Perhaps Jason Breakey should have reminded himself of the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for."

June 9, 2008 (PRESSbooth.ORG) -- The year was 2002 and business had been booming for the upstart dating service he created with partner Cameron Sharpe. In the past twelve months their entity, Ultimate Singles, had grossed over a million dollars in sales from its network of Christian singles offices in Houston, Dallas and Arlington. Yes there was this pesky, unfounded lawsuit their former dating service employer had lodged against the pair a couple of years earlier, but that was the furthest thing from their mind. The world was at their fingertips, and there was no reason why they couldn't modify their dating concept and introduce it on a national scale. It would take some deep pockets to fund the dream. Sharpe had the perfect investor in mind – Steve Smith, his former boss and co-founder of Excel Communications.

Smith was a multi-marketing wiz who had organized Excel into a network structure that allowed almost 2 million people to participate in, and profit by, the marketing of its long distance services. The youngest company in history to be accepted for trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Excel created more millionaires - in excess of 10,000 - than any company before or since. Steve Smith sold his interest in 1997 for almost $1 billion. In his youth, Sharpe had been a part of the culture that helped fuel this telecommunication giant's rise to the top. A restless nature got the better of him, and he moved on. However, Sharpe still had strong ties to his mentor, and now was the perfect time to approach him about an investment.

Though the retired executive was spending a lot of time and money trying to create a world-class, five-star golf resort in the desert town of Lajitas, Texas, he was intrigued by the business proposal his former protégé presented to him. Breakey and Sharpe had the idea of melding their dating service database with Smith's network marketing principles and duplicate the formula on a nationwide basis.

"Steve spent six months doing his due diligence on our business," recalled Breakey of those heady times. "He was impressed with our business model and thought we'd be a good fit in his growing empire. He even advanced us $100,000 as part of a million dollar investment he wanted to make for just a five percent equity position."

Breakey and Sharpe were about to realize a dream, only there was one slight problem. Three outside investors who originally staked the duo's enterprise to the tune of $200,000 owned 30 percent of Ultimate Singles. Their shares had to be bought back or the deal was dead. With Smith's million dollar carrot dangling in front of them, some hard decisions had to be made.

"I was intoxicated," marveled Breakey, "by all the wealth and power Steve Smith had accumulated. He even told Cameron and myself we'd be ringing the bell on the New York Stock Exchange one day when we went public. That's when I decided to buy out the equity position of our original investors. But to do that, we had to trade away the lifeblood of the company.

"I went to our billing company and they told us we had receivables totaling about one million dollars. That money was bringing us a monthly payment of $55,000 which in turn stabilized the business. I offered our investors the guaranteed income in exchange for their equity position in Ultimate Singles. They were more than happy to take me up on the deal, especially since they hadn't seen any return on their investment."

Within a month of gaining total control of the company, Smith blindsided Breakey and Sharpe by announcing he was pulling out of his handshake agreement to provide funding to Ultimate Singles. Stunned, the duo began to scramble for ways to shore up the company's finances. The first order of business was to preserve cash flow. They went from being a strictly 'pay as you go' customer with their radio and television advertisers, to borrowers on a billing cycle.

"One moment," said Breakey shaking his head, "we're on a path to the big time. The next, I'm doing whatever I can to save the business. It was nearly impossible to operate Ultimate Singles properly without the guaranteed cash flow coming in. I certainly couldn't go back to our original investors and say, "I made a mistake, can we go back to the way things were?' At the time, Cameron and I obviously weren't mature enough to handle real success. We let fanciful dreams get in the way of prudent business decisions, and in the end, it cost us dearly."

With storm clouds gathering over Ultimate Singles, another thunderous bolt of lightning was to rattle the company. Sharpe fell in love and informed his partner he was moving to Austin with his fiancé. Breakey would later find out that Steve Smith had a job waiting for Sharpe as soon as he relocated. It was with his online multi-level marketing company he had recently formed called, ironically, UltimateMatch.

In a business overview of his new venture, Smith offered individuals the choice of several business opportunities to earn extra money on the Internet using his network marketing guidelines. One interesting endeavor under the UltimateMatch umbrella was an introduction service called SoulMate. Smith claimed his online dating service would soon be the market leader in the fast growing billion dollar industry. He was offering individuals the opportunity to help singles meet their "ultimate match" online and get paid for their efforts.

"I don't think," declared Breakey firmly, "I have ever felt more betrayed than the moment I found out Steve Smith was launching his own online dating service. This guy had all the money in the world, yet he stabbed us in the back to start his own, once he studied our business model of the dating industry. The fact Cameron moved to Austin, got married, and ended up working for multi-millionaire Steve, only added salt to the already gaping wound his broken promise had left in what was now my business."

