Why are there so many "scamsultants". Because idiots keep hiring them.
Nice piece, Jacques. In my younger days, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you. (And I still agree with your major point: Don't do this!)
By now in my jaded older days, when I see so much clashing between the ideal and what's really happening, I'm not so sure.
I've spent a career cleaning up the messes of scamsultants. And you know what happens to them? They move on and make bigger messes. And more money for themselves. Sometimes, a lot more.
In just the past 5 years:
- My accountant fired his IT guy for fraud. When he told a half dozen of his associates, every single one of them asked for the IT guy's number because they couldn't find anyone. They didn't care about the fraud.
- A scamsultant for one of my customers ripped them off for over $2 million. They decided not to sue him because of the bad publicity (and embarassment). He now has a new company name, a new website, and one of his testimonials (fake, of course) is from the company he just ripped off.
- Another scamsultant convinced one of my enterprise customers to hire 80 more people into their IT department because "lack of resources" was their biggest constraint. 2 years later, they fired most of those people (who came from the scamsultant's own agency and couldn't do the job). The scamsultant is now doing the same thing to 2 other enterprises in other parts of the country.
- A scamsultant tried to split the commission with my co-founder on her side hardware business. She told the customer who immediately fired the scamsultant. I just saw him driving a new Mercedes SUV into another local customer's parking lot.
- A scamsultant set up the software to (believe it or not!) funnel every 5th customer credit into his own bank account. It took the auditors 2 years to unravel this. He was promptly fired, but never prosecuted (embarassment, I presume). Now he's selling new e-commerce software to new suckers.
- Another customer hired 20 .net programmers through a scamsultancy. After 2 years, they had produced nothing. They were all fired. I stayed in touched with quite a few of them. They are all still working.
As long as people value money over ethics, this shit will always happen.
Don't do this, but don't be surprised when others do and get away with it.