Oil Investment Contracts Gone Bad

[half&half]

My question involves court procedures for the state of: Texas-NY

this is long and i hope that it is in the right place and i'll try to cover everything as was explained to me.
We live in a very rich area in upstate NY, many like me are native but in the past 20 years many millionairs have moved in and bought everything they could and built mansions. One women came and spent tons on money on her horse farm-millions and she had a boy friend that mixed with the locals, I had never met him but never heard anything bad about him, most of the locals were impressed with his big cars and thought he was for real and i guess he had a good line, he was supposed to be a texas oil man and after a few months he let a few locals buy into his wells, in the mean time he and his millionair girl friend parted company and he moved back to Texas.. six people that I know of bought oil contracts from 20,000 to 90,000, this all took place about 3 yrs ago and a couple famlies have moved to Tenn, no one has ever collected a dime from their oil revenues, the guy has sold the wells to another corp and that corp has sold them another corp and one of the guys in the new corp in the original owner that took them all in to start with. Everyone had givin up on ever getting any money and were talking about sueing the oil corp but never got to it.

they had a contract and resigned a new contract everytime someone new took over the well, now remember none ever collected a dime. Yesterday A sheriff found one of the owners and handed him a summons to appear in a Texas court for a bill of $36,795.00 for operating costs. He started calling all the other owners that are on the contract and like him, owners of the well. Only one had gotten a summons and his bill was for $19,600. without calling anyone else, this guy went to a local lawyer and the local lawyer called the Texas lawyer and the cut a deal for half what the summons said or $9750.00.. My friend called him and he just said he was old, sick and wanted to get free from them and he had invested over 80,000 in the well.
Question #1,can the lawyer make a deal settling for half what the summons reads and what are the other options. None of the people that i know have the money to make a deal. they already waisted their saving on the well. the original owner himself is also under indictment in Texas for something, i think some kind of fraud. thanks for any suggestions or help.
I personally thought from the start that it was the old pyrimid game

[aaron]

The involved "investors" need to gather their paperwork together and consult a lawyer.