Breakey was determined to ride out the storm with the company's few remaining employees. On the surface, it was a noble idea. However, without the guaranteed monthly income from the billing company, Ultimate Singles began to spend more money than its offices could bring in, thus falling deeper into debt.

"We just went into a tailspin I couldn't pull us out of," conceded Breakey. "My wife and I went though some tough times together, especially after my business divorce from Cameron. I'd go three months without making the house and car payments, and when they finally threatened to repossess the car and foreclose on the house, I'd barely pay it off and start the delay process all over again.

"I was driving around in a Range Rover that was way past due in payments and the bank were chasing me for it. Everybody sued me, including all the major radio stations and Southwestern Bell. In one year alone, I had $11,000 in overdraft charges from all the bounced checks I had written, but eventually cleared. I can't even put into words the enormous kind of pressure a situation like that puts you under?"

Breakey's life, both professional and personal, was about to become even more complex. After months of searching in vain for a cash infusion to pull the company out of the dark abyss it had been sucked into, a deep-pocketed investor finally stepped forward. So did someone else – investigative reporter Byron Harris with WFAA Channel 8 news in Dallas. He was preparing an exposé on the company and demanded some answers.

"Unbelievable hatchet job," announced Breakey upon hearing the name. "When Byron first called me, I was broke and a little antagonistic towards him. For the past 18 months, we had been doing nothing but lose cash. I owed a lot of people money, including the TV station he worked for. I had gone from 40 employees down to two. Byron's entire segment on Ultimate Singles centered around one ridiculous claim. Our company wasn't Christian enough to be called a Christian dating service, so a few people wanted out of their contracts."

Another factor Breakey didn't count on was the timing of the investigation. The story was going to air during the last week of the all-important May sweeps period, where every rating point was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in future ad revenue to the television station. Channel 8 purposely made the Byron Harris report its lead story following the season finale of The Bachelor, featuring NFL quarterback Jesse Palmer. The station didn't want to lose any viewers to rival news organizations after the show, so throughout the night, it repeatedly baited viewers with the line, "They say they are Christian dating service, but they're not! Byron Harris investigates!"

"How do you defend an accusation like that?" asked Breakey. "The bottom line – you can't! Here's the thing. I was always taught if you believe you are a Christian in your heart, and state it openly, then you are a Christian. That is what the Bible teaches us and that is exactly what I told Byron Harris on camera. If a person accepts Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, then they are a Christian. That comment was conveniently edited out of the story."

KLTY, the biggest Christian radio station in Dallas, (Ultimate Singles owed them money as well) also got into the act and ran teasers about the broadcast throughout the day that said, "Tonight, on Channel 8, troubling questions about a Christian dating service."

"You want to talk about someone having a number done on them" proclaimed Breakey," you're looking at him. It's going on four years since they ran that story, and I'm still baffled how a Christian can't be Christian enough. I really believe the Byron Harris piece was motivated strictly by WFAA management's desire to run me out of business because I owed the station $40,000. They figured if they couldn't get their money out of me, and coincidentally they never sued me in court to get it, the next best thing was to make sure I never did business in Dallas again."

The Harris report focused primarily on a few disgruntled women who wanted out of their contracts. Their reasoning – Ultimate Singles wasn't the type of Christian dating service they thought it should be, and, they wanted their money back.

"In the dating industry," explained Breakey, "you'll always find a very small percentage of people who later have buyer's remorse. But here's the thing. In big, bold letters on every one of our contracts, it states to carefully read the terms of agreement, because once you sign your name, the deal is binding. It wasn't hard for Byron to find some people who not only wanted out, but reimbursed as well.

"From what I understand, this all started when a very attractive member of Ultimate Singles, for some reason, wanted her money back. This girl attended the same church Byron did, and she approached him to see if there was anything he could do about her situation. I heard Byron was shocked when he looked up her profile on our website and saw the provocative bikini photos she posted of herself. On a one to ten scale, this woman was definitely an eight.

"When Byron sat her down to do their television interview, she asked them to hide her identity. Now, when the piece aired, they made it look like this girl was afraid of me. The only thing she was really scared of was people looking up her profile on Ultimate Singles and seeing her suggestive poses in a bikini. That's why she made the request for anonymity, and of course Byron Harris was more than happy to oblige. It added more intrigue to the 'they say they are Christian, but they're not' mystery Channel 8 was spinning to the public."

As Breakey found out, truth isn't a defense, especially if it casts you in a positive light.

