From what you wrote he isnt your friend.
Did I understand it right that you have access to the sourcecode?
And the success isnt because of he wrote texts and everything for the site to maintain it? Its not its offline-business taken to the net only? Its all your work?
How about adding a 301-redirect for google-bots away from these pages? Then the linkjuice should be taken away from the sites and given to the new target. Maybe hide it in includes and so on.
But somehow it sounds strange to me... he does not do adsense, no affiliate... so where comes the money from? Does he sell goods? So I dont know if you could say its all your work.
Alternatively when there are no backups your server could crash and... oops no data anymore because the backup was corrupt somehow too. You found a bad RAM-Part and already have changed it. Youre sorry.
If he is using affiliate change them slowly to your links so that it could be natural. If he asks tell him the competition is getting harder because... of the jobmarket or somewhat...
When he has only a couple hundred bucks a month play the friend and tell him that you wanted to start a page on this topic. His site could be a good start for this. And you could pay him 12x monthly winning the site generates at that moment. Maybe he is doing it because he fears to lose all else... Maybe it needs some weeks more for this decision... and some less earnings...
You could try to insert cloaked content. Maybe some keywords so that the google bot sees it. Maybe the site gets banned for cloaking.
No more ideas for the moment...
He sells a service locally, which I suggested, named, conceptualised,ochestrated for him to show him the new skills I was and had been learning from my buddies at BHW... part showing off. part showing love to him.... part hoping that in some way I will benefit from it some how.
It was me who sat in a cafe for 4 days doing SEO research, keyword anaylsis, onpage off page planning, url choosing, and it was my staff who put the code and my images and frameworks into a site and onto the web.
He even gave me his credit card once and allowed me to make a transaction for him.
It has been eating away at me for a while... since he called me pathetic and I lost it in the office and subsequently came off worse than him job wise. But I felt more spiritual etc etc.
Then yesterday he asked me to do the same for his brothers business... then today I found out he had a cosy secret meeting with my ex...
MY MOM was furious when I first set him up.. but I said ah well... she now doesnt want me to take him down... Eye for and eye as he said...etc.
I dont want this to haunt me... and I also have to go into work and see the moron every day....so he will know its me and defo start stirring shit at work ... maybe its
1 Wait
2 Formulate
3 Strike
Revenge is a dish best served cold...?
And @ the man who said what am I asking for?
Well I know basic BH - I also got a bit lucky chosing the right URL...( the old proverb "knowing where to tap?" but I don't know half as much as you lot especially the cloak... accidental stuff......etc...
I recall a thread which was about a guy who wanted to ******** his competitor up... and you lot said it was immoral at that point..again though .. these are very different circumstances....