Someone is threatening to sue me for a small amount of money. The bad news for him is that I know he’s breaking the law by hiring illegal aliens. (he told me this )
Is there anything to prevent me from mentioning how I might turn him in for the illegal employees?
Careful, don’t threaten or blackmail, just do.
Do you legitimately owe him money? If so, pay it and mind your business and remember the workers will hurt more than their employer if you report just out of malice.
If you knew about his workforce prior to the threats of suing and didn’t report then you are proving yourself an arsehole if you do it now. If you don’t actually owe the money and extortion is happening then report the extortion.
Remember that most farting contests just turn to shit eventually, don’t get needlessly splattered.
Don’t think I owe him the money, it’s BS.
A friend of mine was owed money by a guy and he was going to take him to court. But then he realized the guy fully admitted to him that he was cheating on taxes. (he worked for himself) . So instead of taking him to court, he just turned the guy into the IRS and state tax dept for tax cheating. I guess the lesson there is don’t tell people you cheat on taxes and then if you do, don’t screw that person.
It would be a criminal offense is some jurisdictions.
But simply reporting a crime without telling anyone in advance is not a problem right?
“Hey, that guy is hiring illegal aliens” is fine.
“Drop your suit or I’ll report you for hiring illegal aliens” can be extortion.
How would reporting him anonymously stop him suing you? Presumably it would put him under considerable financial pressure, that would make me more likely to try to collect what I believe is owed.
What about “just so you know, if it comes to a contest in court, my attorneys will likely bring up any relevant facts they know to impeach your character. I will make sure to let them know you are hiring illegal aliens. Are you sure you want it to all end up on the public record?”
In this example, you’re getting the same outcome, but you’re not threatening to do anything illegal. Just warning him of the natural consequences of this action.
IANAL, and neither are you. This could be seriously bad advice and is why no lawyer will opine in this thread.
To the OP, consult an attorney in your jurisdiction if you want to play that game.
around here in construction/landscaping business (which this guy is in), it’s flooded with illegal aliens. So it’s not any surprise at all he has them too.
I can’t imagine many situations where it would be. There may be times where the people that enforce the laws would prefer you attempt to resolve things first, but I don’t think you need to warn someone before reporting them.
If the OP did it anonymously, he may suddenly have bigger fish to fry than taking someone to small claims court for a BS debt. OTOH, he may just be kicking the can down the road.
I’d stop at "“just so you know, if it comes to a contest in court, my attorneys will likely bring up any relevant facts they know to impeach your character.” There’s no reason to let the world know that you’re aware what’s going on illegally at his business, not at this stage. Why give him time to prepare and why threaten him?
While it may be wrong I was always told never to say something like “You need to pay me the money you owe me or I’ll sue you” for this reason, just request/ask/tell them you want the money, then sue them. Don’t threaten legal action or attempt to extort the money out of them.
It’s all in the wording and when we’re talking about a few hundred bucks nothing is likely to become of it and it might not even be true, but it’s something I’ve heard.
If the OP wants to use it he can could wait until the next time he sees this person and say “I heard you have undocumented workers at your place…” and see where that goes. It’s not a threat, you didn’t say you were going to do anything about it, it’s just a statement and/or question but of ICE shows up at the door he’ll know why.
Of course, now he’ll be even angrier and you don’t have any cards left to play.
I’m having a hard time figuring out who you would rat the guy out to that would A) care, or B) do fuck-all about it.
Indeed. How many illegal migrant workers are there? 10 million? If the INS were actually remotely doing it’s job, and/or empowered to pay bounties or something to those who rat others out, the number would be about 10,000.