Hey there everyone, my first post here, well second anyway.
Thanks for the help in allowing me to post here.
This thread is about the most complete history of how Ed Trice has scammed computer/HFT people that there is, it’s very good to see this info coming out.
A brief history of this from my point of view.
Several years I was a member of a computer forum and Ed Trice made his first appearance and started showing off a checkers benchmark program and several of us ran this benchmark and submitted results. He was very impressed with the speeds in which our overclocked machines could run this benchmark. He contacted myself and another guy about if we had any desire to build boxes for clients of his. The other guy (name withheld unless he wants to post) had a machine already built that Ed came up with a buyer for. For some reason at the time this guy decided to bail on Ed and that’s when Ed contacted me.
Ed had a buyer for a machine but no builder, he contacted me to do the build and I said sure. I had been a care provider for my mother who had alzheimer's/dementia for the last 13 years and was super hard for me to leave the house so this was a welcome change and the chance to earn some extra money. With a few difficulties the machine was built, shipped off and I was paid. Great.
Things went on for awhile, I designed the machines and built them while Ed updated and built up the website.
Everything was on the up & up for a few years.
When the first big sale happened is when things began to get strange. See Ed had discovered HFT guys and felt they had tons of $’s so easy pickings.
Right around this time there was a machine that was damaged in shipping, I did see photos of the damage but it was minor but prevented the machine from booting. One of Ed’s favorite things to do was insurance fraud so he attempted to claim the full amount paid for the machine. The shipper who was a friend of mine asked me about this and I said this can be fixed easy, can we get it shipped back to me for repair. Ed want no part in this, yelled and screamed etc, I responded by backing out, said I want no part in insurance fraud. Finally the machine was shipped back, I had it repaired in 10 minutes and off it went saving the shipper ~$6,000.
I want t make it clear here also that I never had contact with any clients except and two or three occasions, I delivered a few machine sto the clients and had talked with a few others on the phone. Ed was doing all the LNO – client communications so I do not really know what was being told these guys.
I was just a box builder and never an employee.
July of last year or so I came up with a design called the HSSM (High Speed Server Module), a client purchased this machine and I went to New York to install it. This was a big sale for LNO.
Not much happened for a few months after that one until 3 other orders came in. Parts were ordered and I started building. I was asked by our shipper if Ed was going to pay for the shipping for the big New York build. This was about $2K or so still due. I talked with Ed and received some story about not paying him, he cleared payment and all was good, or so I thought.
First machine built and ready to go but for some reason it was hard to get a shipping address from Ed. Finally I did and off it went. The next morning I received an email from Ed claiming that the client had but a hold on the company CC because they had not received a tracking number and $6K had been pulled out of the account. I said that’s strange, got a tracking number for him and the client received the machine the next day. When asked to show me proof of the CC charge back he never would.
I now had most of the parts for a dual 2687w system using a ASUS motherboard that allowed overclocking and set this up in a test config, it could not be closed up at this time until the proper video card came. Ed remote in with Team View as he usually did to run his Prime Number cruncher (more about that in a bit). If any of you have been around servers you know how much noise these things make and being open it made even more. I was not going to run this thing for 24 hours unfinished, screaming away. Ed was not very happy about this, I wanted to wait until we had the proper setup, correct cooling and try and schedule test times that did not interfere with us so we could sleep, yes it’s that loud.
After screaming at me and making unreasonable demands I told him he needs to find another builder as I will finish the work I have here and that’s it, I will be leaving LNO.
Parts came for the 3rd machine, it was finished and yet I had a very hard time getting a shipping address from Ed, finally he did and off it went.
Finishing up the dual 2687w machine, I tested it all was good but I could not get a shipping address from Ed. His demands were unreasonable and he was becoming extremely hard to have communication with. Little did I know at this time that Ed had been in contact with another builder in my town, a friend of mine actually and managed to persuade him to get involved.
Around this time I went over to the bank because there had been several charges that came back with insufficient funds for ordering parts. This is when I saw what was really going on. Strange transfers of money, non company bills being paid. The reason the shipper had not been paid for the New York build was because of lack of funds, things were getting paid for past items off of new clients builds. I said I am done with this mess.
