Trying to Make Things Work

I worked in my home office for a few months, I had some success and learned what worked and what people wanted. I thought it was time to get out of the house, open an office and maybe hire a couple of programmers. I knew I had limited resources, so I went to the bank in Port Jefferson I had used for years to see if I could get a loan to hold me over during the transition. I had been "out of work" a few months so I figured I was pretty much broke but was hoping for the best.

"Hi Bob, how can I help you today." I had known Jim for years, he was with Bank of New York until Key Bank took them over and stayed on.. then Chase took over and he stayed on again, so I stayed there too.

"Hi Jim, I was hoping we could talk about my account and see about borrowing some money."

"Okay, let's see, well you have a pretty healthy balance, how much do you need?"

"Healthy balance, how much is in there?"

"As of today, $62,292.65"

"What? That's impossible".

"Nope, your account, wait for another deposit just hit, $63,922.81"

"Do you mind printing out, say... the last few months for me?"

"No problem, it will take some time with all these auto deposits, can you come back at 3:30 after we close?"

"Sure, of course, happy to, for now, I'll just withdraw $500."

"Okay, I'll have that for you in a minute."

After a couple of stops and chores, I swung by the bank for a copy of my statement. I went home still in a daze, I kept thinking, "surely someone is going to realize that they are putting money into my account".

After dinner, I relaxed and started going over the statement. The deposits were small, 30 cents, $2.00 and change, and so on... but there were thousands of them. There were codes showing where the money came from, in checking it looked like there were maybe 2000-2500 accounts sending small deposits all day. There were some that were pretty late, but there weren't any at night. I went all the way back to my first deposits totaling 45 cents and realized that the code for that company, the company I use to work for, was the same as maybe 30% of the deposits. Obviously, they were using 'my' software to resolve the accounting issues for all their invoices and accounts receivables. Now it made sense, they must have given, or sold, the software to other divisions or even other companies.

It was unbelievable, no one checked to see how the software worked and they obviously didn't realize that at its core the software belonged to EDS and they were using it without a license or permission. Clearly, they had fired me, on those trumped-up charges, so they could take the credit for developing the solution and maybe even getting paid by some of the other companies.

"What to do, what to do?"

If I did nothing, my account would continue to grow with what I had decided to call "my royalty and severance pay". I needed a plan, I couldn't just let this keep happening. I did what any honest person would do. I went to my former company and asked to see the president. I would tell him what happened, what I did, and give the money to the rightful owners.

When I arrived I approached the security desk and asked to see the president. After the obvious discussion about "not having an appointment", "but that it was important", that 'he really needed to see me', etc. I asked if I could make an appointment for the next day. While the security guard was on the phone, my old boss came back from wherever and after seeing me, immediately told the guards that I had been fired and that I was not allowed in the building, blah, blah, blah. I was escorted out of the building and told to never come back.

So I called and asked for the president's office. I got through to a secretary and after I explained who I was and that I had important information for him, I was put on hold and then, either yelled at, told several times to stop bothering them, or left on hold until I disconnected.

"What to do, what to do?"

I was angry, I had tried to do the right thing, I had tried to explain. I tried to reach the president, the VP of Operations, the accounts receivable department and even called their accounting firm. In return, I was verbally abused and threatened with lawsuits and bodily harm if I didn't stop bothering them.

I actually tried, on and off, for a couple of years, and finally gave up. My account had grown to a few hundred thousand dollars and counting. There were now almost 5000 codes depositing small amounts in my account every day with the 15th and 30th being particularly busy. I didn't really try to determine which companies were making the deposits. After the way, I was treated I just figured it would eventually work itself out.

Assuming I would have to pay the money back at some point, I tried to live a frugal life, living off the interest and investing where I could, my wife still spent every penny in our joint account and maxed her credit cards every couple of months.

I know this is a little sneaky, but I also thought at some point EDS would want and receive royalties owed to them, so I purchased shares at anywhere between $12 and $16 each.

Early on I had told my friend at EDS what had happened and he didn't seem worried about it. He said things like "good for you and I'm sure it will all work out" or "let me know how it goes". But something changed in the summer of 1983. He said that he needed to "clean things up" and that he needed me to be ready to return all the money that had been deposited into my account. I told him I was ready, I had bought and sold other stocks, but had over a hundred thousand shares of EDS and I would sell them immediately if we could figure out who was owed the money. It took almost another full year, but with help from Jim, at my bank, and his deposit codes, after court orders were served to the publishing company and criminal charges filed against my old boss and the DP manager, it all came undone.

At the hearing, I told the court that I had never felt the money was mine, had many times tried to return it, and that, of course, I would gladly pay back all of it once we knew who got what. Of course, it was agreed that EDS would get their royalty payments first. I was in the clear as the only person who had permission to modify and/or use their software, but each user company had to pay what was due.

In 1984 I sold all the shares of EDS for $44, making on average, $25 a share. I paid back everything that had been accidentally deposited into my account, with modest interest, and still had a little over $3 million dollars in my 'stupid little' account.

It's weird how things work, while never being a software, or computer, guy for that matter, I had a keen interest in seeing where computers were heading. To that end, a couple of years before it all unraveled, I had attended a seminar at the Rockwell Institute where they presented what I thought was a great idea. Simply put they suggested a computer screen could be segmented to allow it to do multiple tasks at the same time and allow the user to freely switch back and forth between the smaller segmented screens or smaller windows.

Over lunch, I met a couple of guys that seemed to think there were two directions to go. Steve suggested the answer was a completely dedicated hardware and software company, while Bill was sure he could reach a broader market by perfecting software to work on various platforms. We promise to stay in touch and I was happy to help them get started by buying stock when they got going.