The only storyline Channel 8 was going to promote was the controversial one its producers put together. Using select footage from interviews, it was their job to make the story compelling, and often one-sided, especially when it was tagged an 'investigative' report.

"Here's something I learned the hard way," acknowledged Breakey. "Byron Harris already had the story angle in mind when he questioned me about Ultimate Singles. It didn't matter to him how honest I answered his questions. They edited my comments to suit their story. He was determined to make something out of nothing, and his one-sided investigation into our dating service definitely reflected that.

"'They say they are Christian, but they're not!' Again I ask you, what does that comment mean? It was a totally absurd line, but captivating enough for a television audience to stay tuned for an explanation. Channel 8 made me look like the biggest asshole on earth. It's a humbling experience when the media comes after you, especially when you are absolutely powerless to do anything about it."

Needless to say, the funding Breakey was hoping to secure for Ultimate Singles fell through. To add further insult to injury, he was informed by his lawyer that a trial date had been set the following month in the three-year old lawsuit brought by his former employer, Lee Hamblin, with Christian Single Adults (C.S.A.)

The rift between the parties came about in September 2000 when Breakey and Sharpe quit Christian Single Adults over compensation issues regarding their work. Hamblin had cut the pair's commissions from 15 percent down to eight, ostensibly to use that money for advertising purposes. Another salesmen Scott Thomason (who also loaned Hamblin $100,000), saw his pay structure remain at 15 percent, plus a 2 and a half percent override on all contracts balances he was responsible for.

"In a nutshell" offered Breakey, "here's what happened. Two sales guys are working for a dating company and aren't required to sign any non-compete agreements. The owner then decides to cut their commissions in half, so they quit. These two guys decide they can do a better job running their own dating service. They have a business plan written up for a Christian introduction service based on their marketing ideas and strategies. Within three days of circulating the proposal, they raise $200,000."

Hamblin had two thoroughbred salesmen in his stable, Breakey and Sharpe. The owner felt he needed to rein them in. They wanted to grow the business and expand on a national level. The owner did not. Hamblin promised the pair stock in his company. He never delivered. When their commission structure was drastically altered, the writing was on the wall for their imminent departure.

"Lee was starving the two of us financially," he remarked. "We weren't agreeable to the commission cuts so it forced us to take matters into our own hands and leave. Cameron and I calmly walked into his office, shook his hand, and thanked him for the opportunity. When we walked out those office doors the very last time, the only thing we took with us was our experience and knowledge of the dating industry."

Ultimate Singles opened its doors in October 2000 with offices in Dallas and Arlington, Texas. Houston would open up shortly afterwards. Another former employee of Christian Single Adults, Terry Dyche, also joined the team. Ten months into their endeavor, a lawsuit from Hamblin arrived at their doorstep.

"His claims against us were so ridiculous," responded Breakey, "we allowed ourselves to get emotionally involved with this case, especially Cameron. That was our biggest mistake. This case jumped from intellectual property theft, to fraud, poaching employees, stealing A.S.C. members, even breaking into their data base to steal prior lead sheets A.S.C. had developed before we left.

"If you read his deposition, Lee couldn't prove any of the charges he leveled against us. For some reason, this guy would not let this thing go, because he was pissed the two of us had left and were doing extremely well. The year before I arrived, his three offices had generated $250,000. By myself with one caller, I sold memberships totaling $960,000 cash down with another $647,000 financed. His merchant credit card company needed written explanation how his business could improve in such a short time. When I brought on Cameron to run the Arlington office, Christian Single Adults did over $3 million in cash for the 1998 – 99 year."

Breakey says Hamblin went through rough times after they left because he refused to change with the times. Instead of entertaining new ideas, his attention was focused squarely on old school beliefs drilled into him the past 25 years he'd been involved in the industry.

"The company went bust when we left," revealed Breakey, "because the owner felt it necessary to control every aspect of the company. Lee had two superstar sales people who were ready to open up the nation for him. What did thus guy do? Pretend he would give them equity in his company then scheme on how to pay them less and less for their work. In fact, Lee was jealous of our success even though it was his success. He started feeling like we were making too much money and he even made me read this book, Who Moved My Cheese? Well I finished the book and realized the cheese had definitely moved."

Hamblin's claims may have lacked substance going in to trial, but he did have some things going in his favor. First off, the presiding judge was upset a frivolous case of this nature had made it onto his court docket. He put pressure on the attorney's for both sides to settle the lawsuit out of court. Second, Channel 8's Byron Harris decided to set up shop in the Ft. Worth courtroom to do a follow-up report on his original Ultimate Singles story from a few weeks earlier.

