Joshua Holcomb is a self-described multimillionaire Internet entrepreneur who admits to cutting a few corners. But he says he's neither as rich, nor as bad, as he's made out to be by many of his customers -- not to mention some of the women in his life.

The 28-year-old Roanoke County native, a dropout of William Byrd High School, is under siege from those he was once closest to: his estranged wife and mother of his four daughters, who is suing for divorce and claims he's hiding money; an ex-girlfriend and the mother of his son who says his child support is too little; and a former fiancee who is taking him to court for allegedly hitting her and who he says is keeping the $4,000 diamond ring he bought for her at Fink's Jewelers.

Holcomb is the man who founded and ran Telextra, a Roanoke Internet company that has drawn Better Business Bureau complaints from dozens of customers around the nation and the interest of several law enforcement agencies, although no charges have been filed. He has also sought donations for a Roanoke charity without permission from either the group or government regulatory officials.

The saga of Holcomb's business troubles is inextricably woven into the tale of his unfortunate private life. It all meshes to underscore the ambitions embraced by a generation of young Internet entrepreneurs who have seen others taste success quickly. He has been a man in a hurry, professionally and personally. Further, he seems very much a product of a click-on, log-off youth in which businesses and relationships begin with similar abandon and often end abruptly.

The Internet gave Holcomb a speedy wealth that in earlier eras would have been almost unthinkable for someone with his lack of conventional education and family connections. Despite some disadvantages, Holcomb fast-tracked his image from Subway sandwich wrapper to dealmaker. At the same time, his romantic liaisons have been doomed to brevity and costliness. He readily acknowledges he has caused pain for himself and others.

"I have never meant to hurt anyone. Some nights I cry and can't sleep because I can't tuck my kids in," said Holcomb, who lives in a Southwest Roanoke apartment complex. His late-model silver Corvette is parked outside near his black Ford Excursion.

Then there's his mother, Wanda Ward -- adoring but always looking over his shoulder. Remarried since the divorce from Joshua's father in 1985, and now working in a Roanoke real estate office, she willingly discusses her son, calling him "my Pookie Bear." He has "behavioral problems" but also possesses some fine qualities, Ward said.

"I give him credit. He has always paid his child support since he was 17. He'll never quit. I told him I'd kill him if he did."

In recent weeks Holcomb has dismantled Telextra's Web site, where the company solicited fees from mortgage brokers who were promised leads in the form of names of people in the market for home loans. But many said the prepaid leads furnished by Telextra proved to be either worthless or nonexistent.

Holcomb now says he is gradually refunding thousands of dollars to certain of those brokers. He says the unsatisfactory service was inadvertent, and he insists he wasn't fully aware of the complaints until reading about them in articles The Roanoke Times published in April and June.

He also attributes the Telextra performance breakdowns to his spotty health, especially an emotional condition for which he takes prescribed antidepressants, Holcomb says.

"I had kind of got mixed up; there was a bit of confusion," he said.

Things haven't been all that calm at home either, at least not on the night of June 2, when Roanoke police arrested him. Charged with assault and battery against his fiancee, Lauren Dianna Meucci, Holcomb is scheduled to appear for a hearing in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court on Oct. 13.

"What really happened is she attacked me and I just grabbed her arm," Holcomb said.

Meucci couldn't be reached for comment. The couple have since split up. He's bitter that she won't return the $4,000 engagement ring.

There's no love lost between him and some of his clients either.

"They say there are three kinds of sharks at the bottom of the ocean: lawyers, mortgage brokers and I can't remember what the third kind is," Holcomb said.

The feeling is mutual, according to Bob Baird, a mortgage broker in Orlando, Fla., who recently received a $1,500 refund from Telextra, 75 percent of the fee he paid earlier this year. "He [Holcomb] called in June, after the second article in [The Roanoke Times]. He said he wanted to make things right," Baird said.

But even after that, Baird said, weeks passed before a check arrived.

"I kept calling him back. I told him I would never, ever give up on getting my money."

For Holcomb's part, he said that this newspaper's two articles brought mortgage brokers "out of the woodwork wanting refunds from me. I'm pretty sure I have sent money to clients who got what they paid for -- just to keep things smooth."

Roanoke Police Department officials won't comment on Telextra, or Holcomb, but a department spokeswoman says information about the complaints has been forwarded to the Virginia Attorney General's Office in Richmond and to the U.S. Secret Service -- which sometimes investigates computer-related fraud allegations.

Holcomb hopes the refunds he's making will be taken into consideration by investigators, one of whom called Baird in Florida to verify the repayment to him.

