Updated: 5/4/13

***The Saga is finally over***
May this be a lesson learnt and most importantly, if you don’t already know it –  social media can be really scary.

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I call this, the Sheikh Ridhuan Saga.

So allow me to sum up the whole story in words and pictures which is easier than looking through the 100+ pages of Cassandra’s thread on EDMW forums [thread closed] that has been really active.

Who’s Involved?

1. Cassandra (TS & Victim(
2. Sheikh Ridhuan
3. EDMW-ers on this thread

The Short Story

Cass, a budding blogshop owner found a website designer Sheikh Ridhuan on Elance.com to help her build an e-commerce site for a budget of below $500 in February. From Feb – Mar 13, Sheikh pulls alot of stunts ie – uncle died, need money for gf during vday, laptop died, need money for wordpress plugin blablahblah and basically, her site was not completed by her stipulated deadline(s) and she gave him so much leeway. After wasting so much of her time, as any ordinary person, Cass is unhappy and demanded a refund which he promised to give her.

He didn’t so she posted her story on Facebook which I then picked up the story as seen here to share on my blog. Facebook took down her post so she turned to EDMW forums where he story picked up and he got thrashed + CSI-ed. During the next few days, he threatens her to commit suicide first, then threatened to sue her (and me as seen here) and lastly, said he will suicide again.

On the morning of 1st April, he promised to return her money by latest, 2 April and in return he would want all the blogs posts (e.g mine and several others) as well as all the threads from EDMW, Sgcafe, etc to be closed down. Also mentioned that he was disowned by his family etc and basically painted himself to look like the victim. Lastly, he also said that he would like to find her family to talk to them.

On 2 April 2013 afternoon, he smsed Cass saying that his client just paid him via cheque so he has to wait for the money to be in his account before he can transfer to her. She said she will give no quarter if she doesn’t see the money by 12am.

It’s already past 12am, 2 April and Cass has decided to take action by e-mailing the story to The New Paper, STOMP, Wanbao and Berita Harian

Updated 5/4/13: The New Paper published the story. Saga is over(:

Updated 4/4/13: Apparently he has transferred her the money and she has informed the EDMW thread administrators to close the thread. What exactly transpired – I’m not sure. Will this really make it to The New Paper tomorrow? I don’t know either. I’ll see what happens tomorrow when the bf picks up his daily copy of The New Paper and we’ll see(:

Updated 4/4/13: The New Paper will be publishing about the saga/story tomorrow, so grab a copy(: 

Updated 3/4/13: Apparently Lianhe Wanbao and The New Paper have contacted Cassandra for more details, so this saga may appear in the news o.o 

Title: “Young Singaporean entrepreneur stands up to local con-man, garners massive support online”.

The Juicier, Detailed and Longer Story (With Descriptions and Pictures)
Credits: Cassandra and EDWM thread of 100+ pages =.=

1. Cassandra was looking for an affordable freelance to do up her ecommerce site on elance.com in February 2013. This guy, Sheikh Ridhuan approached her saying that he is able to do up her site for her – within the stipulated budget of under $500.

2. Cassandra and Sheikh met up for a face to face meeting on the 8th of February to discuss the details and she agreed to pay 2/3 of his fees upfront.

3. The 1st preview of the site was supposed to be on 11/12 Feb, but nothing. Then starting on 13 Feb, he started pressing Cass for payment as apparently ‘he is out of budget’ even though it was agreed on that the last part of the payment is supposed to be AFTER the completion of the project.

4. Still on 13 Feb, he said that the site is more or less completed and he asked her to transfer the rest of the money to him since it’s completed

5. Obviously the site wasn’t up and so he claims that there was a sync issue with her hosting. Then he proceeded to ask her for $20 in advance as he didn’t have money to spend on his gf for Valentine’s Day on 14 February.

6. Feeling sorry for him, Cass gave him an advance of $50 even though she felt rather unhappy that he wasn’t able to deliver what he had promised

7. And over the next few days, again, the site still wasn’t up and so she finally asked him to give her another definite deadline.

8. As usual, he didn’t deliver since 14 Feb which he had initially promised.

Also, just to mention, apparently on 17th Feb, he asked her for another $30 as his hosting expired (ehh wth right?) and she rebutted by saying that she had already purchased the hosting for him (as he requested)

After her rebuttal, he claimed that the $30 is actually for a WordPress plugin instead. She then asked for the Paypal invoice.

In the end, he never did send her the Paypal invoice, but Cass let this incident slide.

I guess after that, they were still communicating via email from Feb – 17 March about her requested changes but as you can see from the emails below..he next claims that his laptop is down (ANOTHER EXCUSE?!) and sent it for repairs on 15th March 2013.

After that, she didn’t get an email back so she messaged him again.

9. Obviously by then, you – much less Cass will get really unhappy because she had already paid and didn’t get anything for more than ONE month! He then came up with a million excuses!

10. That one month made Cass really really mad – who wouldn’t be right? So she issued an ultimatum to Sheikh and demanded a refund if her site was still not up.

He agreed.

11. He promised..then suddenly he came up with a new excuse (unsure if real or fake) that his uncle passed away in Malaysia and he had to rush there.

12. Of course Cass was very understanding about his uncle’s demise and gave him a two days to settle everything before asking yet again if her site was up.

13. He promised her a refund if nothing was still up by 7pm on 24 March 2013. And…really, by 7pm, NOTHING was up.

14. He said he would refund her back her money, apologized again and said he got into an accident blahblahblah. But has he given a though about Cass? He wasted her money..and most important, her time to do up her site.

