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[ke5aux]

A quick criminal history look up shows over 5 arrests for writing bad checks $500-$1000

[Scotti]

sparr0 said:

-1 for implying that hosts who don't take paypal are shady. Paypal is as shady as it gets.

I know I'll regret asking this... but what exactly is shady about PayPal?  Every single complaint I've heard about them has been ridiculous.

[ftzy2487]

No new sign-ups get billed. They need to be converted from leads to accounts. And well, since I've not been doing anything except taking care of my children, no one has been converted. Everyone that was billed in error has had the transactions reversed, and have been removed from the billing list.

Continue to think what you'd like about the circumstances, as I'm sure you will anyway. I'm offline again to attempt survival.

Later.

[ftzy2487]

Before I go, Paypal is shady because if you read the fine print, they OWN your money until it's in your possession. Any money in your Paypal account? Not yours. They can take it anytime they see fit.

That's why we don't, or didn't do Paypal.

[ke5aux]

ftzy2487 said:

No new sign-ups get billed. They need to be converted from leads to accounts. And well, since I've not been doing anything except taking care of my children, no one has been converted. Everyone that was billed in error has had the transactions reversed, and have been removed from the billing list.

Continue to think what you'd like about the circumstances, as I'm sure you will anyway. I'm offline again to attempt survival.

Later.

So can we get the accounts cancelled since the servers are NOT working and, as it appears, will never be?

ie stop billing period?

[ftzy2487]

Raziaar said:

Hey, if you can get the police involved, I'm all for it. The more and more I dig, the more and more this guy seems like a professional scam artist.

Think he has enough addresses?




His wife is an accomplice in it.

http://www.myspace.com/457843143

She was the one handling all the sales and such.



EDIT: Further investigation yields his facebook account.

http://www.facebook.com/skhammerly

http://www.facebook....erly/1385731136

That's his wife on facebook as "Erin Hammerly" Same person as Fitzy Hammerly.

Must be his mom or something. Maybe somebody who is serious about bringing these guys out can use some of this information. Don't harass his family obviously, but maybe you can use them to probe questions about whereabouts.


http://www.facebook.... ... 1112845530

People do move. Just saying.
Old Lyme, CT'
Deep River, CT
Moodus, CT
New Milford, CT

Every year it seems. Strangely enough, the same amount of time a lease usually goes for. Why move when you are still trying to find a place you like. If you would like our physical street addresses for each town, I would gladly oblige. Or perhaps where our son was born 3 years ago? Lawrence & Memorial. 2nd closest hospital to Deep River.

I am Erin/Fitzy Hammerly. Also, Erin Higgins. I do have a maiden name. And Fitzy? What are the odds someone's birth name is Fitzy? Come on..

I've already stated, everyone that was billed in error will receive refunds shortly.

I am no "accomplice" to this "scam". Steve worked his ass off on this site, and for everyone that signed up. Especially considering it was just him. It's also great that I got to spend approximately NO time with him before he left.

So yeah. We've had a lot of addresses. It means absolutely nothing. Except maybe trying to figure out where we would eventually purchase a home.

[ftzy2487]

ke5aux said:

ftzy2487 said:

No new sign-ups get billed. They need to be converted from leads to accounts. And well, since I've not been doing anything except taking care of my children, no one has been converted. Everyone that was billed in error has had the transactions reversed, and have been removed from the billing list.

Continue to think what you'd like about the circumstances, as I'm sure you will anyway. I'm offline again to attempt survival.

Later.

So can we get the accounts cancelled since the servers are NOT working and, as it appears, will never be?

ie stop billing period?

Yes. I have stopped all billing. Scotti was kind enough to find me on Facebook, whether it was out of irritation or not, and help me get people's maps downloaded so at the very least this wasn't all for nothing. Believe me, all of this was not our intention. Bad timing perhaps. But no one was intentionally scammed.

[ke5aux]

We really have no business about your personal life, aside using the clues you volunteer to the internet to find you and your husband, as the support requests go unanswered.

In this case I would suggest posting on the site  - Sorry, we have no resources to continue this for personal reasons. All accounts have been cancelled and will not be re-billed.

