(*Here's hoping he's still in prison and/or doesn't read Reddit.)

Back in the early days of the internet my brother and I worked with a man who held several patents to do with internet connectivity. He was always in court fighting one case or another. If he had won, he'd have become even richer than he already was and my brother and I would have benefitted greatly. In the millions. Things were going very well, except for the fact that the guy was a major douchebag. Still. This was business and douchebags were a dime a dozen. Well, we had a huge meeting with a really large company. (*Think Canada) They held a massive buffet-meeting in the headquarters. Really rolled out the red carpet. My brother 100% sold them on jumping in on what we were doing and we were on our way. A major celebrity at the time was set to host the grand opening, the city had given us a remodeled building to use as office space. This was a really big deal as we'd have employed several hundreds of local people. While getting ready to film for a news network we were told by the douchebag to set up desks and fill them with people. Here's the kicker. It was to be all fake. He had no intention of fulfilling any of these promises. He simply wanted to present enough of a case to show the use of his patent to help win his case. This old Canadian company was set to spend several millions of dollars on something that was never going to happen. My brother and I quit. We called up the company and informed them we were no longer involved in the project. As my brother was the one who sold them on the idea they were surprised but realized that we couldn't tell them anything. What we did tell them is that they would be advised to really consider what they did next.

​

In the end, the deal fell through, some people were fired from the company and the man we worked with went to prison. My brother and I? We said goodbye to several million dollars.

Do I regret choosing honesty or money? Only sometimes.