Mike69 biggest ripoff programmer"

[benn626]

I decided to write this thread finally after MANY attempts of getting hole of Mike69 to finish the project paid for. I understand that I should have looked into his reputation before dealing with him, but I was brand new to this business and very excited to see the outcome of the program.

About 1 1/2 years ago I was looking into purchasing a custom webcam program to be made COMPLETELY from scratch. After many detailed discussions on what the program would feature, and how he would also keep it up to date and add features for low prices he quoted us 10k. He agreed that the program would be fully functional with a admin area also. We decided to do a half now and pay the remainder when the program was finished. He said the whole project would take about 3-4 months max.

From the start Mike seemed like a genuine nice guy, and I thought he actually cared about the outcome of this project, and the quality of his work. He bragged about how he used to work for adult.com as the main programmer and how he is the best in the business, and how adult.com ripped him off so he decided to do his own freelance work. I was a newbie to this business and very naive so I believed him, not to mention he had his wife Tina backing him up the whole time.

We sent the first half (5k) to him provided him with everything he needed, dedicated server etc. For the next 2 months Mike went on about how he was working 12-16 hour days on our program, and had it almost finished. He showed me some basic screen shots of his progress along the way, it looked decent to me at the time, but I really didn't know anything about programming. His wife kept calling me everyday looking for more money (even though we sent the first 50%), she said that without the remainder he would have to take other work to pay the bills. We were very reluctant at first but she kept calling and making up excuses, so we paid of the 5k balance before the program was finished (one of the worse business mistakes I ever made).

Now the real horror story begins. Once the money was sent it was almost impossible to get a hold of him or his wife Tina (the past 4 months they had been calling every day looking for more money). I decided to show a friend of mine who is a mainstream php programmer everything he did for us so far. Within 10 minutes of my friend taking a look at the script, he said "you were ripped off", Mike sold us a non functional program he created in 1998. My friend told me that the code was so bad and old, that there was no point of even trying to fix it. I wrote Tina, and Mike about it (because they wouldn't pickup my calls) saying I was going to show everyone on GFY how you ripped me off. He contacted me within 5 minutes, and said he would re do the program and finish the admin area. I decided to give him another chance because really I had no other choice (it wasn't like these scam artist are going to refund our money). Months went by and nothing! He doesn't respond to my ICQ messages, or pickup my calls. I know they started a cam site called camgirlscorner (dot) com, and is working on a payment processor.

I know a lot of you are already aware of what a scumbag Mike69 is, and how I made a lot of obvious mistakes trusting these people, but I hope it might save a few people from getting scammed in the future.

[brassmonkey]

let me see brb

[CYF]

ouch, that sucks.

[brassmonkey]

never heard of him

[woj]

brb, gonna grab some popcorn, carry on..

[benn626]

ughh worse headache of my life.. they money issue sucked, but the worse part was that the program was made in 1998

[Sly]

Originally Posted by benn626

From the start Mike seemed like a genuine nice guy, and I thought he actually cared about the outcome of this project, and the quality of his work. He bragged about how he used to work for adult.com as the main programmer and how he is the best in the business, and how adult.com ripped him off so he decided to do his own freelance work. I was a newbie to this business and very naive so I believed him, not to mention he had his wife Tina backing him up the whole time.

I don't know Mike or the situation at hand, but each of these coming from anybody you are looking to hire is a big red flag. Someone's work should pretty much speak for itself.

Best of luck to all of you getting this resolved.

[Kirby]

you got proof to back it up?

(it's GFY rules)

[Barefootsies]

Originally Posted by benn626

ughh worse headache of my life

Sorry to hear that man.

[LoveSandra]

it sucks

[Juicy D. Links]

He made the internet eraser program for EraserCash i believe...

[benn626]

Im getting screenshots of the program code sent to me today, I also have the wire transfer receipts.. I emailed mike69 this post, I will wait 24 hours to see if he wants to clear this matter up before I show the screenshots logs etc.

[fatfoo]

$10K - that's a lot of money to be scammed for. Good luck, benn626 who was ripped off by Mike69.

[benn626]

I have no doubt that Mike is a talented programmer.. but in my care he figured he could just send me a 10 year old program, skip the work and I wouldn't notice

[nudecanada]

Originally Posted by benn626

ughh worse headache of my life.. they money issue sucked, but the worse part was that the program was made in 1998

Never-mind the fact that you are 1 1/2 years behind in what you wanted to do. That sucks too, as trends change so fast online.

[mgtarheels]

For $10k, he'd be in court.

[marketsmart]

Originally Posted by Juicy D. Links

He made the internet eraser program for EraserCash i believe...

I know how to erase cash, but how do you erase the internet?

wouldnt that make a lot of people made?

and after you erase it, can you get it back?







.

[TrainWreckContent]

fuck thats a lot of money i hope you get it resolved!

[benn626]

Even if he is willing to give me some sort of refund, there is now way in hell his wife would go for it.

[Zorgman]

I think this is something not just you (benn626) but everyone should look closer at when hiring a programmer.