[ftzy2487]

Scotti said:

I feel I owe an apology  to everyone for not offering my experience sooner.  Like a lot of people here, I continued giving this guy the benefit of the doubt even though I had my suspicions from the beginning.  Unfortunately, I started typing this about 6 hours ago and a power outage wiped everything I had written.  

Anyway, I'm going to share what I've found in my research, and I'll share my email exchanges a bit later.  Steve claimed to me that his company grossed $3 million dollars last year, and that he didn't really need my money.

http://web.archive.o... ... -magic.com

That's his SEO company that I assume he's claiming made him $3 million dollars... interesting that it was only online for 2 months in 2008.

http://web.archive.o...w.punk4hire.com

This one's a bit more interesting.  Seems Steve spent a good portion of his youth as a software pirate.  Yo ho ho.

http://maps.google.c... ... l=en&gl=us

This is the listed address for his company that charged me, and the same phone number that appears on your credit/debit card when you paid for the service.

Finally, I called 724-964-6327 (their advertised "support" number) and spoke with Steve on Friday, November 12th, but we were "disconnected".  I immediately got a call back from (860) 365-8010, but no one spoke.  I tried calling both numbers several times over the following days, and I'm sure that one of them is forwarding to the other.

That's all I've got time for right now, but I'll share my email exchanges with Steve and Fitzy Scammerly... err, Hammerly later.  I'm curious if anyone else was told that something "incredibly serious happened" in their personal life on that Friday night.  Fitzy asked me to not share this because Steve doesn't like anyone to know any things about his personal life...  Obviously I could care less what Steve likes at this point.  I'm nowhere near done messing with him yet.

I just wanted to explain this Hidden-Magic Consulting thing to you, Scotti. Since I'm on here anyway.

At one point, Hidden-Magic was making booku bucks an an SEO contractor. With one company. It took us a while to choose between 3 name options which eventually ended up as Hidden-Magic Consulting. So he made a site for it.

We then realized all his time was consumed by the one company he was doing business with, so it was pointless to pursue anything else.

And as for the disconnection when you attempted to call, I was expecting a call from Steve since my phone chose the worst time to not work. And I accidentally called back through Skype.

That's the deal with that.

[ftzy2487]

Raziaar said:

Scotti said:

I feel I owe an apology  to everyone for not offering my experience sooner.  Like a lot of people here, I continued giving this guy the benefit of the doubt even though I had my suspicions from the beginning.  Unfortunately, I started typing this about 6 hours ago and a power outage wiped everything I had written.  

Anyway, I'm going to share what I've found in my research, and I'll share my email exchanges a bit later.  Steve claimed to me that his company grossed $3 million dollars last year, and that he didn't really need my money.

http://web.archive.o... ... -magic.com

That's his SEO company that I assume he's claiming made him $3 million dollars... interesting that it was only online for 2 months in 2008.

http://web.archive.o...w.punk4hire.com

This one's a bit more interesting.  Seems Steve spent a good portion of his youth as a software pirate.  Yo ho ho.

http://maps.google.c... ... l=en&gl=us

This is the listed address for his company that charged me, and the same phone number that appears on your credit/debit card when you paid for the service.

Finally, I called 724-964-6327 (their advertised "support" number) and spoke with Steve on Friday, November 12th, but we were "disconnected".  I immediately got a call back from (860) 365-8010, but no one spoke.  I tried calling both numbers several times over the following days, and I'm sure that one of them is forwarding to the other.

That's all I've got time for right now, but I'll share my email exchanges with Steve and Fitzy Scammerly... err, Hammerly later.  I'm curious if anyone else was told that something "incredibly serious happened" in their personal life on that Friday night.  Fitzy asked me to not share this because Steve doesn't like anyone to know any things about his personal life...  Obviously I could care less what Steve likes at this point.  I'm nowhere near done messing with him yet.

That's all incredibly interesting. See I got a completely different story from Steve. He told me that he had quit his job to work on Mynecraft.com full time about the time when I started up with his service. He said he was just recently then starting to turn a profit on Mynecraft.com but that they were still sort of scraping by.

