Can an immigration law firm in Bulgaria sue me in the US? Two months ago I started to conduct an investment-based immigration program to Bulgaria with the aid of a Bulgarian law firm. After two months, I found they were extremely unprofessional (the bilingual documents provided had typos, many duplicated articles, even Google Translate results) and there were also hidden fees after I enrolled. I tried to negotiate with them for refund, which did not work. I started to question them for fraud and noticed them that I would ask for chargeback from my bank. Then they sent me a quite threatening email, which included notify the embassy, file criminal complaint in Bulgaria, and some stuff about bilateral agreement between US and Bulgaria for lawsuit. Some facts: 1. We did not sign any contract for the immigration service. I only provided them the scan copy of a lot personal documents. (Passport, no crime certificate, etc.) 2. The total number I asked for chargeback via my bank was around USD 11,000. 3. Currently I lived in the United States, but not a US citizen or PR. Can they take legal action against me? By what method? In future, when I travel to EU (or even do another immigration program), will I get into any trouble if they really sue me in Bulgaria? I'd like to ask for advice for this situation.
You do have a contract - you agreed to pay them for services, that creates a contract. If they have failed to provide the service that you paid for, the onus is on you to prove that. Getting a bank to make a chargeback when services have been provided in return for the payment is likely unlawful notwithstanding that you are not satisfied with the service they provided. They can sue you in either Bulgaria or the USA and a judgement in one countries court will likely be enforceable in the other. In addition, if you have committed a crime in Bulgaria then the Bulgarian police may investigate and may issue a warrant for your arrest and seek your extradition from wherever you happen to be.
This would be virtually impossible to do from scratch. If you had the guidance of someone who successfully pursued a similar legal action it might be possible. In theory you should be able to pursue grievances in court by becoming well versed in the applicable laws and rules, having impeccable attention to detail, exceptional deductive and writing skills, and getting lucky enough to run your filings through patient clerks who will tell you every time you're missing something or doing something wrong. New York Courts even offer this encouraging CourtHelp website for pro se guidance on common actions. But if you really want to attempt a pro se civil action, especially against a government entity, or other entity with essentially unlimited legal funds, you not only need all of the above but also some sort of assistance from somebody who knows the system. I would spend as much time looking for sympathetic advocacy groups and lawyers offering pro bono service as I would reading relevant law and procedure. (One more thing: The word "quick" is never used in conjunction with formal legal actions, except in jest ;)
An Estonian company can be sued under French law for violating French law in France, and so can its officers, no matter what their nationality or where they reside. So yes, you could be sued in France as an officer of the company. If you have assets in France, a French judgment against you will be easier to enforce than one against someone who has no assets in France. This is, similarly, not about nationality but about the location of your assets. A suit could also be pursued in Estonia. If the activities in Estonia are contrary to Estonian law then you could also be sued in Estonia as an officer of the company. We frequently have questions about &quot;which law applies&quot; for cases that span multiple jurisdictions. The general answer is that all law applies. An activity in multiple jurisdictions must comply with the law in every one of them. If you are doing something that is prohibited (or even that possibly might be prohibited) in either Estonian law or French law, you should take professional legal advice. Unless you can find a lawyer who is qualified in both countries, you will need two lawyers.
First of all, if your Delaware LLC earns money, you will pay tax in America on that money. America still taxes "foreigners" on American income, just not on"global" income. That is, unless the U.S. has a tax reciprocity treaty with your home country, Malaysia. I don't know about Malaysian law, but I am writing as an American about American law regarding the Seychelles (and I am not a lawyer). The following is only as an "example." If you set up an LLC in the Seychelles, you could, in theory, avoid American tax by accruing income there. In practice, if you did nothing but "banking" in the Seychelles, America would look at your lack of "value added" there, and could tax you on Seychelles income as if your corporation was American. The way to make such a claim stick (typically in a place like Ireland), is to set up a manufacturing or operating facility (e.g. call center) there so that you were shipping goods or services from your offshore operation. Then you'd have a strong claim in America that your operation actually earned most of its income abroad, and the U.S. company was just a holding company.
1) Why would an Orthodontia provider want to receive this payment at all in the first place? I was thinking maybe tax reasons. Less cynically, medical providers request that insurance payments be sent directly to them (and you routinely agree to allow them to do so in the fine print of your insurance contract and the paperwork you will out with the provider), every time that they request payment through insurance, because it is extremely uncommon for someone to pay in full and then come up with insurance through which a claim can be submitted. It is set up this way, in part, because medical providers have a lien on insurance payments made to compensate any not previously paid for services that they provided. So, anyway, bureaucratic inertia causes it to happen this way in your quirky case where it really doesn't make sense. Also, insurance companies routinely see claims failed by providers and handle them uncritically, while rarely seeing claims filed by insured for services that have already been rendered and paid for, and so look at those claims more critically, so it was probably in your interest to have the provider make the claim for you on your behalf. More cynically, even if the medical providers doesn't get to keep the money, holding onto it helps their cash flow. It may allow them to borrow less money for operations, or to invest it and earn a return on it. Having money has value even if it is temporary. 2) If they never end up sending me the claim refund, do I have any legal power to fight against this? I have all of the original receipts and an EOP report. Yes. You could write a demand letter, including copies of your evidence, and if they refused to comply within a reasonable time, you could sue, either with a lawyer, or in small claims court. You would have an extremely strong chance of prevailing and in all likelihood they would refund the money before the case went to trial rather than fighting a losing case in court. You have solid evidence that they were paid twice for the same thing. You don't need to bring the insurance company into it (which would make the case much more complicated). You just need to show that your local medical provider got a double recovery and didn't provide a refund. Six to eight weeks is unreasonable when they have already been paid twice. But, given the cost, aggravation and delay associated with suing, you might want to give them some time to provide a refund, although the next monthly billing cycle for them ought to be more than generous accommodation from you.
