03/18/2024
Here's a fun story for your Monday.
In 2018 just, ~2.5 years in to our practice being open, we were contacted by someone on behalf of Delaware Hayes to be sponsors for Delaware Hayes Basketball. The pitch was small advertising space on the back of T-shirts to be handed out during basketball season. I remember getting similar shirts during basketball and flag football camps at Colonel Crawford High School when I was young and was really proud to now be one of those sponsors contributing Delaware's young athletes. We try to be very meticulous with our advertising dollars because our budget is fairly small. We purchased a small space on the shirts two different times for several hundred dollars.
In October, I got an email from Heidi Plank, one of our great administrative assistants at Hayes, about some peculiar T-shirts. She shared that some shirts arrived in a beat up box at the high school and that our logo was on them. The peculiar part was that the front of them said "Delaware Hays" and that no one from the Athletic department knew anything about them. I explained how our name got on them and realized that we'd been scammed.
The story could end there, but it doesn't. I don't particularly like to made a fool of so I started to do a little research. I discovered through online reviews, the BBB, and a few scattered news articles that some scumbag in Texas was running this scam across the country through several different companies. He and his affiliates have called thousands of local businesses selling them advertising space on shirts, cups, mini-basketballs, banners, you name it, under the guise of "supporting" the school, but the reality was they were mailing some crappy paraphernalia, and pocketing what I assume to be hundreds of thousands of dollars for themselves.
The first thing I did was notify other optometry offices around our town and neighboring towns so they knew better and didn't fall victims themselves. Then I filed a complaint with the Texas Attorney General. I explained the above and that, while I only lost a few hundred dollars, the bigger issue is that this guy is directly diverting thousands upon thousands of dollars away from local schools across the entire country. Much to my surprise, a few months later a rep from the AG's office contacted me for some additional details and said they were actually going to pursue this guy! Time went on and I basically forgot about the whole thing except that every 9 months or so I would get a little update on the proceedings.
Finally, SIX YEARS later, they got a ruling against this guy and ordered him to pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines, refunds, attorney fees, and court costs. I read that in the middle of the proceedings his attorneys fired him because he wasn't paying them and he is now being sued by that law firm as well. I feel satisfied that he is at least not having the best time of his life right now. Moral of the story: Don't mess with Texas, or DFE.
We're happy to report that we received a 100% refund on everything that we paid his company and, while it's not a boatload of money, it definitely should be going to Delaware kids and not into some scammer's pocket. The check has been sitting on my desk for a month or so just waiting for the right opportunity to donate it back to the kids at Delaware City Schools.
This boys team is pretty great. They clearly have some talented individuals, but what really sets them apart is their unselfishness and their willingness to make the extra pass; perfectly exemplary of our Delaware community sticking up for one another.
Good luck in Dayton!