15. After that, she called and smsed him, but it seemed that he went AWOL, so she went public on Facebook about what he did on 27 March 2013. I picked up the story from one of my Facebook friends and proceeded to share it on my blog as well to warn everyone.

It apparently affected him after that i.e someone told him or etc so he threatened to commit suicide

16. On 29th Mar – Facebook takes down her post with 3k+ shares while Cass files a Police report – but they say they cant do anything. So she proceeds to post on EDMW forums HERE

The people at EDMW picks up her story and proceeds to do their own investigation EDMW-CSI style and dug up loads of stuff about him including:

• Real FB Profile
• Real Name
• Home Address (Recently)
• Business Profile
• YouTube Account name
• Apparently he is very close to owning a BMW

17. On 30th March 2013, he had apparently decided not to commit suicide anymore because he proceeds to message Cass the following and portrays himself as the victim:

18. EDMW-ers continue to thrash him and I guess he was keeping track of the forums, so he decided to threaten to sue Cass.

“Hi cass, i’ll see you in court next month, i pleaded you not to post anything else, you still insist on being a hero”

At the same time, he also posts the following on EDMW.

19. He also emailed me threatening/warning me to remove my post at 1.50am on 31st March.

20. At approx 2.50am on 31st March 13, he messaged Cass again apologizing and saying that he’s going to commit suicide (again!) and basically just admitted he doesn’t have $300 to refund her.

Which is a point that makes everyone puzzled – what about the BMW which he claimed that he would be owning soon? Then $300 should be a mere pittance right?

21. He messaged Cass the following this morning (1 April 13) saying that he’s disowned and his family has been blacklisted (unsure of the authenticity so I’ll just leave it to your assumption). Also said he would return her the money by today or tomorrow but demanded that in return, all the blog posts (e.g mine and a couple of others) and forum posts (EDMW, Sgcafe etc) about him to be taken down.

*raises eyebrow at the last point*

22. Next, he promised to transfer Cass her money back by  2 April 2013, after completing a client’s project. Also, not sure why, Cass’s photobucket account was banned and all the initial photos uploaded were deleted.

23. All the EDMW-ers await, most predicting he will come up with another excuse. And he did! On 2 April 2013, 5.50pm, he smsed Cass saying that his client just paid him via cheque so he has to wait for the money to be in his account before he can transfer to her. She said she will give no quarter if she doesn’t see the money by 12am.

24. It’s already past 12am, 2 April and Cass has decided to take action by e-mailing the story to The New Paper, STOMP, Wanbao and Berita Harian

Title: “Young Singaporean entrepreneur stands up to local con-man, garners massive support online“.

25. 4th April, afternoon in one of her posts, Cass said that she went down for a photoshoot with The New Paper as The New Paper will be publishing this story on 5th April 2013(: 

26. However in the evening of 4th April, apparently he has transferred her the $300 back to her after 110+ posts on the EDMW thread and the act of publishing this news in the papers. Cass has asked the administrator to close the EDMW thread. Meanwhile, whether this story actually reaches TNP is another thing as well. The bf is going to pick up a copy of his daily TNP anyway, so let’s see.

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Other highlight to include from Cass (as taken from EDMW forums):

Ever since she exposed him on Facebook, others have also contacted her saying that he constantly seeks to borrow money from people around him, giving sob stories and never returning it. Theft issues at school too when he studied there. And she also suspects a couple of similar cases like hers.

For example, a guy messaged her and told her that:

“i fell for the same guy last year. I bought his ticket through groupon and after that his site was taken down. I tried to contact him for an appointment but his response was slow. Let me know if i can join in the case.”

Oh and some general FAQ:

Where’s the original website he did for Cass? How does it look like?
The current website Sheik did for her has been removed as another person helped her to restart the website and removed it. Also, the initial preview + login he did for her was just a basic template with some cosmetic changes done.

What are the issues with the original site he did?
The major issues with the site he did for her –

1) e-commerce cart was not configured to her Paypal account or requirements
2) when testing member registration, confirmation email had someone else’s brand on it and the contact email inside was the default one, something like “user@example.com”
3) Contact us was not configured to her email

There were other issues too, e.g. She asked for “Like us on Facebook”, but the button there was “Login to Facebook”. just some of the nonsense he gave.

How come you trusted him to do your site initially? Did he have a portfolio?
He had a “portfolio” of sorts on his Elance profile. When Cass asked about it he said he worked on the sites with a team of designers back at his last job. And he showed Cass a baby clothing site which he said he did himself.

Can’t view the “portfolio” already though – Cass emailed Elance with the story on Thurs requesting them to ban him so that he cannot cheat any others. They were prompt in responding and have taken down his profile.

Can’t Cass claim from him? E.g from Small Claims Tribunal?
Yes, SCT would be her next legal recourse, but even if SCT rules in her favour, he can always refuse to pay, so she would still need to engage lawyer to make him pay up. In other words, she’ll still have to fork out more to engage lawyer on top of her money lost.

Why is he like not scared of Cass claiming from SCT?
Cass suspects that he already knows there is nothing police or SCT can do, that is why it doesn’t bother him. What he didn’t expect was for her to make this public and shame him this way. Moreover, on Thursday, 1 day after she posted about him on Facebook, he actually SMS-ed her to say that “Report to police or small tribunal or even come to my house was a better option”. Obviously others probably already did that and he realized they couldn’t touch him.

My Conclusion

Cass, kudos to you for having the patience of a SAINT.
Gosh, seriously, that’s really alot of CRAP you had to put up.

Agreed?

Till later,
♥ mitsueki