Still not being supplied with a shipping address for the dual cpu machine Ed filed a police report against me for Grand Theft with Stockton Police department, they refused it and said it was a Civil matter. I did call the police department and told they could not help him. I said I have the machine right here but he won’t give me a shipping address. They called him and got it for me and I shipped the machine.
This is an example of the emails I was getting from Ed at this time…
Dear Mr. District Attorney,
My name is Ed Trice, President of Liquid Nitrogen Overclocking. Today I received a threatening email from a disgruntled former employee named William Harmon, **** removed ***
His phone number is *** removed *** and I encourage you to call him and speak with him.
In his communications, he threatens to take our website offline and block all email access. I have confirmation from two other sources (bcc'd on this email), one of whom is a friend of his, that he has already shut down email services.
I am mailing to your office copies of the Articles of Incorporation showcasing that I am the business owner. I am also furnishing business cards that show Mr. Harmon as Chief Technical Officer, a subordinate.
Mr. Harmon is claiming that he is owed money, which is not the case, as my attorney Mr. Fred Wilf will submit to you in writing when I come back from the Notary Public office. In fact, Mr. Harmon owes our company money, the source of which was withheld equity partner contributions he was required to pay over the prior 15 months.
Mr. Harmon has grown increasingly unstable in the past month, and I regard him as a dangerous person. Be careful in dealing with him. His mother suffers from a form of dementia, and I believe this is well-known to be hereditary. In all likelihood, he is unwittingly suffering some form of mental breakdown. Perhaps a team of professionals should ascertain his present state of well being to see if he should be institutionalized.
As proof of my claims, I invite you to visit http://www.liquidnitrogenoverclocking.com to see if it is online.
More will come as both civil and criminal complaints are being filed against Mr. Harmon. I will send the docket numbers to you when I hear back from the Clerk's Office in Stockton.
Thank you for your attention to this serious matter.
Ed Trice
President
Liquid Nitrogen Overclocking
http://www.liquidnitrogenoverclocking.com
610.818.5063With this I was going WTF !! he has gone over the edge and ready to be beamed up to the mothership.
After I called Stockton police to see what is going on no actual charges were ever made against me, in fact he even yelled at a Stockton police officer who called Ed to get the shipping address for me to ship this last machine.
Ed transferred the domain to me long ago because he could not pay the $75 owed to the hosting company he had used. I had it in my 1&1 account all these years and I asked many, many times to take possession of it. Finally I gave him 30 days as the next billing cycle was coming around for me and I didn’t want to pay his bill yet again + he did owed me money for the last build in the amount of $2,688.
He simply would not take the domain back so I shut it down on the date I had said. He then used ICAN to do a hostile takeover of the domain LOL.
Now I am gone, I left, bye bye and wrote off the $2,688 as what it cost me to get rid of him
During this time my ex friend went to work for Ed and was scammed out of a great deal of money, Ed purchased a nice Dodge Red Viper with that money.
Time goes on when I started receiving emails/phone calls from ex clients who have not had contact with Ed for months, they have machines that have been RMA’d under his 18 month warranty, which means nothing, attorys calling me asking me for details.
I happened to be doing a google search and ran across this thread and was shorty after contacted by papamoi and have assisted him, his attorys and law enforcement the best I can in nailing this scammer.
Sorry for the long post
... oh yeah I forgot, Prime Numbers
You see when ever I built a machine Ed wanted to run this Prime Number program that looks for extremely large Prime Numbers. This is another of his big things as he wants to find the largest prime numbers he can and upload them with his name attached to it.
Every machine built had to run this program as a so called stress test. In fact its more stress full then Linpack. If you look at LNO website you will see this page.
http://www.liquidnitrogenoverclocking.com/news_15.shtml#page_topYes he was using clients machines to crunch prime numbers for his personal benefit.
And here is more work done on clients machine
http://www.jens-hartmann.at/Fritzmarks/I spoke with him many times about this, the fact that this prime number program was running just to stress full on clients machines and risk degrading the cpu's before the client even gets the machine.
This is when I stopped doing this on the dual 2687w machine, being required to run this prime number program on 16 cores on a overclocked dual 2687w (these cost $1,900 each) was something that had finally crossed a line with me. He did not like this at all.
