No Good turn goes unpunished

The poem 'IF' by Rudyard Kipling does inspire me, especially the conflicting dualism expressed in it. ' Your approbation or condemnation, those two impostors. Well, neither feel like impostors most of the time. We seek approbation from our parents, our friends, our work colleagues, even our children.

Professional friends are another matter. How people can look other people in the eye, whilst pretending to be 'right on' never ceases to amaze me.

I was approached in the summer of 2006 by someone trying to sell me SEO services. For the uninitiated, that is the search engine optimisation art, the trying to get good placement in the search engines business.

I was slightly amused that they approached me, as up to a year before I was considered to be the best promotion 'expert' on the island, if not in the hemisphere. My placings across the board in the major search engines on phrases so diverse as to be ludicrous was my own downfall in a way. Anyone searching on any subject I covered, used my writings to plump out their own content, many just copying lock stock and barrel, up to 136 people per page at one time, thereby diluting the value of my content to less than non existent.

The other boob I had made was not keeping my eye on the ball whilst ill. I think I invented the linking system which so plagues the internet now, I used my network of sites and linked each to each other with such success that sites were copying my links and putting them on their own sites. When I realised that this would become a frowned on practice (just before the advent of link farms) I gave instructions for the links to be categorised and reviewed, but was ignored by those who thought they knew better - I was to weak to even look at a computer for some months, so when I made it back into the office, we no longer had a viable business, we had a liability - all my sites banned in Google. You couldn't even find windowoncyprus by looking up windowoncyprus!

Anyway back to the story. Ian arrived with his wife, Louisa. Never assume anything. I assumed that he, being a salesman, could drive. I didn't even ask, I assumed, this as I discovered makes an ass {of} u {&} me.

They talked the talk, and I, being a silly person at times, thought that we could help each other. I would give them 40% of my promotion and hosting business in return for some jolly hard work and total loyalty for a while, when that side of things was back where it was before (and I thought I knew how to achieve this) that was a pretty valuable piece of real estate and should make all their dreams come true.

Louisa had some pretty standard ideas of what worked with search engine placement, but I gave her her head, just in case she was right, she decided that sites such as cyprus-villas.com and cyprus-wedding.com were not up to the task and needed re designing.

See { http://web.archive.org/web/20060610043959/http://cyprus-villas.com/ } you will need to copy the whole url into your browser if you are interested enough to look ; and { http://web.archive.org/web/20060715024959/http://www.cyprus-wedding.com } to see the way they were before the fall of 2007. By April of 2007 they then looked like

{ http://web.archive.org/web/20061210103450/http://www.cyprus-wedding.com }
and
{ http://web.archive.org/web/20070408232910/http://www.cyprus-villas.com }

They had been running a website called seo-technology.com 'first alarm' should have rung when I discovered that they had fallen out with a German web designer in Larnaca, who had apparently stolen their site at seo-technology.co.uk, which Louisa had paid for using her credit card, but this chap had control of because of the hosting she was on with him.
The second alarm should have been the argument they were having with their landlords, the house they left without paying the rent, They moved into a newish semi on the outskirts of Larnaca, which I paid the deposit and rent on, this is when I discovered that he didn't drive and she was driving a rental car. The bills started coming in.... a ridiculously high electricity bill, the telephone, the school ... they wanted lifts, lifts to school, from school, he wanted lifts to go out selling advertising, everything he did seemed to need someone else to do a job first to facilitate him. Attention to detail was not her strong point. Not when doing anything for me anyway - I later discovered that great pains were taken when doing any work on their own sites but when working on ours, not at all - silly mistakes, time consuming things which mean ones time would be better spent just doing it oneself in the first place: links to the wrong pages, bad grammar, spelling mistakes (unnecessary in this time of spell check)

pools,, moving on to the town of Larnaca, the resorts in  Limassol , peaceful  locations like the west coast housing Polis, Latchi and the Akamas.. papahos, SEO Technology proving internet promotion from Cyprus. ! and on and on and on and on...

Oh the list goes on, but these are small things which I later discovered the reasons for.

I took out a loan at the bank for fifteen thousand Cy pounds to finance this venture - not ever having borrowed money before I didn't realise that this amount turns into thirty thousand odd by the time you pay it back, and I am still paying, for the next nine years apparently! To cut an exceedingly long story short, they were working behind my back on their own sites, pretending they had no money whilst collecting money secretly from my customers. When I discovered some mild disloyalty and called them on it, they left in the middle of the night, taking things which did not belong to them, leaving the house I was responsible for in an unbelievable state (it took 4 of us 2 days to begin to clear of rubbish and mess) and leaving unpaid bills and a trail of devastation.

Louisa McIntosh - Lister

Louisa and Ian McIntosh - beware of these people - McIntosh Communications and Seo technology are the names they trade under, they have no connection with Armata although they are apparently pretending that they do. They are still trying to collect money from people here. When I have time I shall elucidate further, but for now I need to put back together the complete mess I have been left with for doing people a favour- yet again.

