Who runs DispuPoint?

I run DispuPoint. I'm one person. I read every case before any letter gets drafted, and I sign off on every draft before it reaches the client. The reason DispuPoint exists is a fight I had with my own property manager. It started over $775 in disputed fees. It turned into something else: masked charges for minutes of admin work, stonewalling when challenged, and the company's quiet bet that I'd eventually give up. I didn't.

Why I built this

In April 2025, Westward360, the property manager for my Chicago condo at 1330 N La Salle, charged my account $775 in disputed fees. I paid $200 in good faith while I tried to understand the charges. Nothing about the remaining $575 added up. I spent a year writing emails. The board acknowledged the complaint. The company didn't substantively respond.

Then I stopped writing emails and started rereading them. Hundreds of pages of correspondence, ledger versions, portal screenshots, fee schedules. The leverage was already in the documents I had. I just hadn't gone back through them with the right frame.

The demand letter, anchored to specific documents the company itself had created, went out April 21, 2026. The community association manager wrote back in nine days. $475 of $575 in disputed fees, approved for removal in writing. The remaining $100 sits in board-decision territory and I'm not pursuing it.

The dollar amount stopped being the point a long time before the demand letter went out. What kept me going was reading the same pattern over and over: a property manager charging fees that vanished from the rule book when challenged, stonewalling owners who pushed back, and quietly counting on most of them to give up. The more I read, the clearer it was that this was a pattern, not just my case. Just because a company can charge a fee doesn't mean it should.

The full story is in the case study: Case Zero, $475 of $575 reversed in nine days. DispuPoint exists so most Illinois homeowners don't have to spend a year of their life learning how to push back.

How I got here

Born and raised in Chicago. Wrigleyville. Lincoln Park High School. I joined the U.S. Air Force in February 1998 and served twelve years across the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Iraq. I started as an avionics technician with a Secret clearance. After 9/11, I retrained as a French and Arabic linguist with TS/SCI clearance.

I separated from active duty in March 2010 and moved to Paris on the GI Bill that fall. Bachelor of Science in International Finance from The American University of Paris, 2013. Associate degrees from the Community College of the Air Force in Avionics and from the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Arabic Language and Culture.

After AUP, I worked as a senior analyst at Credit Suisse before founding G Coffee Company in Wrocław in 2015. A small Polish specialty roaster, still operating today (NIP 8971805443 on the Polish business registry). The G Coffee TikTok channel has about 60 recipe videos I filmed and explained myself. I pivoted into WroFood in 2020 when COVID hit, a Wrocław grocery-delivery service that grew through the pandemic and was acquired by Allegro in 2022. That year I gave a TEDx talk on business resilience; Pivoting on Plywood is on TED.com.

None of the biographical list above explains the day-to-day. I'm 46. Two kids. I run the coffee company. I spent nine months in 2024 living inside the 1330 N La Salle apartment as a construction site, restoring it after twenty-five years of family disuse, with help from my kids, an Air Force buddy who flew over for a week, and a flooring contractor who eventually became a close friend. I'm not a coffee snob even though I sell coffee. The kind of person who'll read every page of a two-hundred-page record if the case matters. Most DispuPoint clients are within ten years of my age. This is not a 25-year-old's product.

I started DispuPoint in March 2026 and work on it daily, full-time. It's not a Silicon Valley MVP, a weekend AI build, or somebody's side hustle. The pipeline gets refined continuously to stay current with Illinois statutes, IDFPR rulings, and the new fee labels property managers keep finding. Every case gets reviewed against the source documents before anything ships.

Why I live in Wrocław

Family ties brought me to Wrocław in 2015. I still own the Chicago apartment at 1330 N La Salle where the Westward360 dispute happened and where I process DispuPoint cases when I'm stateside. The TikTok channel "1330 Apartment Restore" documents the work I did there over nine months in 2024.

The fact that I'm not in Chicago full-time is part of why DispuPoint costs $249 instead of $400 an hour. No downtown office. No three-attorney letterhead. No partner taking a cut. One person, one flat fee, one promise: every case gets read carefully before any letter gets drafted, and I sign off on every draft before it reaches the client.

What "Reviewed by Gaston Sitbon" actually means

DispuPoint uses AI to read your documents fast. Bylaws, fines, notices, ledgers, the whole record. The pipeline checks through hundreds of pages of documents in short order and surfaces the lines that contradict the bill you're disputing. That part is automated. AI is good at speed and pattern-matching across volume. It is not where the leverage call gets made.

Then I read it. The whole thing. I check the AI's work against the source documents. I decide which claim to lead with. I draft the assessment in my own voice. I sign off on every letter draft before it reaches you. If the case isn't winnable, I tell you that directly instead of drafting a letter that wastes your money. You get a refund.

Then you sign and send the letter. DispuPoint drafts; the homeowner sends. That distinction matters: DispuPoint is a document preparation service, not a law firm. The act of sending the demand stays in your hands. You keep control of your dispute and you keep the relationship with your property manager and board on your own terms.

If you Google "Gaston Sitbon", you'll find LinkedIn, the TED talk on TED.com, the Polish business registry, Facebook, the GoFundMe I helped write for a friend, a YouTube interview about G Coffee, and two TikTok channels: one for my coffee work and one for the Chicago apartment renovation. No anonymous Slack avatar. No "our team of legal experts." One person you can name, verify, and hold accountable for the draft you receive.

More on the principles I work by and how I run DispuPoint - what counts as a winnable case, how I handle gray areas, what I won't draft regardless of what a client asks - at the principles page.

What happens to your documents and personal data?

All case documents and account data sit on Cloudflare infrastructure in the United States, behind Cloudflare's highest security tier. No third-party data brokers. Nothing sold or shared. The pipeline that reads your documents runs in US data centers. Your bylaws, ledgers, and emails do not leave the country during processing.

Inside DispuPoint, only I read your case material. "Real person reads your case" also means a small access surface: one person, no team of contractors with login credentials. The one-click "Delete my account" button in your portal wipes everything DispuPoint holds on you. Documents, account, case history. No retention. No recovery.

Most homeowners contacting DispuPoint are already in a situation where someone has been careless with their data or their money. The whole point of this setup is that DispuPoint can't be that someone. The full legal version lives on the privacy policy page.

Common questions

Is DispuPoint a law firm?

No. DispuPoint is a document preparation service. I am not an attorney and do not provide legal advice. The assessment explains your situation in plain English. The demand letter cites the Illinois statutes that apply. You decide what to do with both.

Who actually sends the demand letter to my HOA?

You do. DispuPoint drafts the letter, and I sign off on the draft before it reaches you. You review it, sign it as the homeowner of record, and send it to your property manager or board. That structure is intentional. It keeps you in control of the dispute and keeps DispuPoint out of representing you in any legal capacity.

What happens if my case isn't winnable?

If there isn't enough leverage in your documents to support a credible demand, I tell you that directly and refund the $249. No retainer. No hourly billing. No surprise invoice later. Either you get a letter worth signing and sending, or you get your money back.

How do I know Gaston Sitbon is a real person?

Click any of the verified links on this page. LinkedIn, the TED talk on TED.com, the Growly.io interview, the YouTube G Coffee interview, the Polish business registry, the TikTok channels, the GoFundMe. If any one of those were forged, the others would still verify the same person. That is the point.

Why do you live in Poland if DispuPoint serves Illinois?

Family ties brought me to Wrocław in 2015. The Chicago apartment where the Westward360 case happened is still mine and I return regularly. The work itself is reading documents, drafting letters, and citing statutes. It does not require a Chicago office. It does require careful attention, which is what one person on one case at a time can give.