IMPORTANT: Very real possibility mynecraft.com host is a scam artist

[Raziaar]

Oh dear, this is sad news. I would suggest Raz that although you are mostly upset at the lost gaming experience from this fiasco the greatest remedy would be to see you and the others he scammed get together and destroy this guys name & associations. That would make everyone feel a lot better.

I'm just trying to find out more about this guy and his back story. The experience we've been having for the past month are reflected perfectly in the experiences of other people who have been with him a bit longer or just as long as we have. Here I thought we were alone and a fluke because we had a 'custom server' with 'custom configurations'.


From the thread phantom created.

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.org/web/*/http://www.hidden-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.org/web/*/http://www.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.com/maps/place?cid=12883716245543448390&q=hidden+magic+consulting+ct&hl=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 a fair bit different from the story that Steve had given me about himself.





Just want to thank you guys again for being so understanding on this. It's a great deal of lost time, for some more than others(the people who came in since we moved to Mynecraft and those who did most of their major constructions Post Hokey. But I mean despite all of that, we can push past it.

 

[Krynn72]

That hidden magic place is only about an hour away from where I live. Imma go pee on his door.

 

[Raziaar]

That Hidden Magic Consulting is the name of the merchant charging me on my card, and everybody else too. I wouldn't be surprised if there's nothing at that address. I think the easiest way to figure out what happened to these guys and making them own up to their responsibilities is contacting the family members of the individuals, which are possible due to their facebook pages and stuff, if they're even legit.

But really, that's a WHOLE nother story and I'm not going to get involved in it any further than I already am. I'm cleaning my hands of the whole situation as far as I'm concerned, as far as digging up dirt, trying to make them pay etc. I know there are a whole lot of other people more vengeful than me out there right now who got scammed as well.

 

[Raziaar]

I'm off to work guys.

Woke up to read this.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=86930

Check out the thread. Fitzy responds in it.

I wonder if I can even believe any of it. It's like the ultimate sob story... and she didn't even once think to stop on her mynecraft account to explain part of the situation instead of just hiding away?

Okay...

I'll be keeping an eye out for a refund on that second month's charge.

And why the **** is this guy even being arrested? I wonder what the story is behind that. She's saying we have them all wrong, but maybe we have them all right.

Honestly, I feel real bad about the situation if it's true, since Steve was a very nice dude talking to him, but I know I can't cave in as easily as I do... not when dealing with other peoples time.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Eh, sounds like bullshit to me.

*Big laundry list of "woe is me" stuff, a lot of which has nothing to do with mynecraft.com*

Until proven otherwise, I'd say that was written by the guy himself.

 

[Sliver]

Don't buy into any of it. Just get a full refund and walk away.

 

[ríomhaire]

The story about the guy getting arrested could be true or not. I don't have any sympathy for him though. The autistic son thing is just unbelievably sappy though.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Yeah. Call me an old cynic if you will, but it's bullshit.

 

[MJ12]

Their job is to lie and make up bullshit stories to steal your money; I bet at least 50% of her story is bullshit. Don't feel bad for any of it Raz.

 

[Unfocused]

Wow, this situation sucks. I feel for you Raz, since you dedicated a lot of your time to trying to set this up; and for anyone whose time has gone to waste due to the loss of the map (unless it will be retrieved after all). Regardless of whether the woman's story is true or not, I hope you'll get the money back.

 

[YROC]

Spoiler

My husband got arrested on Friday. 4 felony failure to appears. Add to that the charges on file that caused him to have court, he has a $331,000 bond. We have used all our get out of jail free cards. There were several. Fast forward 3 days and he is moved to the "Do Not Release" list. Were I to walk in with $331,000 cash I got from my magic genie, I would be sent away. I haven't been able to speak with him, and all anyone is doing is dicking me around when I try to find out about my 1 visit I'm allowed, as his wife, before his visitng list is officially approved.

Our bank closed our account on Monday, without notice, because we apparently weren't worthy of a Fidelity Investements checking account. Not enough investing I suppose. It is not a joint account. So I can do nothing but wait for the check from the account that's going to be in Steve's name. Without power of attorney I can do nothing. I had to sell my laptop for a quarter of it's worth to get gas money to get my daughter antibiotics for her ear infection. It's Betty's first birthday today, by the way.

My attempt to sell everything that's not nailed down is not going well. My car, also in Steve's name, is going to be rep'd, leaving me with no means of transportation. My phone will be shut off on December 1st. My internet was supposed to be shut off on Tuesday, but by the grace of God all the cable company did was take over my search engines.

Our 3 year old son is Autistic. He doesn't speak yet, nor understand most of what we are saying. He doesn't understand why his dad isn't here or why his routines have gone askew. He just screams. All the time. I can barely get Betty to eat anything. Be it the ear infection or her missing father. Most likely a mixture of both.

The house we were renting was foreclosed on and was auctioned off on Saturday. I have no idea when they are going to come and tell me to get the **** out. My sister, who I'll be staying with, is in a motel with her family until December 1st. If I have to leave before then it'll be 3 adults and 4 kids in one room. Not to mention the difficulty of transferring my son to another school.

Yeah, I'm hiding. Over the course of 4 days my entire world crashed down around me. I'm refunding everyone's money and calling it a day. The last thing I need to deal with is servers.

Sorry..

 

[Quixoticism]

Appealing to peoples' compassion after you've lied to them 50 times isn't a great way to secure sympathy and karma.

Most likely more bs. (and if it's not, she asked for it by marring him)

 

[Raziaar]

http://crafthub.net/2010/11/18/how-mynecraft-royally-screwed-many-hard/

It just amazes me how far reaching this is... how many people were experiencing the exact same problems we were.

