laughed out of court if I cried "extortion!". Even lacking a contract (let's say I found the cable live when I moved in, and just started using it), I would get charged with theft of services when the CC noticed, not the other way around.
Re:Thankyou sir (Score:5, Interesting)
End result? More information from more points of view, and that's better for everybody.
Re:Wow what a site! (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's the 'correct' page [archive.org]
Re:Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, I'm currently a "real programmer", but in your words, I used to be a "webmonkey".
I take offense at this notion that web programmers are somehow inferior to "real" programmers. My job web programming was a hell of a lot more difficult than my current "real" job. I had to wear a lot more hats. Among my duties were: DB administration, network administration, DB design, DB implementation, server administration, site design, and PERL coding. The way of thinking of management types is that you hire a "web monkey", and he just "does" your site. A lot of people have no idea what goes into a large scale interactive website. It may not be rocket science, but it often is much more than just writing some HTML (though even that is very hard to do well).
I could get into how difficult it is to design an interface to be used by people who don't even know what interface means, to implement a good custom search facility, to smartly generate dynamic content and the like, but it would probably be lost on the likes of you.
Re:Re-read TFAs (Score:3, Interesting)
And, the newpaper may have accurately quoted the sheriff and the charges brought by the sheriff. So, while I may trust the newpaper more, I don't trust the sheriff, or the activist site. And, regardless of whether the guy asked for $300,000 or not, it is perfectly within his right to stop providing a service that he is not contracted to provide.
I think the sheriff department is going to get hammered on this one. He asked for money in order to maintain the website, regardless of the amount he is not obligated under any law to continue providing uncompensated services to anyone. The arrest could be considered an attempt to seize the defendants's property i.e. bandwidth costs to continue operating the website indefinitely. Which would be an unlawful seizure by the government. Let's say not only that, but he is expected to continue maintenance activities, i.e. adding new content. That would be indentured servitude. Which is again illegal.
Best case for the sheriff, the defendant did ask for an ungodly amount to maintain the site. The sheriff knew that he was screwed because he didn't have a contract for the site from its inception, and either had to pay, or let the site be shutdown, and not have any rights to the material created by te defendant on the original site. Instead, he decided to bring criminal charges. That is the best case for the sheriff. Worst case for the sheriff, the defendant wanted the bandwidth costs to be paid, and asked for it. After not receving shutdown the site, and the sherrif arrested in an abuse of police power. In between the sheriff is still a vindictive bastard.
IANAL
Re:Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:5, Interesting)
Example: one of my local PDs was notoriously full of money grubbing racist assholes. Our local paper started trolling through records and LO AND BEHOLD, discovered a number of major improprieties, including overtime pay when people were obviously elsewhere and sexual assault cases against various high ranking officers that had "stalled" in court. Paper started publishing on them, and the guilty officers started disappearing from the force. The remaining guys are sweet as can be, because they know that fucking around with the gray areas will get them canned with no pension.
Specifically: (Dum, da, Dum Dum!) Copyright! (Score:3, Interesting)
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-)
Re:Thankyou sir (Score:5, Interesting)
Fraud, maybe. But if I volunteer to do work for you for free, and then later tell you I'm not gonna work for you any more unless you pay me, that's just the breaks. If you don't like it, you don't use my services any more. It wasn't extortion when X-Drive said they weren't gonna be free anymore, and I'd have to pay them if I didn't want them to dump my files. It's not extortion when eFax tells me that I'm gonna have to pay them if I want to keep the fax number they've provided for years for free. How is this different?
If the sheriff wanted a SLA guarantee, he would have hired a commercial service. He got what he paid for. And if the sheriff wanted to own the domain, he should have gotten a
[Insert ignorant redneck sheriff joke here]
Re:Yes, it is extortion (Score:3, Interesting)
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).
Re:Oh, gotta rant, gotta rant on this one... (Score:3, Interesting)
Quote:
"He built up the site so that we would rely on it so much and would pay him," Hackel said. "(But) that content belongs to all of us."
He's not within his legal rights because he pulled a bait-and-switch on the sheriff's department when he decided to stick them with the bill for a site that they had come to rely on as free. I think they're calling it extortion because of the action he took to pull down a site which their organization relied on instead of negotiate in court. Not having that written contract is partially his fault too, and the lack of a solid termination clause opened him up to liability, I believe.
Then again, the sheriff's office did fully abuse their police powers when they slapped him in irons and seized his equipment.
Re:Thankyou sir (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not about justice or fairness, it's about struggling for dominance, and if someone's got more money and/or power than you, you're screwed. Even if you win the verdict, you have to deal with the expenses and hardships before that (in this case, having his stuff seized), and then have to deal with appeals. Plus, those with power can screw your reputation, leaving you with image problems.
