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There are a couple of important lessons to learn from the story you’re about to read. One is that you should always get any sort of business-related agreement in writing, even if it’s a friend or family member.

Another point is that you should never use your own money when someone hires you to do a job for them.

And a third point is that revenge can be sweet even when you don’t get your money back.

In this story, a construction company owner ignores the advice of his wife and uses his own money to finish a project.

Keep reading to see the consequences and how his family gets revenge on the person who swindled him.

Refuse to pay, have fun sorting out your walls, getting sick and losing everything.

Happened many years ago when I was 14/15.

My Dad has been in the construction business all his life and we were doing well at that time.

So Dad gets a call from a friend of a friend, we’ll call him Giant Dummy (GD), to go and give a quote on a really large job. Building a school in the middle of nowhere.

I am from South Africa and this school was in a very remote part of the Drakensberg in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal not far from the little town we lived in.

This seemed like an exciting opportunity.

So my Dad and Brother are super excited as this could lead to more of these types of tenders coming their way and GD who called them had been getting a lot of these contracts and subbing them out.

So Dad and brother go into this job with meaning.

Halfway through the BS starts.

GD asks them to put their own capital down because his money is supposedly tied up in the other projects he has.

Oh no!

While my Dad is great at his trade he’s not that great at business and instead of seeing the red flags and listening to my Mom to down tools, he proceeds to use hundreds of thousands of our own capital to finish the job. Even loaning against our home.

Time to pay comes around and it’s one BS story after another.

Eventually the realization kicks in that we’ve been screwed.

We have to close the business, sell vehicles and one of our houses and this GD has essentially ruined us. We won’t be getting our money back.

The consequences were awful.

Taking this guy to court is pointless because of the costs involved and the fact that my father willingly used his own capital and there was no contract apart from a verbal agreement.

Everyone is ticked off specially my Mother for obvious reasons.

My Dad and Brother have to move to another Province to find work and things are really bad. So bad that my mother and I were eating only once a day up until I finished school.

So bad that my parents still haven’t recovered fully up to this day because work is so scarce in SA and my Dad was already quite old when it happened.

OP and his brother had an idea for revenge.

The revenge:

Normal revenge: The school had specific colors they wanted the buidlings painted. White, royal blue and Burgundy. (the colors of the school)

We had some left so one night me and brother stayed up late playing PC games, talking trash and waiting for the right time to exact our revenge.

At around 2 in the morning we sneak out with the paint and go over to GD’s mansion (double storey thatch roof place with these walls that where done up to look like they were built out of natural rock)

Kids can be good liars.

We proceed to give his walls the Jackson Pollock treatment and promptly took our leave. We made sure to take the paint cans with us and dispose of the evidence.

The next day the trash hits the fan. Cops come knocking saying that a case of vandalism had been opened and GD claims it was us because the colors match the paint used to paint the school.

Brother and I play dumb, Mom and Dad swears that both of us where in bed the entire night as both of them supposedly checked on us.

Nothing further comes of this but GD knows it was us and is mad.

Then, there was a rumor.

Pro revenge: A couple of years later there is rumors flying around that GD was hit with an investigation by SARS South African Revenue Service (SA’s equivalent of the IRS) and they found he had not paid a lot of tax for years.

All of his tenders and contracts get suspended pending the outcome of the investigation.

He becomes terribly ill as a result of all the stress and claims he has cancer to garner sympathy from our towns community but by now everyone knows what he’s about and shuns him.

OP eventually found out how the rumor got started.

Investigation reveals he has not been paying tax for more than 5 years. All of his assets gets seized and he loses everything while his health steadily declines.

GD eventually moves away to another province. Last I heard he was supposedly in some high care unit on his last legs.

I ask my Mom about it and she admits that she had spoken to a long time friend in SARS and asked her to check into his finances. Mom never did get much for reporting him (enough to put down a good deposit for another house and buy a car) but the revenge was so sweet because he burned us so bad.

OP’s dad made a huge mistake using his own money for that building project, ignoring his wife’s advice and not even getting the agreement in writing. Oh my!

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

It is pretty crazy.

This person has a question about taxes.

Another person knows you don’t tick off moms.

Here’s some more praise for OP’s mom.

I’m honestly surprised OP’s parents didn’t get divorced after that fiasco. The dad just needed to listen to his wife and not agree to use his own money for the project.

That was a disaster, and while the revenge didn’t exactly fix anything, it was certainly satisfying.