"I'll tell you right now," admitted Breakey, "when Byron Harris walked into the courtroom with his camera man, I just threw up my hands and surrendered. I was broke, this lawsuit had been dogging me for years, and Channel 8 is still chasing me around. Lee had no damages that were provable, but I did not want to be scrutinized by Harris again.

"I told my lawyer to make the other side a take it or leave it offer of $100,000 against Ultimate Management Inc. Neither Cameron, myself or Terre were to be held personally liable for the judgment. Three years and nearly $200,000 in attorney fees later, Lee Hamblin took the deal and received a large monetary award against a business entity on paper only."

Harris tried to make a big deal out of the settlement offer in his Channel 8 report, but it was too little, too late and full of falsehoods. Breakey did not agree to go out of business as part of the settlement. He changed the name of Ultimate Singles to Trusted Singles only to escape the negative publicity the Harris report had generated. Current members were still able to access the database of the website. Cameron Sharpe was working for Steve Smith's Internet based online dating organization in Austin, not counseling people how to make big money in the singles industry.

"Separately," confided Breakey, "Byron told me no story he ever reported for Channel 8 generated as many phone calls as his piece on Ultimate Singles did. That's probably why the station ran three separate stories on me in a month's time. Not only was it obsessive on their part, it bordered on the ridiculous. It's not like I ran a day care business and left kids out in hot vans, or I was a doctor doing surgery without proper credentials.

"I had a Christian dating service, but Byron Harris said we were not. Did anybody get hurt in my business? No. What was the main complaint? A customer's inability to walk away from the contract once they willingly signed it.

"The thing is, our service agreement has always been just one page. There's no small print you can only read with a magnifying glass. When you decide to enroll, one and a half inches from where you sign your name, in large bold print, it states once you sign this contract, it cannot be cancelled. That was the root of the anger problem and should have been the focus of the piece. But, it's a moot point now."

After the Channel 8 exposé on Ultimate Singles, Breakey scrapped his plans to open an office in Houston. However, he did have a substantial number of leads in the city. It led to an interesting business opportunity.

"When you are attacked on TV like I was," he reflected, "it's a draining experience. I knew I couldn't open a Houston office like I had planned, so I called the Great Expectations office down there. I told the owner, 'I have 350 leads, do you want to purchase them?' The guy said yes, and offered me $10 per lead. It sounded fair, so I FedEx'd him the list, and he in turn sent me a check over night for $3500."

The owner of Great Expectations, John Merriggi, was the largest franchisee in the company. He had offices in 25 cities around the country. He struck a deal with Breakey to secure leads for nine of his locations, and agreed to honor all transferred contracts from Ultimate Singles to his DFW office at no charge to the clients.

"I had a 5,000 person data base in Dallas alone," estimated Breakey, "that included 1800 girls between the ages of 18-30. The thing is, although the website was still active, our office couldn't maintain the momentum needed to satisfy the membership. All our active members could still check their status online. If they wanted a more personal service, they had a free transfer over to Great Expectations."

The lead generation business exploded for Breakey, and soon he became the top lead provider for all of Merriggi's 25 Great Expectation locations. That in turn led to other dating services around the country contracting his services. At one point, his company was providing leads for over 60 percent of the dating industry. Two years after bottoming out with Ultimate Singles, Jason Breakey had once again clawed his way back to the top.

"In a strange way," he admitted, "both Lee Hamblin and Steve Smith were responsible for my success. Their subsequent actions involving Ultimate Singles forced a complete shift in my business practice regarding the dating industry. By going out and securing leads for dating services, I now own over 5,000 domain names covering every major metropolitan area in the country. The lead business was the best thing that ever fell into my lap."

Not only did he discover a prudent way to generate leads, Breakey's company created a program capable of tracking the geographic locations of the inquiries over the Internet. With advanced technology, extensive knowledge of the dating industry, and monies to finance it, Breakey decided in the spring of 2007 it was time to diversify and enter the matchmaking industry once again.

"Although we had a lot of positive cash flow," confessed Breakey, "I knew we had to widen our business cope. The company had become too dependent upon a small group of people for its income. If anything was to change with Great Expectations, the game was over for me. So, I decided to get back into dating by opening an office in Oklahoma City.

"I drove up from Dallas to sell memberships, but for some reason, I just hated it. I called my wife and said, 'I'm coming home. I don't want to do this anymore.' I was sitting at home shortly after that conversation when one day, of all people, in walked Cameron. He wanted to tell me how sorry he was for everything he had put me through."

Breakey hadn't spoken to his former partner in years. The now-divorced Sharpe had bottomed out through alcohol and drugs, and was a recovering alcoholic. One of the 12 suggested steps in his AA program was to make a list of all persons he had harmed, and willingly try and make amends to them. His timing to reenter his former friend's life to apologize couldn't have been better.

