One of the many "bad guy" stories from Goldhawk's book...

Some people we chased more than once.  Vic Harris was a mover who specialized in countrywide moves where the move would cost customers twice as much as the estimate he gave them.  In some cases, he just lost several loads of furniture.  Harris was a broker.  He would sell you a move and then go to a real mover to book trucks and men.  He was never very fussy about the trucks or the men. 

          We had dealt with Harris many times on the phone.  Usually, he would refund money when we demanded it for some of his unhappy customers.  When the stream of complaints continued, month after month, we went looking for Harris to find out if he was the world’s most incompetent mover or just a cheap crook.  Harris had no office.  He worked out of his car.  He would flit from household to household, giving estimates to customers unlucky enough to have responded to his enticing newspaper ads.  Once you gave Vic a sizeable deposit, there was at least an even chance you would never see him again.

          Bagging Harris was embarrassingly easy.  How do you get a mover?  Call and ask for an estimate.  He comes to you.  And we were waiting.  As soon as he came out of our contrived moving job in a sting bungalow in west end Toronto, we were there.  We caught up to him on the street and walked along as he fended off our questions by complaining about his cash flow problem and how hard it was to find good movers.  We agreed with him on that part.  We let Harris go on the promise things would get better.  There would be no more complaints about him, he said.  If only it had been true. 

          In the next few months, we had dozens more complaints.  And the police had become interested in Harris, as well.  It was time to say hello to Vic again.  We wanted to remind him about a whole pile of new complaints.  He never replied to our numerous messages so with the help of one of our young operatives, Brian Woodcock, we set him up again.  This time we had him trapped on the 22nd floor of an apartment building.  The apartment was bugged so the crew and I could hear what was going on outside in the hallway.  We were ready when he bid good bye to what he thought was a customer and stepped out into the hallway.  He was hit with an instant blast of camera lights and me yelling Vic Harris.  He must have jumped a foot.  Then he rolled his eyes and shouted at me:

          “Does this mean I have to look over my shoulder every time I go out on a call?”

          “Yeah, Vic,” I said. “You got it.”

           It was a tight fit in the hallway as we all walked toward the elevator.  I had brought my file of names and was trying to ask him about the status of dozens of moving complaints.  Don and Kevin stuck to Vic like glue.  He punched the elevator button and we all climbed in the car--four big guys and all the gear, boom pole banging against the ceiling, a little shoving from Vic. Then Vic decided to pop out of the elevator.  He ran down the hall to the stairs--22 floors down.  We chased him down all 22 flights.  At about the 10th floor, Kevin, the sound man, stumbled and fell, twisting his ankle.  We unhooked him from the camera and told him we’d come back for him.  He grunted.  We continued.  By the time we ran through the lobby, with tenants all yelling “he went that way,” we got outside just in time to see him flip us the bird as he drove off down the street.  Such eloquence.  The justice system flipped him the bird later that year when he was convicted of fraud and sent to jail.