We paid a Designer 5K to design a site for us and we found out he stole the design
 

check this BS out.

we paid a guy 5k to design a new mainstream site for us (nothing to do with the sig link) and about a week after we got it, we noticed traffic coming from a message board where people were talking about companies that steal sites, and they had a link to our site and a popular mainstream site (alexa rank 18k) that is an exact copy of ours.

we confronted the designer this morning, he admitted that he did it, and doesnt have the money to pay us back, but is willing to do work over time to pay us back

i want to wring his neck, any suggestions? im not going to post the site on here

Small claims court? You can't just have a guy like that working for you again. Who knows if he even knows how to do the work at this point.

no shit and great point. one of the best days i had this year is when he was not longer responsible to us.

he was part of a bigger project designing a database for us, then we found out he was incompetent as a programmer, and we had already paid him and he seemed to be a good designer (because in one of the meetings he brought us a mock up of our site with the stolen design), so we just said ok, just redesign the site and well call it even.

now we find out it was stolen. on top of the million excuses we got when he was working on the DB, we are now getting a million apologies from him about this disaster. i want to kill him, after what he has done.

Sad to hear.


Let me know if you need someone else.. Got the perfect person for you.

sorry to hear about your problems:2 cents:

So who fucked you over?

You're right, best to not mention the guy's name here.

Wouldn't want to deny the rest of your fellow industry people the pleasure of getting ripped off by him.

:thumbsup:Oh crap:disgust

yeah better spit out the designer that do that shit to you..

Thanks for not sharing the name, so he can fuck a bunch of others over.

mainstream designer, doesnt post on here. just using this forum to vent.

Don't blast his name on here if you are considering taking legal action, it might bite you in the ass and get you slapped with a strong counter-suit

Man that sucks. It's so hard to know if you get ripped off designs these days.

That sucks, you learn these lessons the hard way :(

Sounds like GFY 101 to me...

Many people here have mainstream intrests as well as adult. However unlikely it is someone could find their way into a business deal with this same guy.

If that's the case then there's really no point to making a thread about it at all.

cant i occasionally just start a thread bitching about something that just pissed me off?

Offer him $1000 in cash if he does a new design. Then send a thickset man to deposit a crowbar to his leg when he comes to collect.

Of course.

Can't you also acknowledge my point that not mentioning an admitted thief's name to the rest of us leaves people open to also getting ripped off?

This happens more often here than you might think, and in virtually every case it's as if the victim (in this case you) is actually protecting the thief's identity. It astounds me. I can honestly say that if I ever found myself in your situation I would definitely NOT create a thread about it unless I was prepared to disclose the crook's name.

No name = thread useless.

Congrats to the winners?

thats a bummer.. Was he a good reputable designer?

now thats a huge problem

my partner did the research behind it and he looked good enough to him. looking back i should have dug into it more before we committed.

Post his details here and on other boards with the keyword "scam" in the title so maybe you will save someone else from being screwed.

5k Ggg!!! That's a nice amount.

what payment method was used?

WTF!!!

If I was getting 5k and I didn't know jack about design then I would hire someone
for $2k and make the shit work.

Uh, ok.....I forgot about pure greed.
Never mind.

What's the point of starting this thread if you're not going to name the thief, to warn your fellow GFYers?

lol sad story but lesson is - don't hire graphic designers to do your database

Given your nickname I wouldn't take you as a revengeful person...

haha, good one


we paid by check :(

Wow that sucks :( Sorry to hear about your loss with the project.. People like this give designers a bad name..