Also unhappy with Telextra's Web site were several corporate giants that Holcomb listed as supposedly being pleased with his services. His site displayed color logos of Coldwell Banker, Wachovia Bank and Chase (now J.P. Morgan Chase). But when contacted by a reporter, the companies said they hadn't done business with Telextra or authorized use of their names on its Web site, and they vowed to investigate.

Holcomb now says he didn't ask the corporate headquarters of those companies for permission to advertise them as references, but he insists he had "done business with their branches over the years and people in those offices said it was OK." The companies said they checked with office managers throughout their chains and could find no evidence of business relationships with Telextra or Holcomb.

Such complications are far removed from the innocent birth of his profit motive, which Holcomb's mother recalls being in elementary school. Wanda Ward sometimes made costume jewelry at home, and her younger son -- he has a brother three years older living in Charlotte, N.C. -- volunteered to sell it at school.

He remembers: "I took two or three boxes of it and showed it to my teachers. Pretty soon it was all sold."

Holcomb remembers that as a teenager he watched television "channels where business news, stock prices and that sort of thing, would scroll past."

Holcomb makes no apologies for his successful pursuit of profit. He claims to have earned millions of dollars since beginning a series of Internet ventures in 2000. He declines to say specifically how much of it came through Telextra, which he started in 2003.

Another of his companies is called Everfund Mortgage, which he describes as a loan referral service -- directing borrowers to brokers. It has a rented office on Colonial Avenue, although no one has answered the door there when a reporter visited several times at various hours. It isn't licensed with the State Corporation Commission. Ken Schrad, an SCC spokesman, said Virginia law is murky about requiring certain mortgage-related companies to register.

Even when Holcomb seems to be doing a good deed, he goes about it in ways that raise legal questions.

Consider one of his current Web sites: JoshHolcomb.com.

"This site is dedicated to raising money for Roanoke VA charities and families," the page declares.

The site goes on to extol the virtues of Total Action Against Poverty, a nonprofit community action agency based in downtown Roanoke. The page displays a box on which to click to "Make a Donation."

But when visitors to the JoshHolcomb.com click to make a donation, a subsequent page appears bearing the name, mortgageindustry.com -- another of Holcomb's companies. That site offers to let visitors pay by credit card, but the box labeled "Payment For" no longer mentions TAP or other charities. Instead, Payment For specifically lists: "support for JoshHolcomb.com."

Holcomb said in an interview that the site hasn't collected any money and isn't meant to be deceptive.

"It was just an idea. I did some volunteer work for charity when I was a kid and I wanted to give something back."

For their part, officials at TAP said they don't know Holcomb and haven't authorized him to raise money in their group's name.

Holcomb hasn't registered his charitable efforts as required under Virginia law, according to Marion Horsley, spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in Richmond. Soliciting charitable donations in Virginia without state approval is a misdemeanor, punishable by jail time of up to six months and fines of up to $1,000 per offense upon conviction. But she said the agency doesn't have the resources to pursue every alleged violator, and there's no indication that it's looking into Holcomb.

Holcomb said that in any future charitable endeavors he'll follow the rules.

"I guarantee that everything I do in the future will be 100 percent pleasing to everybody."

Attempting to align himself with organized charities, "is just Josh's way of trying to feel part of something," Ward said. "I think he has anxiety about not belonging."

Holcomb says he doesn't belong to the two families that he helped start because of conflicts with the women he once loved.

"We just didn't get along. I didn't want the kids to hear us arguing," he said.

His son by an ex-girlfriend in Roanoke is now 11, and Holcomb's mother dotes on the child.

"The baby came along when Josh was 16, and she [the girlfriend] was 19. He just wasn't ready."

At age 21, he married for the first time and fathered four daughters. The divorce is still pending, but the file in Roanoke County Circuit Court contains allegations from Jennifer Pingry Holcomb that her husband's business interests produced income of more than $500,000 a year.

Perhaps, said Joshua Holcomb, "but people don't realize my expenses. I have paid out more than $300,000 to advertise on the Internet." That figure can't be verified because Holcomb's businesses are privately held.

The court file specifies that as of April 2005 he maintained accounts at nine Roanoke banks.

Holcomb won't be specific about his past banking activities, but he said that today, "I have one bank account. That's all."

And as to his fortune, "I have made more than a million [dollars] but all I have right now is about a hundred thousand in the bank." He declined to make his financial records public.

But Holcomb isn't done making big money, he vows. When the divorce and the distractions of the Telextra complaints are behind him, both he and that company will be back.

The company's Web site asserts: "Telextra.net is under redesign to offer over 50 new products and services."

Holcomb, looking ahead, says, "I have a lot of big ideas."