If you are charged under the laws of Estonia (or Australia or Thailand or the UK) then the laws of the USA have no relevance whatsoever. It makes no difference if you are a US citizen, if the alleged crime happened in the USA or was perpetrated against the USA. If nation X has jurisdiction then you are tried under the laws of nation X. That is what sovereignty means. As to your specific example, Facebook does business in Estonia, therefore they are subject to Estonian law, as a US corporation they are also subject to US law and the law of every other jurisdiction they operate in (see why they need big legal departments?). If a legitimate Estonian warrant was served on them to disclose metadata or anything else then they are legally obliged to do so or be in contempt of court. Oh, and by the way, the first amendment right to free speech does not give you a right to anonymous free speech.
Is my best bet to get a lawyer and sue? If so, approximately how much should I expect it to cost? How would it work with the requirement for him to pay the legal fees? You would ordinarily either hire a lawyer or bring suit yourself in a limited jurisdiction court (the kind that handles misdemeanor criminal offenses and smaller dollar amounts owed, the exact name of the court differs from state to state). You can always bring suit in the county where the debtor resides. If the loan was not for consumer purposes, you could sue in the place where the loan &quot;was made&quot; or in a forum provided by the loan documents (which does not appear to be present), that might be different from the place where the debtor resides. Usually, you would want to hire a lawyer with offices not too far from the place where you are bringing suit, as limited jurisdiction courts often require in person appearances. Normally, a lawyer would ask to be paid up front, with you posting a retainer equal to a significant share of the estimated legal fees, called a retainer against which the lawyer would bill until it was exhausted, and would normally bill on an hourly basis. Fees on the order of $1,500-$5,000 wouldn't be unusual. One factor that would increase the cost would be the fact that your loan is almost certainly at an illegally high rate of interest, and you and your lawyer would have to examine the relevant law to determine the effect of that on the enforceability of your loan, and the correct amount to claim. In some jurisdictions and circumstances, this might make your entitle loan or at least all interest on it and all fees incurred to collect the debt, uncollectible. In other jurisdictions it might just reduce the amount of interest you could recover. Without this complication, it might have been a matter you could handle on your own. With this complication, you really need a lawyer. You could probably not legitimately claim the full $18,000 plus attorney fees and costs. Some lawyers would take a case like this on a contingent fee basis with you only advancing court costs and out of pocket expenses like process serving charged, but they'd typically do so only if they were confident that they would prevail at trial and if they were also confident that the debtor had the ability to pay. On a one-off basis, a contingent fee percentage of 40%-50% would be more common in this situation that the &quot;usual&quot; one-third contingency rate. &quot;Reasonable&quot; legal fees would be added to the amount you are owed on the loan if the high rate of interest doesn't invalidate this provision. Amounts recovered for legal fees would be paid to you from which you could repay your lawyer whatever you owed your lawyer. In a contingent fee case, usually hourly based fees are awarded and included in the total amount recovered (once the debtor actually pays) and the lawyer would get a percentage of the total collected regardless of what the amount recovered is supposed to be for. Another option would be to sell your debt to a debt collection firm which would charge you a small sign up fee and then collect a percentage of the debt recovered. The usurious interest rate involved, however, might discourage them from accepting you as a customer or buying the debt. If the debtor is not collectible with a job and/or real estate with substantial equity, you probably won't be able to find someone to take the case on a contingent fee basis at all, and will probably have to pay an hourly rate. Do I have the option to take this up via civil complaints? Or is that only for people who are in the same state? It isn't clear what you mean in these questions. A lawsuit is commenced by filing a civil complaint, filed by you or your lawyer in a court, and this can be done even if you don't live in the same state as the debtor, although it may be necessary to file it in the state where the debtor lives. But, the government won't supply a lawyer to help you collect your debt in the way that it would appoint a prosecutor to bring criminal charges against someone who committed a crime in which you were a victim.
The fact that you're not a native speaker of English doesn't alter the legal situation. If you literally had no understanding of English but for some reason you signed a piece of paper, then you might argue that there was no agreement in the first place, but obviously you do speak some English. Most people don't actually understand what contracts mean (on both sides). Contracts are still enforced, based on what the contract says. The move-in data is proposed, not firm, and it even indicates what the charges are if your circumstances change and the dates have to change (whereas is their circumstances change, they wouldn't have a basis for charging extra). It also does say that there will be no refund if you change your mind. So the piece of paper says "No refund". The problem seems to be that there's an "agent" whose statements you relied on, who is ultimately responsible for this problem, and s/he implied that you could get a refund. It's not clear what kind of "agent" this is (is he working for you, or for the owners?). You'd have a somewhat different legal basis depending on which it is, but you could sue someone in either event, assuming that you could actually persuade the court that you were given false information which you relied on. The statement "they will refund your money if the guy doesn't move out by the 16th" is false; the statement "they may refund your money if the guy doesn't move out by the 16th" is true. If the latter was the statement that you relied on, then you knew (or should have known) that that isn't a promise, it's just a guess, and if you read the piece of paper you know that it's a promise with no basis. So I would say it comes down to establishing what promise was made to you. Arguing that the agent "made" you sign isn't going to get you anywhere (unless you can prove actual coersion).