September 12, 2008
Someone who found this site after being asked to send money to William notified us of his current activity. He is on Craigslist as usual, but reselling hardware, mostly Cisco. Oh, and a new phone number as well (513-290-0410).
An excerpt …
He told me that if I needed to send payment via paypal to send it to a FreddyAvila@msn.com. He said this was his “partners” paypal because they have “locked up” his account before because of “big purchases in the thousands” . When I asked him what the name of his company was and If he was “busy at the office” he said he worked for O.K.I.O. Wholesale, and he is always busy busy busy.
Funny, he told another potential victim earlier this year he worked for a local (Cincinnati) magazine …
And Freddie … are you still doing business with him? You are aiding and abetting a criminal, don’t you think?
September 4, 2008
Finally getting to posting this (almost lost it in a pile of old emails!)
William Franklin is, after much research, to be considered a Total Fraud.
I have a project to create an internet site that would assist many people. Amazing Butterflies Ecological Foundation is in the process of creating a mobile educational facility that would be able, at no cost to the teachers, give educational presentaions on various topics of environmental issues. Including education of the life cycles of various insects. This facility would travel from school to school or to city/county events where appropriate.
To fund this we were going to use handicapped and visually impaired individuals to make the phone calls to local and state businesses offering our vendors services.
So the project was going to help both in offering free educational presentations to children and adults while offering job opportunities to handicapped and the visually impaired.
We paid William Frankling over $900 for this project and to print postcards for us.
He, needless to say, did neither! Everyday was another excuse why the world treated him so unfairly and how the websites that complain about him are all untrue, etc… Full Story »
September 4, 2008
Still catching up with projects, personal and professional, but I’m taking a breather to post this story …
He actually got me on Craigslist in Atlanta. I contacted him through it on june 25th. He was going by William and I hate to say I actually talked to him a couple times on the phone. I started to get suspicious after he would get me items and say he needs “it tomorrow” or “finished by 6pm today” — that kind of crap.
His “company” was Kentucky web design. He gave me a contract to sign - NDA - go figure, and actually included a signature on the document. I dont know if it really is his, but whatever. I just hope he doesn’t attempt to use my signature now. I have tons of his emails (about 200) and knew something was fishy after I demanded money from him after an initial amount of work done. He took me for about $1,400 worth of work not calculating kill fees and wasted time (~$2,000 total).
I also contacted the companies I did the work for through him and let them know of my findings on Friday. So far, only one company has contacted me back and they sent it off to their legal department. I let them know because he actually has their server FTP login information and they need to protect themselves from this man.
Would be happy to help in any way possible. I hate that this happened to me because I was counting on that money coming in and it caused a hardship for my wife and I, but I don’t want to have that man continue what he is doing…
August 27, 2008
A number of people contacted me this month about William Franklin, both near misses and victims. As I’ve been busy with projects and moving, I will probably follow up with more details in a week or two.
July 23, 2008
Here is one of the three recent complaints we received, published at their request after deadlines to make things right passed, hoping he would make good.
This is my story…
I am a freelance graphic designer based in Houston, Texas. To get
jobs, I sometimes go to Craigslist.org and search within various
cities for those who are looking for a freelance, off-site designer. I
came across a posting on June 24 from someone who needed some work
done that day, so I responded with my interest, online portfolio and
my hourly rate. I received a fairly quick response from William
Franklin.
William said that he needed a logo designed and asked if it would be
okay to pay me after it is completed. I agreed to those terms and
designed a logo for him. By the end of that evening, I did logos for a
few different businesses. He seemed to like my work, so over the
course of the week, I received more logo design jobs from him as well
as some web layout jobs. That Friday, June 27, I submitted an invoice
to William and asked that payment be sent so that it is received next
week. I told him I wanted to be paid weekly until we build up a
professional working relationship, and once I had received a few
payments, I would be more than happy to accept payment twice or once a
month. Full Story »
July 20, 2008
Through some private investigation, we believe that William’s Covington, KY address (Apt.1) is also that of his sister and brother-in-law (Apt#2), the former of which had a Cincinnati address he used to register domain names in the past, supposedly without her knowledge.
On another note, a new round of people scammed is coming in (mostly through Craigslist), and so the bonus to this post is his NEWEST fake company name: Kentucky Web Development
More to follow …
June 25, 2008
Same old hollow arguments, different site:
williamfranklintruth.com/wordpress/
He never ceases to crack me up. On his “About” page, he writes:
For over 4 years, Bob and Ken have made their living destroying my reputation.
Yeah, we keep a roof over our heads by running this site. Maybe someone SHOULD pay us for this consumer education. But then here’s the lie that will cost him if he pushes it:
Everyone out there has had problems with clients both past and present (just ask Ken) he told me on numerous occasions (while he was a customer) of mine over 4 years ago to provide dial up access to his clients in Western New York (which he still owes money to me for the services that were used). And to date continues to blow it off.Â
Yes, please do ask me.  I never talked about other clients to him that I can recall (and probably wouldn’t have anyway), and I can count dissatisfied customers on one hand with fingers to spare.
But the boldfaced lie is appropriately in bold {emphasis mine}. I paid a deposit of $150 dollars and used approximately $50 in services. We discussed a refund which of course he promised and then denied.  Like other people who know him personally, I truly believe he changes history in his own sick mind to make the other party the bad guy, no matter how obvious the contrary to the rest of the world.
The rest is almost a satire about himself and not worth getting into unless you have popcorn handy … BTW, Thanks to Doug Simar, the other person he libeled in his site, for sharing this link.
Teaser: We now know more about his Covington address and new contact information, which we will publish shortly - but we have yet to wait for an explanation from William’s blog why he can’t keep the same business name or phone number more than a few months.  :^}
June 6, 2008
A company hired William to do a simple animation for advertising use. Delays in project benchmarks become major concerns as the deadline passes, and then he admits to hiring out the work while constantly claiming he was working on it himself.
When a refund is due, he stalled ten ways to Sunday, keeps asking for where to send the payment (after being told) and then eventually devolves into the usual “only contact me by email” after getting tired of phone calls asking for the money. Full Story »
May 22, 2008
I got a few emails from different people this week, confirming his Kentucky address, but having new phone numbers (updated on main page). Stories of new scammings will be posted shortly.
William, you let us down … again.
April 30, 2008
Using your head = Not doing business with William Franklin …
from William Franklin <wmfranklin@insightbb.com>
to XXXX XXXXXXXX <XXXXXXXXXX@gmail.com>,
date Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 2:26 PM
subject RE: Database project
Ok, here is a brief run down real quick on what’s going on…
I had two companies that were handling my overflow work, I had a weekly billing agreement with them, where they billed me weekly for the work that they did. Everything was going great with them.
The problem is, they are getting overloaded with work. I need another hand on this stuff, it would and can be easy 40 hours per week.
Is this something that you are interested in before we get farther in this?
ALWAYS ask these questions and wait for it … here’s the email I received that started the research for this post:
This dude tried to get me to do 40 hours of work UP FRONT. When I said I would need a few things, like:
-contract
-VERIFIED contact information
-VERIFIED business information / location
He quickly flaked off. It was hilarious. I found your site and responded back to him that he was famous and asked if I could get his autograph and hand over all my bank account information.
Anyway, thanks for the site. Saved me a headache with this dude I am sure.
Another one, by the way, is Tony Etienne in Atlanta. He stole my work and passed it off as his own. I never saw a dime.
Williams email he was using today is:Â wmfranklin@insightbb.com
Thanks again,
XXXX XXXXXXXX
So the question is if he isn’t even trying to make up business names any more, or if this site chased him (rightfully) off the Internet.
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