Rant
Why do shithead clients think they can walk away without paying us once we deliver the project !!!

So, here goes nothing..
Got an online gig to create a dashboard.
Since i had to deal with a lot of shitheads in the past, I told them my rules were simple, 20% advance, 40% on 50% completion and 40% after i complete and send them proof of completion. Once i receive the payment in full, only then i will hand over the code.
They said it was fine and paid 20%.
I got the next 40% also without any effort but they said they also needed me to deploy the code on their AWS account, and they were ready to pay extra for it, so i agreed.
I complete the whole project and sent them the screenshots, asking for the remaining 40% payment. They rejected the request saying my work was not complete as i had not deployed on AWS yet. After a couple of more such exchanges, i agreed to setup their account before the payment. But i could sense something fishy, so i did everything on their AWS account, except registered the domain from my account and set up everything. Once i inform them that its done and ask for the remaining payment.
The reply i got was LOL.
I tried to login to the AWS account, only to find password had been changed.
Database access revoked.
Even my admin account on the app had been removed. Thinking that they have been successful, they even published ads about thier NEW dashboard to their customers.
I sent them a final mail with warning ending with a middle finger emoji. 24 hours later,
I created a github page with the text " This website has been siezed by the government as the owner is found accused in fraud" and redirected the domain to it. Got an apology mail from them 2 hours later begging me to restore the website. i asked for an extra 10% penalty apart from the remaining payment. After i got paid, set an auto-reply of LOL to thier emails and chilled for a week before restoring the domain back to normal.
Dev : 1
Shithead Client: 0

Police tech support, corruption, stilettos, fake agents, and all that. This is gonna be a long story.

Remember when I posted about wanting to become a digital nomad and how my annoying landlady has sped up the process for that? So I was looking for apartments to move into. Just a couple of months to get surgery, recover, and gear up for the new life. I met a real estate agent. He showed me his license, he's known by the guards and admins in the residence, and I met the unit owner together with him inside the unit itself. I did a background check and all looks good. A major property developer even posted several awards that he achieved. Sounds legit? Nope. This will soon become the highest level of real estate corruption I've ever seen in my entire life.

The property developer is well-established and has various luxury residences. After some further digging, I saw several posts about him in private owners' groups except they were screenshots of his name and face, not actual texts so it did not appear in the initial search. I see comments from several tenants and owners that he scammed. It turns out they even have a WhatsApp group dedicated into taking him down because he's done all kinds of trouble - bouncing checks, stealing items from the units, fucking up people's apartments, taking money from people and then ghosting them, etc.

Everyone seems angry but also hopeless because apparently, he's been doing this for years and the property hasn't banned him. There were discussions that the property itself takes bribe from him so he can freely go in and out of the residence. As far as I know, he's been doing this for almost a year, maybe longer but since he's a licensed agent with the management on his side, he's pretty much untouchable.

I mentioned his name to a previous agent I talked to, let's call her "Stiletto Girl" because she gave me a tour around the towers while wearing stilettos and dear god, I don't know how people manage to walk so long with those things on. Stiletto Girl was more furious than I am and sent me screenshots of their conversations. She obviously hates the guy and she confirmed that there is indeed corruption in the admin office.

I collected all these information and posted to an investors group to warn them about buying properties there. I received messages with terrible experiences and overall, people are convinced. This group has members that can buy properties in full with cash. I managed to get his account blocked in one of the payment options he provided and I was instructed to file a police report so they can permanently disable his account. I'm working on his other accounts.

After a trip to several police stations, I found myself talking to this asshole investigator in his camo. I fucking hated the guy and the tone of his voice. He gave me trouble for not knowing the suspect's full address. At some point, we were just yelling at each other. He made a phone call and went back agreeing to finally let me file a police report.

He asked for my ID. I gave him my company ID, I learned that doing this builds instant rapport to some because it's a well-known airline company and most of the people have taken a flight there so they're extra nice to me. Maybe they think I can give them a discount or something, whatever. Nope.

Him: "You're a software engineer? Are you good with computers?"

Me: *laughs knowing where this is going*

Him: "See, I have a problem with my computer. Can you fix it?"

Me: "Sure. Just give me the police report first."

He starts working on it. This time his tone is more friendly. Other police officers come in and he introduces me as his new "friend". As discussed, after the police report has been made, I sat on his computer and started fixing his shit. They went outside to respond to some emergency and asked me to guard the station for the meantime, lol. There's only me and another woman in a separate cubicle. When they came back, one of the police officers came up to my desk jokingly pretending to be a victim of some crime asking to file a police report.

I finished fixing his shit and now his asshole energy is diverted to the person I filed a police report against.

Him: "Do you think this guy is a one time criminal?"

Me: "Oh no, he's notorious and that property does nothing about it. I think he has a connection there."

Him: "WHAT?! I will pay them a visit tomorrow! Send me more pictures of him. If I see that fucking guy.."

One of our previous clients is not paying the rest of the payments after receiving the codes. What are the things we can/should do digitally to make them pay the payment?

btw, it was a web app. we worked on the front end and the backend of the app. So, naturally we know all the API endpoints, we have the database access, and so on. So yeah, we can do so many things.

But still I wanna ask you guys, what would you do to make someone pay?