$10k and it was going to take 3-4 months. That is $2.5k month.
$83 per day. I'm sorry to say but if a programmer charges you that you shouldn't hire him, he's not going to give you quality work for exclusive code.

[CaptainHowdy]

What a pain in the ass, sorry to hear that...

[DWB]

That sucks. Bump for you.

I know wasting the money sucks but its TIME that is the worst. I recently had a program owner waste a YEAR of my time making sites that never got released, so I feel your pain.

[sandman!]

maybee he has other projects and was only going to work on this for 1-3 days a week.

Originally Posted by Zorgman

I think this is something not just you (benn626) but everyone should look closer at when hiring a programmer.

$10k and it was going to take 3-4 months. That is $2.5k month.
$83 per day. I'm sorry to say but if a programmer charges you that you shouldn't hire him, he's not going to give you quality work for exclusive code.

[mikke]

$10k for it? you kidding?! thats sucks!!!!!!!! hope you will get your money back!!!!!

[CHMOD]

I feel sorry for you.

Everytime that guy post or apply for a programer job here, You should paste this story in his thread.

[suesheboy]

Originally Posted by Zorgman

I think this is something not just you (benn626) but everyone should look closer at when hiring a programmer.

$10k and it was going to take 3-4 months. That is $2.5k month.
$83 per day. I'm sorry to say but if a programmer charges you that you shouldn't hire him, he's not going to give you quality work for exclusive code.

I did the math too and realized right away I wouldn't work for 2 months for $10K let alone that long.

[benn626]

From the start I explained to Mike that we wanted a quality program made, something easy to use and very reliable. He told me that he didn't have any other work for the next few months and could put his full effort into this. Not only was time wasted but we had alot of money tied up into this project:

-we were paying for 2 different cam studios (3000+ /month)
-paying for server cost (1000 /month)
-and the list goes on!

we were trying to juggle these expenses all at once and instead of Mike and Tina owning up, they kept dragging it on longer and longer. In the end I was able to realize all the crucial business mistakes I made, which is some kind of learning experience.

[Darkhorse]

Ya thats alot of money to be out of pocket, hope you get some sort of resolution.

[BIGTYMER]

That fucking sucks dude. Take him to small claims court!

[candyflip]

Are you located in the US. I would look into filing Federal Wire Fraud charges.

They took $10k from you and provided nothing usable in return. That's got to be grounds for some sort of charges.

[mgtarheels]

Originally Posted by suesheboy

I did the math too and realized right away I wouldn't work for 2 months for $10K let alone that long.

Nothing wrong with $60k/year

[Loch]

You only made 1 mistake here

Always hire an inhouse programmer for a project of this size....its well worth it.
We did that years ago and it paid off HUGE

[Bird]

what would possibly cost you 10k to get programed.

[Domain Broker]

Originally Posted by Bird

what would possibly cost you 10k to get programed.

is that a serious question?

[Mutt]

Mike is a good guy, he was Adult.com's main programmer plus did EraserCash with Lensman.

Not sure about the 1998 code you claim he gave you, he's done full functioning Flash based cam sites for Teen Revenue and CamgirlsCorner. He wouldn't need to give you 1998 code since he has more recent cam site code.

Hiring and working with programmers for laymen in this business is the hardest thing. Definitely hiring an in house programmer is the way to go but that's beyond the means of the majority of people in this industry. A good American coder will want 75K minimum salary and the ones I've talked to wanted more.

[Loch]

Originally Posted by Mutt

Mike is a good guy, he was Adult.com's main programmer plus did EraserCash with Lensman.

Not sure about the 1998 code you claim he gave you, he's done full functioning Flash based cam sites for Teen Revenue and CamgirlsCorner. He wouldn't need to give you 1998 code since he has more recent cam site code.

Hiring and working with programmers for laymen in this business is the hardest thing. Definitely hiring an in house programmer is the way to go but that's beyond the means of the majority of people in this industry. A good American coder will want 75K minimum salary and the ones I've talked to wanted more.

That is assuming you get coders from the adult industry.
You can get mainstream guys with 10 years experience for 50k a year.

[Loch]

Originally Posted by Bird

what would possibly cost you 10k to get programed.

Pretty much anything done right and built from scratch.

[pstation]

Originally Posted by Loch

That is assuming you get coders from the adult industry.
You can get mainstream guys with 10 years experience for 50k a year.

i dont know about 50k..

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/...grammer/Salary

[aniloscash]

I cant imagine how complex a system you ordered that would take 4 months working 12 hours day.

[Loch]

Originally Posted by pstation

i dont know about 50k..

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/...grammer/Salary

Errrr we are not talking about a
Salary Snapshot for Sr. Software Engineer / Developer /

I hope you know what the difference is

[Davy]

I've been programming a script for the last 6 months in full-time. If he was programming the thing all himself, 3 months was quite a challenge to finish this script.
How do you know he used a script that he programmed in 1998?