I have a long chain of e-mails between me and Steve, and I do admit he's one hell of a charismatic guy which helps his con along.

For a while there I was thinking he was operating a legit service and he just got in way over his head... but if that's the case then he's taking the COMPLETE wrong route by continuing to charge his customers. That just screams fraudulent and not scared and overwhelmed to me... especially given the threats of civil/criminal retaliation.




It was this particular email where I was thinking... okay, good. We can get to the point where we're satisfied with the service, and we won't be charged anymore. Steve had assured me that I was going to have a free service until the point that we were satisfied with it, since it's been a horrific time and the first half of our month was complete downtime.

Tim,

    Your server is up, and your server is free. If you make a decision eventually that your happy with us. We can talk then.

    Got back to work this morning. You're on new hardware, and the only thing that needs to be handled is your control panel. That should take less than an hour.

    We've doubled you RAM at no additional cost. I don't want anyone to complain of slowdown.

   I've also added a reboot feature to your control panel. Use that if you should ever need it.

  We've grown to quickly, and we're making changes to be .more transparent with support and status in the coming days.

Thanks,
Steve

Such was my surprised when my card was charged again only 25 days after the previous charging... despite the previous claims of "free two weeks" plus "free" completely for the server... and that nobody was supposed to manage my account except himself personally.

Steve did quit his job to work on Mynecraft full time. And believe me, we were just scraping by. He is forgetful and neglects to inform me when people are to be taken off the billing list for a month. Apologies.

[ftzy2487]

ke5aux said:

We really have no business about your personal life, aside using the clues you volunteer to the internet to find you and your husband, as the support requests go unanswered.

In this case I would suggest posting on the site  - Sorry, we have no resources to continue this for personal reasons. All accounts have been cancelled and will not be re-billed.

We volunteer nothing to the internet. Unfortunately it's all open for public viewing. So people go on with their assumptions. Me included, simply because I go by a nickname, so when I use my real name on Facebook I must be someone else.

Scotti chose to post my message to him on the forums, so now I suppose my troubles are open for public viewing anyway.

And well, I can't just let everyone assume that because we've had 4 different addresses in 4 years that we are just a family of con artists. We move when leases are up. End of story. These posts could still be visible when my children are adults, and there are only so many Hammerly's in the world.

But my statement was true. Billing is stopped. Refunds were made. That is that.

[ke5aux]

ftzy2487 said:

We volunteer nothing to the internet. Unfortunately it's all open for public viewing. So people go on with their assumptions. Me included, simply because I go by a nickname, so when I use my real name on Facebook I must be someone else.

Thank you for resolving the situation.

However, you do volunteer a lot of your information by using Facebook, Myspace, etc. Once you post something on the internet it is understood that it is in public view forever. (No matter what the EULA says)

[PurplePenguin04]

ftzy2487 said:

Scotti was kind enough to find me on Facebook, whether it was out of irritation or not, and help me get people's maps downloaded so at the very least this wasn't all for nothing.

Are you saying that we can get our maps somehow?

I understand that things happen in life and will now bring out a pitchfork and torch over $15. I do, however, hate not knowing what's going on. Even basic information is better than nothing.

I would absolutely love to get my maps though, to move to another server.

[citricsquid]

I'm curious why he thought it would be a good idea to quit his job for minectaft servers. Also I'll be removing all personal information from this thread, it's against the rules to post it here.

[ftzy2487]

ke5aux said:

ftzy2487 said:

We volunteer nothing to the internet. Unfortunately it's all open for public viewing. So people go on with their assumptions. Me included, simply because I go by a nickname, so when I use my real name on Facebook I must be someone else.

Thank you for resolving the situation.

However, you do volunteer a lot of your information by using Facebook, Myspace, etc. Once you post something on the internet it is understood that it is in public view forever. (No matter what the EULA says)

If anyone has access to anything I put on Facebook, that's pretty scary. I thought I had that locked down pretty tight.. But I also don't believe I have anything on there I would be ashamed for anyone to see. Now I'll have to check that out.

