I need some advice on what to do with person who has stolen data from my business and is passing off his business as mine.

Two years ago I set up a consultancy specialising in helping business cut their costs with Adwords and yet at the same time increase sales. The actual approach took me a long time to refine and has delivered great results.

But as with all businesses I needed sales and had started calling businesses explain my services. A friend at the time recommended this guy who I interviewed and took on to generate sales on a sub contract basis.

Initial this sales guy appeared as dumb as a bag of hammers, but could cold call and convince prospects to take a demo with me. I was very transparent and explained why they were not performing, most became customers and we started to grow. The sales guy kept making small slip ups and I began to think that he was not technical but rather savvy with customers. I started to see this dumbness was an act. In the end he admitted as much, with him claiming it avoided me asking him questions.

As we expanded, I trained to him to provide client review and despite always missing sales targets, we were close enough. The relation with our sales guy was always difficult. He would try and bully staff, con staff out of money and sensed to get a twisted kick of trying to con people. I even caught him trying to humiliate a member of staff for their weight. We kept him on the straight and narrow but it was hard work. As we grew staff became to notice that he sales figures were works of fiction and he needed to be kept under close control. He would on many occasions just explode in the office. Writing this, it seems odd, but at the time he had conditioned us to his odd behaviour. He in retrospect wasn’t a good sale person by any means but was very good at convincing us he was. The one thing he can sell is himself.

Fast forward 12 months and the business had grown to several staff and all is fine and we recruited a second sales person. At which point our sales guy starts to behave really oddly after he returns from his holiday. He falls out with the office and works to rule refusing to speak to staff. I had brought a new car and he seemed to resent his work being used to benefit me. We are really concerned, suspecting he may be having a breakdown. He assures us he was fine, but he begins to go on about at the 7th Jan as if it the end of the world day! It was really odd. He’d come in with the laces on his shoes undone regularly or with his shirt half undone. It was odd. He began getting real kicks of conning people in this free time. He’d con sandwich bars out of food, businesses out of donations for school fund raising etc. His behaviour was becoming a serious problem and he was counselled several time on it.

He one day asks from time off to attend court. I query him about it and it’s to attend a trading standards investigation for credit card fraud by Cheshire Trading Standards! Apparently he was the Managing Director (Sapphire Blue Consulting), but he it was his partner (Adrian Park) who is being potentially deported to the Philippines for fraud fault. See -http://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/chester-news/local-chester-news/2010/12/02/pulford-businessman-could-face-extradition-to-the-philippines-59067-27752319/. The whole thing seems fishy.

I can’t believe this and I am shocked - I cannot be associated with anyone like this.

He takes a very late lunch and another member of staff spots him at office for let in December. We’re in a rural location so he has no reason to be there. After some calls I find out he has taken on an office lease down the road from us. I confront him about this next day and he just leaves after I had to hear his wife yelling down the phone whilst on speaker that we haven’t appreciated him enough. It was werid. As he was in recruitment I assumed he just returning to start a recruitment business, but one of the staff suspect he was trying take the whole sale team and some mentors. Over Christmas we all concluded that we’d had a person in our midst who’s heart was more aligned with the con artist than a sales person. Our focus on customers had kept his natural instincts at bay.

Anyway in January, he starts up a business that has the same initials as our, but were as we are called Rescue he is called Response. He had registered a new company a few days before I confronted him. He had copied our entire business model and concept even down to the website text. It then transpires he is calling our entire prospects list. He had stolen 12,000 contact details from our prospects database plus our customer database. These were on individual spreadsheets that he had gone out of his way to copy. The amazing thing was he had no knowledge of how to deliver the service, but to be safe his wife was the managing Director. He always had a thing about warning people about being struck off as a director.

Initially, I turned a blind eye to this, but it got the better of me and I went to his offices and confronted him. The police ended up being called and some coffee fell into his laptop which he’d taken from me. The laptop didn’t make it and had to be put down – sorry laptop lovers.

The police aren’t interested. Today I find out even his terms and welcome letters are word for word copies of ours. He calls prospects saying he’s from the initials but not adding Response. We’ve sent letters warning clients.

The whole matter is difficult on two levels for me. He stole our data, tried to steal staff and customers and recruited an individual to delivery his mentoring service that has no experience, no system and no qualifications in mentoring. Luckily, he never paid attention to service delivery and has no idea how to deliver the service. The benefits he delivers are non existent and his clients regularly call us, but it may create a bad image for our niche. It has turned out that the market, I suspected as being niche is truly niche with room for one. We’ve had to start moving into other markets as it can only support one business.

But the real issue is anyone he sells to. I have built a business that has successful turned around 100’s of businesses online. Many were at the point of closure and we helped them to recovery and success. But others looking for genuine help are going to be taken advantage of.

The question is what should I do?

Sounds like someone to ignore.

Just contact customers with a warning note and some nice level headed info and suggest if they want more information or would like to speak to anyone about it to contact you. might be a good angle on a marketing campaign

He will go bankrupt and fail before too long IMO.

Theft of information is a major problem within my industry (head hunting) and all of my employees have clauses in their contracts making them aware of the legal proceedings that will follow.

When I was an employee I was prevented from setting up a business that could be competition for my old firm for 12 months, and I was also restricted from approaching my old team for a similar period.

All the best.

IANAL but I have seen an Anton Pillar order used: http://www.rossmcbride.com/articles/The-Anton-Pill...

Basically if your legal bod can convince a judge of the merits of your case then you can apply for an order to seize his computers at work and home so as to prevent him from destroying the evidence. Speak to a legal bod about that though

He is not hard to find, my advice, to all reading this, why not ask hime for a quote, if we can get 100 quotes, he will have no time to run his stolen business.

It took all of 3 seconds to find him

Speaking to Trading Standards - if he is misleading these potential businesses then may be comitting offences. If they are alreayd investigating him then I am sure they prob welcome any new offences.

Who would you recommend? I'll take another look into this.

Breadvan is right. I had a very similar thing happen with an ex employee who left to start his own rival recruitemnt business. We did gen an 'anton piller' and he had to pay us all the money he made from our clients\candidates. He also had to stop using our data and terms of business.

GO TO A GOOD COMMERCIAL SOLICITOR. Then

What would be a guide price on the anton piller?