Re:Thankyou sir (Score:2, Interesting)
That's essentially what he did. He let them ride free to a point, then asked that they begin paying for service. They refused, so he shut them down. That's 100% legal and within his rights, and I think if that guy gets himself half a clueful lawyer, that Sherrif's office is going to be seeing a handful of both criminal and civil charges against them.
It is extortion but not the illegal kind (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:what what what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Obligitory answer to the posed question. Yes. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
300,000 - so what? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Read Beyond TFA (Score:2, Interesting)
Apparently he's been in a similar situation before. In this discussion thread http://development.gurusnetwork.com/discussion/th
Re:uh, whatever! (Score:2, Interesting)
> organization besides the local Sheriff he
> wanted cash from to keep hosting their site,
> that the Sheriff's department would have
> arrested him for extortion with the exact same
> set of facts?
>
> I think that's called selective prosecution,
> among other things....
You are getting it all wrong. He had, what sounds like, a verbal contract to provide hosting for a local government agency without charge. After three years he decided that he didn't like the contract, so he demanded $300,000 in "expenses". When they refused to pay - FYI there is no way a local sheriff's department would be able to cough that up anyway - he took the site down and refused to give them the hosted data or the domain name back unless they paid him his $300k.
He has data whose legal ownership will be decided by a court, but likely was contributed in bulk by the sheriff's office. He was essentually holding this data hostage unless the money was paid. And when he hindered investigators, they seized his servers.
This doesn't seem so unreasonable me. This definitely isn't selective prosecution, this is what I would expect any law enforcement organization to do while investigating an extortion case with similarly existing criteria.
This guy is a bone head, and as post #1 rightly said, he deserves what he gets for his actions.
Civil Matter; Criminal Stupidity (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [archive.org] 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.
Re:Obligitory answer to the posed question. Yes. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thankyou sir (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Clearly more here than meets the eye... (Score:2, Interesting)
This assumes that during these three years he worked only on that web site. Somehow I doubt that it was that much work to set it up and maintain, and that he did not have any other clients during that 3 year period.
A couple of weeks for initial development (at most) followed by maybe 1 or 2 hours per week for maintenance during the rest of the 3 years is more reasonable. Come on, web site design (if done right) is not that work intensive.
Not to mention that $8333/month is quite a nice salary for a web designer... Do you really earn that much in the states? Around here, even certified software engineers doing actual application development (C, java, ...) don't get those kinds of salaries!
If we plug in those more realistic figures:
- 1 month initial work
- 1 day/month maintenance => 35 days = 7 weeks => less than 2 months
==> 3 month.Assume a salary of $4000/month, and 50% overhead => $18000.
A far cry from the $300K he is charging.
Re:Thankyou sir (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't matter what the owners motives were - asking for payment for a service is not a crime, and taking down you own property (the web site) is also not a crime. Luckily for the sheriff, stupidity for not getting ownership of his own domain name is not a crime either.
Frankly, I don't trust any sheriff who would so clearly abuse his police power to punish the site owner. This is a civil case, not a criminal case, and from the article the sheriff doesn't have a leg to stand on - the site owner can do anytning he wants to with the site, including shut it down. If the sheriff didn't like the site being down there were civil remedies that could have created a court order to keep the site operational until the matter could be resolved. The sheriff didn't do that - he just abused his arrest power and decided to teach the guy a lesson by arresting him.
I hope the site owner sues the hell out of the sheriff just to teach him the difference between civil and criminal law.
Re:Thankyou sir (Score:3, Interesting)
I am concerned that the police confiscated his computer. Was that his WEB SERVER? If so, they destroyed his business. Did they charge him with "using a computer to commit a crime" just so they could confiscate his server to get access to "their" data? If so that is a clear abuse of authority and nothing more than theft. You can't steal someone's car just because he won't return your fuzzy dice, and the police can't confiscate a person's business just because they want their web site back. If they have gone into his computers and extracted their data they have proved their bad faith. I suspect they have done just that.
What makes this different is that the police abused their authority and decided they were the law, not the courts. If the guy had a plan to make them reliant on his site and then send them big bills it is perfectly legal. How is that different from your local cable company? How is it any different from the phone companies who until recently owned your phone number so you couldn't change carriers without great hassle? No one tried to arrest THEM, so how is that different from this guy who owned their domain and wouldn't give it to them unless they paid for it?
And one final point: The site owner was a former deputy sheriff and as such I suspect he hates and loathes the ACLU - but this is exactly the kind of case the ACLU takes on. I wonder how he is going to feel about them when the ACLU asks him if he needs help now that he has first-hand experience with the abuse of police power?.
$300k ain't so bad. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.