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selling shares in Napster, he finally responded to the two large judgments against him. But rather than simply pay off the debts, he fought back like a wolverine. Fanning hired lawyers who filed motions to vacate the judgments on the grounds that the creditors had his address wrong and hadn't served him with the paperwork. Fanning even countersued Creditrust for a host of alleged wrongdoing, including violations of credit-collection statutes and infliction of “emotional distress.”

It was a stretch for Creditrust to agree that since Fanning had never been served, he didn't officially know about the suit against him. The firm had gone so far as to enlist the Plymouth County Sheriff's Department to hunt Fanning down and bring him to court. Normally when the Plymouth sheriff gets such a request, his department simply sends out a letter. That's almost always all it takes to get the defendant to appear in court when he or she is supposed to. Sometimes it takes a phone call. On a very few occasions, the deputies have to go out and look for someone in order to make a form of civil arrest. With Fanning, deputies would have to go out on foot—not once or twice, but a total of eight times, according to Plymouth sheriff's spokesman Mike Seele, all without success. “The guy was pretty good at hiding. We put a lot of shoe leather and effort into that guy,” Seele said. A frustrated deputy reported to the Creditrust lawyer that he had done everything he could. “Defendant will not come into court,” he wrote.

When Fanning's attorney filed the motion to vacate the judgment, the Creditrust lawyer was beside himself. Obviously Fanning knew about the case, as demonstrated not only by his efforts to dodge the sheriff but by the Creditrust lawyer's conversations with Fanning's lawyer. Nevertheless, without a proper service of the documents, Fanning was able to get the judgment vacated and start the suit over from the beginning. The other credit judgment was also vacated, leaving it to that creditor to file suit again. Neither case had been resolved by the time of this writing.

Fanning responded in a more conciliatory manner to the $13,000 judgment against his wife, whose wages were nearly garnisheed by her employer. In that suit, Fanning interceded with the bank and negotiated a deal. On September 30, 1999, a month after he raised the first outside investment in Napster and sold some of his shares, Fanning sent a check

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