[Mike69]

benn626,

In all honesty, you posting on GFY really makes no difference to me one way or the other.

but since you did, lets get some facts straight...

You hit me up after almost 2 yrs, and I responded, you then told me you were going to post on GFY that I sold you a program from 1998, and you wanted a refund. I promptly ignored you, sorry if your broke..

The cam system was an existing system that was already written, for the most part and you knew that.

After months of dealing with you, trying to use sub-par billers, even after I told you on numerous occasions you need to be CCBill or someone like, you closed up shop. NatNet Servers closed.

Then you tell me your heading to Vancouver to work with Mask TV, servers are shut down, and I don't hear from you for almost 2 yrs.

There is only person who has reason to bitch about me, and thats dready from http://www.adultimagebrokers.com.

Your so called friend must be a complete idiot, even bigger then you for posting this...

"I decided to show a friend of mine who is a mainstream php programmer everything he did for us so far. Within 10 minutes of my friend taking a look at the script, he said "you were ripped off", Mike sold us a non functional program he created in 1998. My friend told me that the code was so bad and old, that there was no point of even trying to fix it."

Heres a few facts...

On March 15, 2002, Macromedia released Flash Player 6. This version included all the functionality for a yet to be released server called Flash Communication Server MX.

Version 1.0 was released on 9 July 2002[1] and included all the basic features that make up the product, including the NetConnection, SharedObject and NetStream objects.

Version 1.5 was released on 27 March 2003[2] giving the server HTTP Tunneling, Linux support and a free developer edition.

Version 2.0 was released on November 15, 2005[3]. The server was renamed to Flash Media Server for this build to better illustrate what the server does; however, the version numbers were not reset. Version 2.0 brought support to stream the new video codec in Flash Player 8, On2?s VP6. However the Flash 8 client can still only encode to the Spark codec of version 6. Version 2.0 also introduced edge-origin servers, an optional enterprise architecture that simplifies load balancing. The server side Actionscript runtime also received updates with support for XML, XMLSocket, SOAP and File operations.

Version 3.0 was released on December 4, 2007[4].

Your cam system, the SAME one we are still using today (written in the summer/fall of 2007) was based on FMS ver 3. Which was not released until December 4, 2007.

Yes there were a few more things left to do in the admin, but they were minor.

Theres the facts, your NOT getting refund, just because you dropped the project and disappeared for almost 2 yrs.

[Mutt]

Originally Posted by Loch

That is assuming you get coders from the adult industry.
You can get mainstream guys with 10 years experience for 50k a year.

where did u search for mainstream coders?

[Mike69]

I stand slightly corrected, I had to dig out my old machine to have a look..

It was written for FMS 2, using Flex and the original site was done in Coldfusion.

Pascal, Coldfusion, PHP, Python, Actionscript ect.. somtimes forget whats written in what.

I seem to recall, talking about converting it to php, but that was not part of the original deal, but I did redo ours in php.

Screencaps, your kidding me... you were online and doing a few transactions, that you never got paid for.

I tend to show people what Im working on, when its not a big deal and there's no NDA, and there a few long time board members (almost as long as me) that I showed it too.

[Mutt]

[suesheboy]

Originally Posted by mgtarheels

Nothing wrong with $60k/year

I couldn't run my business with a $60 gross.

[Loch]

Originally Posted by Mutt

where did u search for mainstream coders?

Craighslist of all places.
Hired local for a few small jobs first to test them out, worked well.

[candyflip]

Originally Posted by Loch

Craighslist of all places.
Hired local for a few small jobs first to test them out, worked well.

I can second this, at least from my experience doing the same thing locally.

[benn626]

Mike, we had agreed on a fully functional cam program WITH a admin area for 10k.
Over those months I paid you over 15k for the program because your wife kept calling me saying there was no way you could finish without more money. I would send you 500$ here, 1000$ here, and I wouldn't be able to get a hold of you for weeks (because you were doing other work). The only reason my friend looked at the script is so he could try to fix the bugs to have it up and running when we couldn't get a hold of you.

The fact is we paid you the full amount plus more, and you didn't deliver what you agreed upon from the begging (a fully functional cam program with ADMIN). Can you provide me with this?

[AaronM]

Originally Posted by benn626

Mike, we had agreed on a fully functional cam program WITH a admin area for 10k.
Over those months I paid you over 15k for the program because your wife kept calling me saying there was no way you could finish without more money. I would send you 500$ here, 1000$ here, and I wouldn't be able to get a hold of you for weeks (because you were doing other work). The only reason my friend looked at the script is so he could try to fix the bugs to have it up and running when we couldn't get a hold of you.

The fact is we paid you the full amount plus more, and you didn't deliver what you agreed upon from the begging (a fully functional cam program with ADMIN). Can you provide me with this?

Personally, I think you're full of shit.

Your first posts claims you paid him a total of 10k but now you are claiming 15.

You also fucked up and posted personal info about his wife. If I were Mike, I would have your ass banned for that alone, not to mention calling him a scammer.

I've read Mike's response and it seams reasonable to me.