"When Cameron walked through my door," smiled Breakey, "sober and clean from alcohol and drugs, I was both shocked and relieved. He was sincerely apologetic for all the harm he had caused from his out-of-control addictions. Though he didn't know it at the time, I had forgiven him a long time ago. Before Cameron could finish his apology, I literally offered him a job helping me jumpstart a dating service again."

Sharpe agreed to rejoin his friend, but made an unusual request to go with it. He wanted to be known by the name Barrett Stone, not to escape the past, but to embrace the future.

"Cameron, Barrett," countered Breakey, "it didn't matter to me what name he wanted to use. He was arguably one of the greatest salesmen I had ever met, and I was happy to be working with him once again. He really proved his worth when we opened our Salt Lake City office on 24-hour notice."

Breakey had grown weary of the underhanded tactics a client he was providing leads for, Ted Law, was using against him. Law was the Texas franchisee for The Right One, a dating service headquartered out of Boston. With offices in Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas, Law was purchasing his leads from Breakey, then going behind his back copying his marketing strategy to gain more leverage.

"Ted not only owed us a lot of money from unpaid invoices," remarked Breakey, "he also started copying our marketing strategies. If the police contacted him about his marketing practices, Ted would tell them I was the one to contact. I couldn't figure out why they were calling me until they told me what Ted had said. That's when I realized he was going behind my back to secure his own leads.

"For a long time, I avoided his phone calls. He wanted leads and I just didn't want to sell them to him. We finally spoke, and I said, 'Man Ted, what's going on her. Why are the cops calling me?' His first response was, 'So, you don't want my business anymore, is that what you're telling me?' I looked at him and said, 'Well, not if you are going to lie to my face and conduct shady business behind my back. You keep telling the police I'm doing something wrong when it's actually you. It's just not worth it.'

"Well, Ted immediately told me to go screw myself. In less that 24 hours, Cameron and myself were on a plane to Salt Lake City to open an office there. Our first week, the two of us did $40,000 worth of business. I picked the location because our technology indicated the area was generating a tremendous amount of leads for us. It was also a city where I had no conflict of interest with John and Great Expectations."

Four months after Stone had rejoined his friend, they had five offices up and running in four states. Unfortunately, one age old problem started to cast a shadow over their venture. The name Ultimate Singles was coming back to haunt the pair because of its controversial past. Leading the charge was Ted Law. He was posting negative remarks about the two on a controversial web site called RipOffReport.com.

Calling itself a consumer watchdog Internet site, RipOffReport.com was created by a dubious figure named Ed Magedson. The site was originally designed as a platform to allow consumers to air their gripes, complaints, and allegations about a business. Over time, however, RipOffReport.com evolved into a web site that existed purely to make money from the various negative postings about a business that appeared on its pages. The company often received and posted defamatory material about a business without ever checking out the legitimacy of the complaints.

"There was plenty of material for Ted to choose from," laughed Breakey about the website. "Between the Byron Harris reports, and Lee Hamblin's three-year lawsuit against us, Ted Law could write all sorts of stuff about the two of us. But that's okay. I'm sure it made him happy.

"At first, Ted's posts on the site concerned me. Then, we began to investigate the legitimacy of the web site. When we found out that RipOffReport.com was the target of a steady stream of lawsuits, because of their predatory postings, I couldn't believe he had lowered himself to attack us on a bogus consumer web site. You would think he'd be more concerned about his own business, than what I was doing."

The frivolous written attacks by Ted Law on Breakey and Stone continued on RipOffReport.com, but the pair paid it little attention. Ted Law knew the real facts behind the Lee Hamblin lawsuit and the Byron Harris Channel 8 report, because Breakey had told him the stories. Unfortunately, his contempt for Breakey dropping him as a client fueled an unhealthy desire for Internet revenge, so the truth be-damned. Undermining Law's disdain for the pair was the vehicle in which he chose to air the "dirty laundry" – RipOffReports.com. The web site is under investigation by several state attorney generals for its business practices. Google has been strongly urged to drop the site from its web service when it accused founder Sergey Brin of trying to lure a 16-year old into a hotel room.

"The more I investigated the authenticity of that web site," concluded Breakey, "the more I felt sorry for Ted. I couldn't understand why he went to all that trouble to embarrass us, when he actually ended up making a fool of himself. All this because I refused to sell him leads based solely on his actions to undermine me. The fact that Ted Law has thrown his full support behind RipOffReport.com should tell you everything you need to know about his own dating service."

By David C. Huff, Jr.