What can you do when people cheat you?

It's a great question for the online world. People are cheating one another right and left online: auction winners who don't pay, or send bad checks; businesses who cheat you out of money.

Fact is, you've probably been cheated online already. If you haven't, give it a week or two. Because hey, what's so special about you?

The only thing special about me is, I have created a form of retaliation - the Internet deadbeat file. Like the bad checks you see lining the cash registers of Chinese take-outs, my deadbeat file is a compendium of names, domains, e-mail addresses, and incriminating anecdotes about anyone who promises to come through for me, then bails out.

Whenever this happens, whether the screwing is online or offline, I ("Hell hath no fury like a freelancer scorned") write the incident up and put it up online.

So far, after four years of this, I have nailed:

• A predatory turnpike tow-truck driver who failed to pay me $100 for car parts when my Volvo broke down on the way home on Easter morning, 1995, and I, in desperation, signed the great beige beast over to him. Evidently this is what constitutes hospitality in Bryan ("A Town Without Pity"), Ohio.
• A local politician who agreed to pay me $3,000 for a campaign booklet, had me to give him a disk of what I written, then, as politicians since Hubert Humphrey have done, elected not to pay. He was especially disappointing because he hid behind the continuous improvement philosophy of a hero of mine, Wm. Edwards Deming, while he ripped me off. Please don't elect this guy to anything!
• A small-time syndicate that sold my column via e-mail over 50 times to a computer tabloid in New York, and never paid me. My, we had a merry exchange of e-mails for about a week - which I gleefully include in the deadbeat file.
• Finally, I was unable to collect from eleven auction winners this spring on eBay and Amazon.com. I sent them repeated warnings, then sent them a congratulatory e-mail (SUBJECT: "You're not just a deadbeat, you're famous!") then posted their names and e-mail addresses.

Now, it would be nice if I could tell you that the deadbeat file was an exhilarating success. But I wound up with a mixed bag. On the plus side:

• You feel you have done something to avenge the wrong done to you. Even if no one sends in another dollar, you vented. And, in this century at least, that is considered healthy.
• Anyone looking for this person's name on a search engine will find your words of censure. You have permanently tarred this person's reputation - yippee!
• It's grand entertainment for visitors to your site. I get 50 people looking at my deadbeat file every single day. It's like slowing down to see a flaming car crash - human nature being what it is.

Of course, you heard the big but coming. Here's my big but.

But it only hurts the mildly bad, not the truly bad. And it's brutal. And it's ugly.

• It only hurts the mildly bad. Of the eleven auction winners who didn't pay me, eight were complete jerks -- they bid for the fun of it, from unregistered e-mail addresses, with the sole intention of wasting everyone's time. They never got my e-mails, and they change login names like you and I change socks. My eternal dunning does not affect them. But it's a stunning blow to people who flaked out, procrastinated, or went on vacation without paying. When they find out they made my list, they are either hurt or enraged. While they were dopes, they weren't on the same plain with the truly evil. I regretted slapping them.
• It's brutal. My story is only half the story. The mechanic who cheated me claims to this day there is a lien on my car, and that prevented his paying me. There isn't, but the claim muddies the water just enough to sound legitimate. Like Kurosawa's Rashomon, there is always another side to every story. Especially on the Net. The deadbeat page is hard put to reflect that two-sidedness.
• It's ugly. As for the syndicate guy, I suspect he's mentally ill - normal people just do not fly off the handle like he did. And it's hard to feel like a wonderful person, garbed in the unassailable cloak of victimhood, while taunting someone who's a few rungs short of a ladder. Truth is, I liked myself more losing the money and shutting up about it, than going ballistic and blowing indignant slime all over these people - and having everyone see me do it.

But I still enjoyed nailing the politician.

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