On the 5th of June 2008 I saw a chat record of what I can only assume was Louisa, in some way trying to justify her actions. During this justification she wrote that she would like to bet me £10,000 that whatever I was thinking was wrong. Ok, I take that bet - does that mean that you now owe me another ten grand, because lady - if I was wrong, why did you turn tail and run? If I was wrong, why did you compound my suspicions by running off in the middle of the night with a chest freezer? Did you need it as cover while it was sent to the repair man? If so, that wouldn't work - there was a years guarantee on it, it was new. You also lied (or Ian did) by pretending that you needed your computer, which I let Ian take out of the office, in order for you to be able to get another job - as I had told him to take back the TV and that I was not wishing to either ruin or harm you in any way, why do you say ' Yes we did a bunk (we had no choice), you didnae have to deal with anything (but knowing you you CHOOSE to) ' There was no pressure on you to do a bunk, the pressure on you was to start behaving honestly, I did not choose to clean up your mess, it was my duty. You however chose to lie to me by pretending that you were preparing the instructions for how to use the program I had bought you and the passwords for the accounts you had created with Google etc, which I still do not have. I will post the contents of that chat on the other site, yes I have started posting things about mean people. I don't know who you are trying to kid with this nonsense, Prospective marks? yourself? me? Well unless Ian has been doing a number on us all (which I doubt) then you are perfectly well aware that you were both taking money from people under false pretences. I have had 2 visits from the police and one from the court server since you left, I have copies of affidavits written by people I had never heard of, the first was during the first month of our association. The affidavit says the following:

11th December 2007

Around the first week of November 2007, I hired Ian McIntosh and his wife Louisa to create a website for my new business. I was given a business card bearing the company names SEO Technologies and Armata with Ian’s name and phone number hand-written on the back. We arranged a meeting to speak about my website project and after the meeting I was quoted a fee of cy£800 and I was required to pay a deposit of cy£200 which I paid by Bank of Cyprus cheque on 16th November 2007. On this day Ian McIntosh told me he was leaving for England on a business trip with his family and would return in 2-3 weeks but he reassured me that the work on my website would still be in process.

On the 18th November I received an email from Louisa informing me that I would receive the first draft of my website by the end of that week by email. A few days later I received a phone call from the UK from Ian reassuring me once again that the website was being worked on and that I would have it soon. I have still not yet received anything. Since then I have tried to call Ian on his Cyprus and UK mobile phones, both always seem to be switched off so I left voice messages requesting that they return my call which they did not. Furthermore, I have emailed them but I have yet to receive any form of reply. This has resulted in the delay of my business starting date amongst other inconveniences.

M***** N******

Now this was apparently for a shopping cart site, this little 'lapse in communication' led to many more such slights on the good name of Armata. My lawyer advised me that at the very least I should run an international advertising campaign stating categorically that Louisa and Ian McIntosh have nothing to do with Armata and that any monies sought by them under any pretext whatsoever should e reported immediately to the police!

hi Jayne

I have a receipt for cy£200 made out to Ian's name. I have hired another web design company to take on my project shortly after i realised that Ian was no longer associated with Armata but i've already lost over a month and its still not live yet. Had i known sooner that Armata was your company and separate to Ian i would have come straight to you from the start. Anyway, im glad you are on our side and not a part of this all.

When i spoke to ****** ******* about all this (who are in the same position as me) they told me that you offered to reimburse both of us on the spot. It would be a great help as i have no other income at the moment due to the delay of my website. When can we sort this out?

People are still coming up to me and asking where their adverts are (not to mention those who ask why I have used their names on a site which they refused to be a part of), such as Astra, Octopus Diving ! The out and out brazenness of it ! My next door neighbour, who of course ASSUMED that this was on behalf of Armata - what do you mean

'Those last two weeks give or take i was working on something i told you what it was i just never gave you the address, well im sure you already know it by now, that project moved onto another one recently and has made a far bit of cash. It was exactly as i said (fuk all to do with Cyprus or anything that you was doing)

The people you either had or pretended to have on that site were all Armata's customers, our client list - this was fraud to all sides - wasn't Ian supposed to be selling advertising for Armata? what do you mean, your grip on reality really does need a bit of a brush up.

The bottom line Louisa is that when you say;

Im not asking for fuk all from you and obviously i want no pity i just think this page etc was well uncalled for. Do you want me to get a loan and pay you back what you invested is that what you want? We are back working now and doing well so getting you money wouldnâe be imposable.

Yes please. I do not appreciate the fact that I am now trying to borrow my kids school fees because I did what I did to HELP YOU, even unto paying your father back money, clearing Ian's overdraft and various other bits and pieces I would not have even done for myself in that situation such as anniversary and birthday presents from you to each other! You found a complete mug in me it seems, but this mug says ' Yes please' I owe 25,000 euros at the Laiki bank down to you, I will even swallow what I have already paid and be exceedingly grateful if you leave the ranks of those tossers you never understood who cheated me, Yes please, pay off my/your loan, give me my passwords and start sorting your karma out. You have 2 lovely kids who should not learn that the way to behave is to shit on your 'friends'.

And that upsets me more than the rest I supposed, just like Dimitris Mita was supposed to be my friend, who just had to run away and is now ' hiding in Russia (allegedly)

As a small aside, I had let 2 lots of people use a small flat I had in town recently. It saved them a few bob on a hotel for the night and I have always been of the mind that if someone lends you something that you return it in the same or better condition than it was when you took it.

Not the thing nowadays it seems. I was storing a white suite of furniture there for my mother prior to selling it for her, it had white covers on it. I arrived on the afternoon they were departing to find that they had taken the covers off the largest sofa. I went back a few weeks later to find they had let their 5 year old draw in ballpoint pen on all the arms of the sofas, the footstool they had used to house the ashtray had burn marks on the upholstery, they left their rubbish and they also left rotting food in the fridge on a plate!

What is it with people?