Originally Posted by Skiploder

Jamie:

When I used to weekend race in NASA, I was (and still am) good friends with one of the guys who was one of the top engine tuners in our class.

His youngest son was diagnosed with autism and his wife left him. He lost his job and fell on hard times.

His mistake was that his mouth had sold more than his ass could deliver. He had taken money from several clients on high end track mods and used that money to pay off his debts, assuming that things would bounce back. It was stupid move and, at the time, I told him it was.

They didn't and he ended up owing tens of thousands of dollars to clients to whom he couldn't deliver. He got crucified on the NASA and SCCA boards and at the time, he was one of my closest friends. While I understood the hardships he was enduring in his personal life, that didn't excuse the stupid decisions he made to continue to pay off his debts with customer money.

He robbed those people and even though he is my friend, I will be damned if I'm going to spend my time defending a person who took thousands of dollars from people and has, in this case, six years, ignored the problem.

As I said, he remains my friend, he's one of the nicest guys you will ever meet, but he's a shitty businessman - therefore I'm not going to spend my time or stick my nose out there defending the decisions HE made that got him in this mess. I have friends who went from forum to forum and event to event defending his actions, and I told them point blank they were not only carrying a load he was refusing to shoulder, but that his problems were becoming their problems.

Whatever issues Adam has had, there is no excuse for taking someone's money and giving them nothing in return. That money needs to be returned to Andrew and David.

You and I do not know each other, but I'm going to offer you a bit of friendly advice. If you want to ignore it, so be it:

If Adam is going through hard times and he is your friend or a close acquaintance and you want to provide support and friendship - that's cool....... but put up a fire wall between your personal relationship and whatever is going on with what happened in his business world. It is not worth having your name associated with his business issues.