In Early 1997 Michel Gingras and myself were both members of YNOT. He, with Dirtybird and myself with JamesAndVictoria. Chatting via email, we quickly became friends. Shortly after that, Dirtybird asked Michel Gingras to step down from their company for reasons I have yet to have been told.

He decided to build a site called Susy.com. This site took him almost 2 months to complete and all the while, I gave him my moral support. When he finished the site, he told me he would pay me if I went through the site and proofread it since his primary language was French. I told him I would proofread it for him but if I took money from him, I really wouldn't be much of a friend.

He shortly thereafter opened the site but had no money to pay for advertisers. I took all my paying banners off my site and only advertised Susy.com and told him to pay me for the traffic when he could. My family went 2 months eating Maccaroni and Cheese for dinner for the next 2 months because of this. After a few months, he was able and did pay me what I was owed.

We met shortly at the first Internext show that was held in Miami but promised to see eachother again as soon as we could. That happened at the next show. Michel, my wife and I quickly became best of friends and I could not believe that he told me he ran Susy.com, Ultrahardcore.com and Gayvillia.com by himself and I offered him my services.

He offered me $15,000/month plus 10% of all the profit the sites would generate. We started out slow but quickly became known as a player in the adult internet industry. He realized that his program was in good hands and decided to take a camping trip with his girlfriend across Canada. At that time, I believe he had $50,000 in his bank account. During his trip, my duties included running the program, building new sites, paying webmasters and building traffic. I believe when he returned, he had almost $10,000,000 in his bank account. He repeatedly told my wife that he owed it all to me. As far as any of the webmasters were concerned, I owned Ultracash. And in a way, I did.

We then opened Freepictures.com as a freehost. He told me when I reached 2,000,000 unique hits/day, he would raise my percentage to 20%. Reaching 2,000,000 unique visitors took me all of 2 weeks and I was now a 20% partner in Ultracash.

Now remember, at that time, Ultracash was the number 2 webmaster program in the business so 20% of all profit was quite a chunk of change.

He then decided to hire a lawyer to move his money offshore. This lawyer was more of an accountant that I believe took him to the cleaners. The last I knew, Michel had paid him over $50,000 and nothing had been done. Michel was given promises of going public and becoming richer than his wildest dreams.

Remembering that I paid all the webmasters, the way it worked was like this. I would write checks from my bank account and send Michel a detailed statement of the money spent and he would wire the funds from Canada to my US bank account. You probably all remember getting those big checks from Wizard Computers. That was my own account.

Part of the rest of this story is speculation but most of it is fact. I was asked by Michels Lawyer (accountant) to send him a copy of all checks that had been written in Ultracash's behalf. My secretary did that and sent over 10,000 copies of checks, 3 to a page. After months of an accounting totaling the checks it was found that my figures were off by what Michel told me was $1,500. Now remember, during the time I used my account to send webmaster checks, over $4,000,000/month went through my bank account so a $1,500 discrepancy was really not a lot. I looked at my books as well as my secretary and we could not find the discrepancy so it could have been the accountants error as much as mine.

Soon later, I was told by Michel, he didn't like what was happening with the girls in the business and wanted to close the webmaster program down. We had now been open for 3 years so 20% of the recurring was quite substantial. Knowing that the reason Ultracash was such a good program was because of me, I had no doubts that I could do the same thing with Jimsmoney. For those that have started a pay per signup program understand that it takes a lot of money to start a program. I had about $60,000 and the rest of my money was controlled by Michel…a person I though of as a brother.

After 3 months of running Jimsmoney, I ran out of money. I asked Michel where my 20% of the profit from Ultracash was and was told, I would not be getting it. Remember, we had 3 years of recurring members and no webmasters left to pay. So, 20% was at least $300,000/month. When I opened Jimsmoney, EPOCH was going through contract changes and was told by them to just use the Ultracash account…which I did for a week. Jimsmoney accumulated $18,000 using the Ultracash account in that week.

I was now in a place where I had no money, webmasters were due and it seemed I was getting screwed out of my 20% of my recurring.

Believe me, I did everything I could to pay the webmasters. I sold my wife's Christmas gift and borrowed $100,000 from my parents and even $10,000 from my mother-in-law. We sold my wife's Harley Davidson and many of her diamonds for just one reason, to pay the webmasters the money I owed them.

I had to close down Jimsmoney and was on the verge of losing my house. Michel offered me the $18,000 Jimsmoney accumulated while on the Ultracash EPOCH account in exchange for my signing a document saying that Ultracash no longer owed me any money. I was left with a choice of suing Michel and losing my home during the lawsuit or take the money, pay my mortgage and try to start again. I took the money and took care of my family.

Last year, with still having access to Michels EPOCHs stats, I saw that Jimsmoney recurring had gained another $20,000. I wrote to him and asked for that money and was promptly told no.

People may wonder why I waited so long to tell this story. I have never brought this out in public and only told a few of my friends. The reason is simple, I am just not that type of person. I try my best to turn a bad thing into something good. But, with over 4 years going past, and with Michel putting out a movie last year saying he owed me nothing, I knew it was time to get this out in the open.

Everything I have said in this statement is true. Take it upon yourself to figure out what kind of a person Michel Gingras is. To me, he was like a brother. But now, I wouldn't even piss on him if he were on fire. He hurt me more than just financially. He hurt my trust in someone I loved as my best friend and the closest person I had as a brother.

I have a small update from when I wrote this story. It seems that Michel Gingras dream of going offshore didn't work. Revenue Canada has taken his house and everything he owned. He screwed his techs, models and hosts so Ultracash sites are no more. EPOCH eventually noticed the sites gone and stopped processing his recurring. He now shares a dorm room with a friend he knew from college and has nothing. Oh yeah...his wife left him when Revenue Canada took his house.

What is it they say??? What comes around, goes around.

Thanks You For Listening
Jim Barnett