[ftzy2487]

PurplePenguin04 said:

ftzy2487 said:

Scotti was kind enough to find me on Facebook, whether it was out of irritation or not, and help me get people's maps downloaded so at the very least this wasn't all for nothing.

Are you saying that we can get our maps somehow?

I understand that things happen in life and will now bring out a pitchfork and torch over $15. I do, however, hate not knowing what's going on. Even basic information is better than nothing.

I would absolutely love to get my maps though, to move to another server.

Scotti said it's pretty easy to download maps. Right now we're just trying to figure out the setup Steve had going on in the SSH of it all. We are definately trying to get the maps going for everyone.

[ftzy2487]

citricsquid said:

I'm curious why he thought it would be a good idea to quit his job for minectaft servers. Also I'll be removing all personal information from this thread, it's against the rules to post it here.

Mynecraft started blowing up and support got crazy. He had time for little else. Like I said, he worked his ass off for to keep it going. He spent all his time in the office working on support and control panels. Usually 16 hour days. So the only thing he could do was pick it up full time.

[Skully7780]

Thats all well and good, but there are multiple people that worked over there. Someone should have updated us. I understand that its a lot of work, but when you leave for a week with no update...

mynecraft.com website is now down (thank god!)

I will be monitoring my CC statements closely and am still expecting a FULL refund.

Do you have any idea how many people your boy has pissed off?

Are the personal reasons your shutting down: "We made enough money now and we are at our limit to fudge the situation any longer?"

[Raziaar]

ftzy2487 said:

ke5aux said:

We really have no business about your personal life, aside using the clues you volunteer to the internet to find you and your husband, as the support requests go unanswered.

In this case I would suggest posting on the site  - Sorry, we have no resources to continue this for personal reasons. All accounts have been cancelled and will not be re-billed.

We volunteer nothing to the internet. Unfortunately it's all open for public viewing. So people go on with their assumptions. Me included, simply because I go by a nickname, so when I use my real name on Facebook I must be someone else.

Scotti chose to post my message to him on the forums, so now I suppose my troubles are open for public viewing anyway.

And well, I can't just let everyone assume that because we've had 4 different addresses in 4 years that we are just a family of con artists. We move when leases are up. End of story. These posts could still be visible when my children are adults, and there are only so many Hammerly's in the world.

But my statement was true. Billing is stopped. Refunds were made. That is that.

Never made any indication you were anybody else(unless they were completely fake names for everybody to begin with). I never once implied that Fitzy was some shady pseudoname. It just wasn't a real name I was able to find. I had to compare pictures of you on the facebook and on your myspace to determine it was actually you.

You know, if your situation is real I have great sympathy for you, but to be offended at the notion of people trying to mobilize and reverse the possibility of getting ripped off by yet another potential internet scammer is quite ridiculous.

During my research, I made indication to people not to harass your family. The whole intent behind the thing was to find out why the sudden drop in communication which coupled very poorly with a very poor service over the past month.

I was willing to accept that Steve was in way over his head, since he made indications that it was all incredibly rough going with all the new sales and stuff, and I figured if it wasn't a scam, the most likely possibility was that he simply bowed out to hide away from the pressures of operating the business. I mean, it was a LOT of effort that he had seemingly poured into the website, though in depth cons of a more extravagant degree are not unheard of.


If you wanted to avoid all of this, honestly... instead of hiding from all the calls and taking care of your family, you could have taken 1 minute or less to fire off a couple of twitters, or access the mynecraft site if you had Steve's credentials to explain the whole situation instead of leaving people to freak out over the situation.


A service WAS provided to me during the first month, legitimately, and I don't want to take that back. I have no intention of taking it back. It was a poor service, and I was completely understanding with Steve on it since we had a lot of great communication, but it was the second month being charged, before the bill date, when I was told I wouldn't be charged again until a later determined date is what threw me into overdrive. So I do await that refund for the second month's purchase on my account.

[Doggins]

Please pm me a link to the map for doggins.mynecraft.com

Even if some terrible things were going down with you guys you still have the obligation to let your customers know, even if its just "something happened, we apologize and will be back asap"