Always Read The Fine Print
This happened many years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. This jerk of a former judge owned a company that owed my employer (I was controller) a bunch of money. He signed a “security agreement” for their receivables, meaning we could collect the company’s receivables to recover our debt. The only problem was that one of his employees was a friend of my boss.
This guy brought in a copy of exactly the same agreement, but with ANOTHER company, dated a month before. Now, being a CPA candidate, I was studying business law, and I also didn’t let details like that escape my notice. I said, “Well, this looks like fraud, and we can sue him for the entire company”. My boss calls our attorney (who hated this judge with a passion) and related the situation.
Yep, they are goners. We went to court, got summary judgment (the judge just laughed at the crooked judge) and we owned the company. It was fun.
Story credit: Reddit