The papers mainly accuse me of “damaging their business” and expresses Inetglobal’s intention to start a law suit in the USA against me. These papers were sent off middle of December last year and today is the 25^th February! If that is an indication of how fast moving things are when it comes to international law cases, then I am in for an interesting year or two!

Am I concerned? Yes and No.

Yes, because I have never had a law suit filed against me before, nor, for that matter have I ever received “legal papers” in a similar way. Going to the court alone was frightening enough. As the friend who accompanied me to serve as translator put it: “Things like this make you feel guilty even when you know that you have done the right thing.” I am really not looking forward to having to handle legal papers and proceedings for months and perhaps years to come.

No, because the FBI and other government authorities are investigating Inetglobal for exactly the same points I have written about on this blog. They are investigating Inetglobal for being a pyramid or Ponzi scheme. And that will certainly help my case when a formal law suit has started. When Inetglobal gets convicted for being an illegal pyramid scheme, then there is little chance that I get convicted for saying so in the first place.

Do I regret having written the original blog post?

No, not at all! If I saved only one person from losing money to Inetglobal, then it was well worth the time, effort and risk writing the said blog post. But I have to admit that my wording could have contained a bit more “in my opinion”-statements and could have been a tiny bit less candid. So, that is what I have learned so far: When writing critically about something then stating that “in my opinion xyz is a xyz” keeps your butt legally safer

So, what is happening now?

I received the papers and have 20 days to deliver my answer to them. This requires a lot of thought on my part. The fact is also that I will, most likely, have to defend myself because their is no way I can afford an “international lawyer”. One of the good things of living in a capital is that there are a lot of embassies around and so the first thing I did today after receiving the court papers was writing an email to the American embassy here in Prague and asking them, not for legal advice, I know that they can’t do that, but for advice about how legal procedures work in general there “over the big pond”.

I always felt it to be the right thing of keeping the discussion about Inetglobal to one single blog post and not converting, as I have been accused of doing by the “Inetglobal fan brigade”, this blog into a purely “anti-Inetglobal blog”. But I started this blog some time ago with the idea of documenting on things I do and commenting on things that I find. And so, yes, I will post updates on the Inetglobal situation here on this blog but I will also continue to write about other things that I hope are of interest to you

A tip on the hat goes to PatrickPretty.com for an excellent follow up blog post that explains the exact reasons why and for what Inetglobal is investigated by the FBI at the moment.

Oh, and btw, does anybody here knows of a good lawyer versed in international internet law that might be interested in a pro bono case? One can but ask

1. Don’t undersell yourself

Charge $750 for a sponsored blog post of, hold your breath, less than 60 words.

2. Don’t discuss with the customer.

But for your faithful, and attentive, readers, make your point in a subtle manner in the comment section.

3. Prevention of a similar event.

OK, sh.. happens, but you don’t want it to happen again So write a subtle blog post to get your point across without offending anybody and without putting anybody on the spot.

Summary: Look under the surface and you might learn a lot from John Chow A great example of blogging diplomacy and a great lesson in “Don’t do like they tell you, do as they do.”