Today, I'm walking into a client pitch and my boss says, "Remember Paul from DMK? He's in jail. For shooting his wife. And killing her."
We partnered with this data center consulting firm late last year to help us gain access to the market. Their CEO talked fast and told a great story, so the leaders in my company (who didn't know anything about the market) thought he was great. Call after call of this guy telling the same story. It was exhausting.
I went to their facility in Northern VA in January to meet his team and have some arranged meetings with clients. The team looked like deer in headlights and the client meetings never materialized. For 2 days, our salesperson and I were driven around by his team, shown data centers from the outside, then taken to meals. We'd go back to the office and be told, "I don't know what happened. This was supposed to be solid." Then he'd call these supposed contacts and it'd go straight to voicemail.
I called my boss about 3 hours into this and told him we needed to separate because this is all a shell game. You pull back the curtain a little and it's vapor. I was told to stand down, the guy is solid, and this partnership (which included paying them about $30k/ month to arrange meetings) was what we needed. This lasted 6 more months of nothing before my boss finally pulled the plug.
At the beginning of day 2 of that visit, he pulled us into his office to tell us he'd just been diagnosed with cancer. He said he was telling us before he told the rest of his team because we're his partner. It was so off-putting the way he positioned it. In my head, I was like, this guy is just trying to gain our sympathy and buy time because he's got nothing for us, and he wants my company to continue to invest. But that's a crappy thought to have, because what if the cancer is real?
Turns out this guy has a felony conviction for wire fraud in Iowa in 2019. Served time, and the motive the police are going with (from written records) is that his felony conviction created an inseparable rift between him and his wife. So he murdered her. His real name is Brad, but he went by Paul to try to throw off anyone researching his background. They have 3 boys, 2 in college, 1 in high school. I can't imagine what life is going to be for them going forward. He called his brother (who was our driver for those days in NoVa) to confess and his brother called the police. They arrested him 3 hours later on the PA turnpike.
Crazy to think of how much time I spent with this guy, breaking bread, trying to assume the best. And then he murders his wife and the mother of his children. For what it's worth, at one of the dinners, he let me know how messed up it was that transgenders were taking over women's sports.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/northern-virginia/husband-accused-of-killing-wife-in-aldie-to-be-extradited-to-virginia/4158438/