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NeoScale web man posts Better Off Dead invoice

'I want my $4,400'

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Think of it as the technology world's equivalent of the Better Off Dead newspaper boy hunting down his $2.

Earlier this week, the website of encryption specialist Neoscale displayed the following message.

NeoScale owes its webmaster, of the last 5 years, $4400 USD

The message appeared just as UK-based security outfit nCipher announced that it had acquired some of NeoScale's assets, including technology and employees. It would seem, however, that at least one of NeoScale's former contractors didn't get taken care of as the company sold off its good bits.

An nCipher spokeswoman told The Register that an employee from a company called Marketing Tactics sent her a number of invoices, seeking compensation for work done on behalf of NeoScale - a company with $40m in funding . The spokeswoman informed the chap that nCipher would not be handling the invoices, since it was only purchasing NeoScale assets and not existing liabilities.

The Marketing Tactics fella responded as he saw fit, posting both the note about the webmaster fees and the nCipher spokeswoman's response on the NeoScale website.

Both notices have since been removed with NeoScale.com now redirecting to nCipher.com, although you can see trails of the web anger via a search.

Screenshot of a Google search for "Neoscale owes" showing the phrase in the results

I want my $4,000

"Lots of things are going to come out of the woodwork (during an acquisition)," the nCipher spokeswoman told us. "But we bought NeoScale's assets from a company called Hercules Technology. We didn't buy the business or take on any of their liabilities.

"It's very unfortunate that they haven't paid their webmaster." ®

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Latest Comments

Re: Shurly

The debt to this guy counts as a liability and since they didn't buy liabilities they don't owe him. But somebody does - and that somebody just sold an asset that wasn't really theirs ... it all depends on what the contracts involved look like.

Actually I think they're treating this website defacement surprisingly decently.

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Shurly

The guy claiming the money did some work that could be considered an asset? like some webdesign work? So it would be a kind of unpaid-for-yet asset... mabey...

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Dear Sir

I am Barrister Tunde Owolabi, Manager of Bills/Exchange at the Foreign

Operations Department of Ecobank Nigeria Plc.

In my department, we discovered an abandoned sum of Four Thousand Four Hundred United States Dollar (US$4.400.00) in a domiciliary account that belonged to one of our foreign customers, the NeoScale webmaster who died in a plane crash on March 9, 2000.

Etc, etc

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