And here I thought we were in some isolated bubble of torture and everybody else was having a fairly decent time.

I feel less... stupid for succumbing to the con if it was indeed a con.

It all doesn't make sense though the fact why if we were supposedly on such good hardware, why we always had so many issues, why it ran so poorly, why it was down all the time etc.

I mean Hokey's efforts were infinitely better than anything we experienced with mynecraft.



Statement from THE SHAFT podcast.

THE SHAFT was shafted by steve for sure. I started thinking later that I wonder if he even had multiple servers like he claimed. I think the reason we were all having issues what that I bet he had like 1 server and was just telling people it had GBs of ram on it so he could charge more. I think his whole control panel bit was a way to get everyone using the same stuff and just post to a different map file.. because THAT’S when things started to get really screwy was with the map backups…

I’m sorry for ANYONE that heard our podcast and bought a server because they sponsored a show.

After everything I’ve read over the past week. I won’t trust a single word he OR fitzy says. Stay away from these guys like the plague!



This was the information the one guy in the thread was talking about. Says he cropped out the name, DOB and stuff.

 

[Bad^Hat]

This sucks (except the being arrested part), but dear god that Crafthub article is terribly written.

"The Shaft didn’t mean realize this scam before it was too late."

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN.

 

[Raziaar]

This story just keeps on unraveling.

I just don't understand it guys. It's almost painful to watch. She made another post about how she has more important things to do than "tweeting" like finding out how she's going to be getting gas money to get medicine for her sick autistic child.

What?

I mean, your family members have the time to post on the forums to come to your defense, your husband is arrested and they aren't helping you out with your daughter?

I don't get it.

 

[Sliver]

Oh, you left out the part how their dog had to be put down and then their grandma died, and they're left with the $10,000 bill.

I'm sure that a lot of the story is made up, just bullshitters bullshitting.

 

[Krynn72]

How is this supposed to nullify their being scam artists? 4 counts of failing to appear in court? UH. You could maybe just have gone? Or you could maybe just have not scammed people to the point where they pressed charges or sued you in the first place.

They deserve no compassion whatsoever. In fact, the justice system is actually working, because they're getting exactly what they deserve. The only ones who deserve any sympathy whatsoever are the children who have rather doubtful existences.

 

[Raziaar]

So what is the likelihood this dude gets out of prison and comes to murder me? lol. He has all of my personal information.

The dude has been in and out of the prison system several times, dating back almost half a decade at least.

 

[Vegeta897]

He's a con artist, not a psycho, lol.

 

[Raziaar]

He's a con artist, not a psycho.

Notice the use of the lol in there. It's actually a binary flag and indicates I'm joking.

 

[Vegeta897]

There, happy?

 

[Krynn72]

That lady says she is selling her kindle on craigslist, but I can't find it. Damnit, I want one. I figure I could get her down real cheap for it.

 

[Sliver]

I found the Headset and Mouse. Headset is going for $95, pretty steep price to be honest.

 

[Krynn72]

Yeah, saw those too. Shes also selling a piano, but she doesn't know how much they sell for so shes taking offers, and asking people to find her a piano-inspector to price it haha.

 

[Mr. Djees]

Yeah. Call me an old cynic if you will, but it's bullshit.

I dunno, a couple with an autistic son starts selling minecraft servers? Makes perfect sense if you ask me.

 

[YROC]

Oh, you left out the part how their dog had to be put down and then their grandma died, and they're left with the $10,000 bill.

 

[Raziaar]

I was sent our world file by Scotti.

I don't have time to verify this morning whether or not everything is intact or not.

If any of you wish to check it out while I'm at work, please do so.

http://raziaar.mynecraft.com/download/world.zip

I did at the very least download it myself, in case it becomes unavailable in the future.

 

[Quixoticism]

I downloaded the world file and explored a bit, it seems to be the latest file from the last time I logged into the server.

 

[YROC]

I checked the map out. It's all there, except for about 15 minutes of mining/placing. Not bad at all.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

I rendered the map in Cartograph and while most of it seems intact, there seems to be some corruption at the south and eastern edges, almost like interference-like patterns. It could just be an artifact of the Cartograph rendering, so I'll have to head out there and have a look.

www.nealeroberts.com/pics/hl2netserver.jpg

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

I can confirm that it *is* corrupted. It also lags total balls when you get anywhere near the corrupted area. It's ****ed.

 

[Vegeta897]

Hah, that place looks awesome. It's like some forbidden zone now. We don't go there anymore.

 

[Mr. Djees]

Oh wow, minecraft missingno.

 

[comradesean]

We should just send expeditions of miners to fix that area. I'm sure it'll work if we just chop it up enough.

 

[Vegeta897]

Probably wouldn't be a fun experience, Pi said it lags to shit.

 

[Quixoticism]

Would there be a way to delete those sections with an editor?

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Yeah, you can do it with MCEdit.

 

[Raziaar]

I'm just wondering if it's even worth it... or if we should keep the world available for people who wish to reminisce about their past creations or use it as an idea template for their future projects in a new world.

 

[MJ12]

www.nealeroberts.com/pics/hl2netserver.jpg

dun dun dunn


"to whom it may concern: I bender, bid you hello! You don't know me, though you may have heard of me, but that's not the point. long story short... I need helf"

omg it all makes sense noww

Spoiler

you ****in futurama fags

 

[Viperidae]

I want to keep our current map, mostly because my project isn't finished. Seriously, if you guys are still bitching about it being cluttered... GET OUT OF SPAWN. There is so much space out there for you guys to **** around in, not to mention going down--most of you people only build on the surface. Use all available dimensions, fer crying out loud.

Besides, minecarts work now, so, provided some people are willing to build, we could have a pretty nifty transportation system back to spawn.