Adam

Imagine letting someone sleep on your couch for free when they had nowhere to go, teaching them ecom, helping them make their first $500,000 in profit… Just for that same person to go behind your back, secretly run the same product you were partners on, and repeatedly lie to your face about it. All while living in the same house as you. This is what happened between me and someone I considered a brother for almost 3 years, Othman Jaber. I met Othman around 2.5–3 years ago. At the time, he was doing high-ticket sales for online mentorship offers, making maybe $2–3k a month, occasionally $5k. He was fascinated by what I was doing in ecom, and we eventually became really close friends. When he first came around Miami, he didn't have his own place. He was couch hopping between people's houses, including my friend J Park's. Eventually, he couldn't stay there anymore, so I let him sleep on my couch for roughly 3 months, completely free. During that time, I'd bring him around while I worked with my mentor Jose, teach him about ecom, and answer whatever questions he had. I even gave him an opportunity to close for my mentorship program despite him not being the greatest closer. Fast-forward to June of last year. He calls me after we hadn't spoken much and tells me he's in a horrible financial situation. He's working multiple jobs, going broke, and struggling to support his mom. He asks me to coach him, offering $10,000 and even saying he'd finance it. I initially declined because I was busy and wasn't offering coaching anymore. Two weeks later, he tells me he's considering getting into black hat ecom. I didn't want to see him go down that route, so I eventually agreed to help him build a store in exchange for 50%, as long as he actually put in the work. Within a few months, we generated multiple seven figures in revenue. His share of the profits was around $500,000. I was genuinely happy for him. Eventually, we ran into Shopify issues and had to pause the product. Around this time, I started noticing his ego getting bigger and the way he carried himself changing, but I didn't think much of it. We tried scaling another product around January, but after roughly six months, it wasn't working. We were losing money, and I had other businesses to focus on. Outside of business, I still helped him whenever I could. I even sold him my Audi R8 for $120,000 when I believed I could've gotten $140,000. I'm only mentioning these things so you understand the kind of relationship we had. Now here's where the bullshit starts. June of this year comes around, and he tells me he's going broke again. He suggests we bring back the original product we'd made all that money with, run it for a month, make some quick cash, and pause it. I agreed. His Facebook profile was banned, so I ended up handling most of the work. But the entire month, something felt off. We barely profited, and it honestly felt like he didn't give a fuck about making it work. Then September 2 comes around, and he wants to pause the store. He tells me he's worried about getting MATCH-listed and thinks the business might be haram. So we stopped. Here's what I ended up discovering later. Based on the evidence and timeline I gathered, he appeared to have been preparing his own operation involving a separate version of that exact product since around July. While we were running it together in August, ads for the other operation appeared to have started in late August. Then, right as that operation seemed to be gaining traction, he wanted to shut ours down. At the time, I knew NONE of this. He'd been telling me he was running a creative agency with his little brother, and I had no reason to question him. Until one day, I randomly asked: "Bro, are you running a store right now?" He said no. I asked, "Wallahi?" He said Wallahi. For anyone who doesn't know, that's swearing by Allah. Another friend of mine was literally there when he said it.