In the summer of 1986, I bought a million shares, for about 10 cents each, in Bill's company, he called it Microsoft. At the same time, I bought a million shares, at about 60 cents each, in Steve's company, first it was called Macintosh but later was changed to Apple. Sadly we didn't stay in touch, but needless to say, those investments did quite well.

There was quite a bit of money in my little account, but having seen the pattern of unbridled spending and multiple affairs, I only withdrew enough money to pay the bills and keep us going. There were other investments some did well, others no so much, but I never dipped into the principle balance and never spent more than 50% of that year's interest or earnings, so the account continued to grow.

This is just about the time in the story that my wife decided I wasn't good enough for her and could leave with what we agreed to.

I liked my little apartment and stayed for a rough few years. One day I looked around took a breath and realized I needed to enjoy life, so even though I was only 53, I decided to retire. I became one of those guys who gets up late, takes the train into the city, has lunch at a great restaurant, spends the afternoon at a museum and has dinner with friends at his favorite bar/restaurant. In my case, that place of choice was Vento, which later was changed to Dos Cominos, off 14th street in the Meat Packing District. I had a lot's of fun, met a lot of great people, and made some friends for life. I spent way too much time and money there, but along the way found myself.

I think it was 2009, or maybe 2010, I made one more small investment. I had always liked the idea of an alternative currency. One that was owned by people instead of governments, something "they" could technically not see. So when I heard about BitCoin I invested a thousand dollars. They were selling for 8 cents each, up from 8/10's of a cent, so I then had 12,500 BitCoins of what would surely become worthless crypto-currency someday.

I invested in a few homes, I traveled a lot, I tried to always be someplace warm. In 2015, I moved out of the states permanently. I was rarely here anyway. I checked around and found that I could become a citizen of Andorra. My tax rate would be fixed at 10% of annual earnings, so it made sense not to be a permanent resident of anywhere else. I am required to spend at least 90 days a year there but can come and go as I please. I don't spend more than a month or two in any one place, so it all suits my lifestyle perfectly.

This year, once they reach $50,000 each, I sold my BitCoins. I thought I'll cash out and negotiate a great rate with a few highly-rated banks around the world, it has worked out nicely. If you do the math, you'll see what I mean.

Along with my other real estate investments, I had bought a summer house in East Hampton, along Further Lane. I really liked the upper west side too, especially during the opera season, so I also bought a townhouse on West 65th street. It was a short walk to Lincoln Center and Central Park and there was a parking garage just down the street. I find myself on Long Island for a month in the late summer and a month or two in the townhouse for the spring and fall.

I hadn't planned on it, but I was getting gas one day out East and saw a 1970 Chevelle SS up on blocks and asked about it. Tony, the manager at the garage told me that it was left by someone who couldn't pay their bill. One thing led to another and I ended up not only buying the car but having the interior completely redone, took the 350V8 with an automatic transmission out and put in what is called a 'rock crusher' five-speed manual transmission while having the engine bored out to 383, added a performance cam and stoked it to boost the horsepower to just about 425HP, with excellent torque.

We changed the rear end to 3.72 and painted it a metallic "Bright Blue" that, in 1970, was only available for Corvettes. We also painted the original twin white stripes over the hood and scoop. I loved driving that car... but loved it, even more, when people, young and old, would stop and talk to me about the car, and why they loved it too.

With more money than I'd ever need for myself, I would buy anything that had meaning to me and my life so the collection grew. I had a full-time mechanic and paint and body guy. I had plenty of land at the Hampton's house, so I built a 15 bay garage with storage lifts in each bay. Two were dedicated to resorting cars, the other 13 could hold a total of 26 cars and I started to fill it with cars I loved or finds that were just too good to pass up.

A few years later we were cruising in my 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. We had been in the city, and stopped to meet an old friend at the Stony Brook Inn for coffee, on our way home. As we were on the North Shore anyway, so we stopped at Danford's Inn, on the harbor, in Port Jefferson for a light lunch. They have tables inside overlooking the water, but when it's warm they have seating on an outside deck. I had their lobster club, my lady didn't want the lobster, so she had a chicken salad sandwich and we enjoyed the view.

Of course, I hadn't let the attendant drive my car, but was happy to pay a premium to park it, by itself, in the loading zone, right near the back door. It's simply too rare to let someone drive it (have you seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off?), so while I'm not fussy about possessions, I'm not crazy either.

We had a nice lunch.

We were walking arm in arm towards our car. There were a group of people standing around it, which wasn't unusual. The guys were looking over the car, while the ladies rolled their eyes, one guy was saying..."I'm telling you, I saw an auction a couple of weeks ago and a car like this, but not as nice, went for over forty-two million dollars."

As we got closer I realized the four couples were my ex-wife, with I'm guessing her current boyfriend, holding her hand, and a few of my former friends and neighbors.

As we approached, they moved aside as I helped my lady into the car... the guy holding my ex's hand asked, "Is this an original?" I walked around to the driver's side I looked at him, I said "yes".

One of the ladies turned and asked, "Bob, is that you?" I turned, smiled, said "Yes" but continued to get into our car.

I said, "Excuse me" and they awkwardly moved aside as I slipped behind the wheel. I carefully backed out and drove away with them standing there, with their collective mouths open. I couldn't really say if it was the car or my very pregnant wife that caught them off guard, but then again, I don't really care.

I wish I could tell you what I did and how I did it. But I really don't know, I just keep trying to make things work.