The creator of AmaVoyeur is preparing to file suit against local police he says tried and failed to build an assault case against him, which began when he and his wife first approached police to get a former worker to stop breaking into their e-mail servers.
Daniel Friend was found guilty of nothing worse than driving with a suspended license when he got his day in court this month. That was after more than a year and a half of dealing with a bizarre case in which he said police tried to level 263 simple assault charges against him, four days after he was jailed on a driving under the influence allegation despite passing a breathalyzer test.
The affair began in July 2002 when Friend and his wife, Linda, were prepared to release the first version of AmaVoyeur's signature program, the search engine and adult online community software AmaWare XP. They were returning home from bringing signage to a site where they planned a release party.
"I e-mailed all the members to tell them they could get their pre-release copies (at the party)," Friend told AVN.com, "not knowing two police officers were members of the site. And we were coming back, we noticed two cop cars blocking our driveway, and Linda said ‘Get out of here.’"
Friend said he turned around and pulled out of their housing development, with the police following without sirens or lights. He said he wanted only to take them out of the neighborhood before talking to them, because his neighbors did not know his business. He led the police to an industrial building away from the neighborhood – and that, he said, was where the real trouble began.
"They were screaming that one of us had better be working (at the industrial building)," Friend said. "And an officer asked me to get out of the car and they gave me a field sobriety test, which I failed because I have a coordination problem with my feet. They never gave me hand-eye coordination. I blew 0.0 on the breathalyzer three times. The officer got irate and they cuffed me and put me in the cruiser."
The officers asked Friend to sign a form and, while he wrote down what happened from his perspective, Friend said, one of the officers inadvertently introduced himself as the other. "We found out later," he said, "that he was a rookie, and he was reading a speech, written by his partner. He was kind of scared and kind of new on the job, and I'm writing down what happened here."
Friend claims one of the officers came back and said his wife offered the officer sex and told him, "She's going home and you're going to jail." He said he kept his cool and continued writing, telling the officer "exactly what I was doing. And he slammed me against the (police cruiser) and then to the ground, and his partner pulled up and jumped over the hood." Friend claims the officers assaulted him further before arresting him.
The original charges were two counts of simple assault, two counts of aggravated assault, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, careless driving, and driving while his privileges had been suspended. He spent time in the local jail where he learned "there was 263 simple assault charges added that I wasn't arraigned on," including one charge alleging he had pulled a weapon on an officer.
"Even in the jail, they said these were bogus charges," he said. "It would be like me beating the shit out of 263 individual people."
Friend is convinced the police who confronted him had no prior knowledge of his suspended driver's license and that they went to his home in the first place because of his business.
"I had an ex-employee who was trying to sabotage AmaVoyeur," he said. "He got into one of the e-mail servers and locked me out. We got the cops involved in that to get him to stop breaking into our stuff, and we gave them all these reports. And they responded to that." Just not quite in the way the Friends expected.
"We don't have escorts or strippers coming in and out of our house," Friend said. "We're just a huge search engine, a huge database for people to find information, a huge adult online community. For people to make a trump charge against me, they ought to be out busting the pimps and the freaks."
The case interfered with AmaVoyeur's operation, when the couple's Internet bill piled up during Friend's battle with the law and they were forced to shut down until Daniel was finally able to go home. "It took me three to four months to get everything back running again," he said.
Finally, a judge ruled the 263 assault charges were a computer error and found Friend guilty only of driving with a suspended license, ordering him to three months' house arrest.
The couple has hired an attorney, Mike Berman, whose clients include adult entertainers. And they intend to file suit in the case as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, claiming 3.4 million members for the program, the Friends released Version 1.1 of AmaVoyeur last week, not to mention launching Kiki's Cash, an affiliate program designed by AmaVoyeur, in which you can market your adult product, service, or Website on AmaWareXP.
Stylistically modeled somewhat on Microsoft's Windows XP, AmaWare XP works like an operating system, complete with lower-corner start button and start menu options for a unique Internet browser plus an image viewer, media player, assorted program and interest-item links, and functions like your own document and image storage within the program.
"Kiki" is AmaVoyeur's logo trademark, a computer-drawn image of a trim blonde looking somewhat like a fashion doll. "Kiki's Cash is very unique," the Friends say. "AmaVoyeur pays on every sale, even the traffic not sent by an affiliate. If a potential customer finds AmaVoyeur on the Internet by our other marketing means, we still pay our affiliates."
The affiliate program works with a customer typing in the AmaVoyeur.com address or finding it on one of several other search engines. "We pay our top monthly affiliate commission for that sale," the Friends say. "This will ensure that all our affiliates strive to be the number one affiliate, each and every month."
Current payouts for affiliates are $10 per sale of AmaWare XP Home Edition on CD-ROM, a pricing due to end April 2, with the payouts returning to $5 per sale.
Affiliates also have access to a large supply of banners, page links, and instructions to help them market AmaWare XP to their customers' preferences. AmaWare XP on CD-ROM sells for $39.99, but there are no monthly membership charges beyond that.
