Some time ago I was browsing the net and stumbled upon a website www.savetoby.com. The site owners told a story about how they rescued a little fluffy rabbit from under the car wheels. Nevertheless inevitable death waited on the creature whom thy called Toby unless $50K were “donated” to the site owners Pay Pal account by July 2006. These ruthless people threatened they’d cook the little rabbit using one of the recipes described in the culinary section of the site unless the exact amount of 50K is received.

The site also contained pictures and videos of this cute little rabbit jumping around, eating grass, reading Wall Street Journal, and sitting clueless in a frying pan without any idea what the horrible future had for him.

Animal rights defenders were in horror. They demanded the site to be closed. The authors received tons of hate mail and awful threats like this one:

>>>>>

Subject: i am going to kill you with an rpg
From: “Mike or Susan Self” [self@xmission.com]

You crazy mofo. I will cut your tongue out and make you swollow it then shoot you with an rpg and take toby into a loving family.
Thank you for your cooperation
Have a nice day

SAVETOBY.COM: Two thoughts: 1) For some strange reason I don’t think I’m crazier than you 2) For that same reason I doubt Toby will be safer in your loving, RPG toting, body-part force feeding family. Unfortunately, we will be unable to cooperate.

<<<<<

But the site owners remained anonymous. They could not even be brought to trial for cruel treatment of animals as until July 2006 they were going to look after the rabbit, satisfying the slightest demands of the potential victim, and this was all reported on the Internet.

The only thing that was not foreseen by the executioners of Toby was that the system of online donations can sometimes give serious failures. After several months of the site existence and hundreds of letters from angry visitors who wished to save the fluffy rabbit from filthy butchers by buying a T-shirt or a Toby-cup, PayPal had frozen the site owner’s account. At that time the extorters were not too far from their goal of getting the money (they already had around 20K in their account). But to make matters worse Paypal had notified almost every other online donation company and had told them not to accept savetoby.com as a client.

Inevitable death was awaiting the rabbit. However Kensington Publishing was able to broker a last minute deal with the site owners, just before the June 30th cut off, for the publication of SAVE TOBY! The authors agreed and in September the book was published. It sold over a 100 thousand copies and as the official press release says on SaveToby.com the little rabbit was saved.

Now how’s that for a way to get start up capital for your business?

Related posts:

1. Making extra money with a dating site