Of course!

I used to work in financial report automation and was recommended to some rich dude. I tend to choose my clients carefullly so we talked and he seemed like a nice guy. Talked about his charity organization a lot. I took him as a client.

The project was a nightmare. No one in his team was willing to be specific about any critical details and he didn’t really know what he wanted so he kept changing specifications.It also quickly became evident He was doing shady shit with his numbers. I was screwed, though, because had no other jobs and and was about 100 hours of unpaid work in at that point. I figured i’d deliver and then just never talk to the guy again. There was lots of progress at that point too, but he missed the first agreed payment. Then he missed it again. Then the time for the second payment came and he hadn’t paid the first yet.

I asked his team and payments were always “coming next week”. Eventually one of his team members felt bad for me and confessed that they had received instructions directly from him to say this but not pay me.

I realized he was going to stiff me. I asked for a meeting to review progress with him. We met up, he asked me how i was doing. With a smile and never being threatening or rude I told him i was having some tax trouble due to an accounting error. I then said “but thank god my sister works in the (local version of the) IRS/tax service so she helps me with my questions”. This is true btw.

He raised an eyebrow and asked me a bunch of stuff regarding my sisters position and how the organization worked. I didn’t really reply to his questions. Instead, i said “well i gueas the most important thing is that there are 3 ways to get an audit: random selection, inconsistency in ingormation by reporting agents such as banks and real estate registries or…” and then I paused for a split second and said “anonymous tips.” And then I kept talking about my fictional “accounting error” and acted like nothing happened. The information regarding how to get audits is all true here btw.

This was a threat. And not an empty one, mind you. His charity organization was a tax evasión maneuver, and not a neatly tied one. I could cause a lot of damage to him.

The meeting went on talking about work alone.

People like him understand these subtelties. I asked him about payment at the end of the meeting and he apologized and told me i’d get paid this very week. I got paid the next day.

I could have gone to authorities anyway, but people like him can be extremely dangerous if you do them harm. He had the resourcea and connections to make me miserable if he chose to. With this it was understood, by both of us, “don’t fuck with me and i won’t fuck with you” Threats are better for everyone when dealing with these types imo.

Note that this situation was nuanced, and what i did was use the leverage i had on something I knew he cared about in a way that he would understand but never dorectly threatening him.

I did this in front of his team. While everyone understood what had happened, i have all the plausible deniability in the world and it was subtle enough for him to not feel hummiliated.

Sun tu says something like “provide your enemy with a golden bridge to retreat through”. He also said “the supreme art of war is to defeat your opponent without ever fighting”. I feel like i only truly learnt the meaning of those words after this situation.

Sorry for the shit spelling. Am on my phone.

Hope it helps.