I have received a PM from someone giving me additional information showing that the developer of PXC and UNOCS is not as "highly skilled" as he says he is, and that the pattern of lies, bad coding and broken promises is not something new.
Confirmation that the developer of PXC, Michael (iamatrix), is the same user as Mike69 at the gfy.com (NSFW) forums:
"Here is my MSN : michael at iamatrix dot com"
http://gfy.com/showpost.php?p=9584980&postcount=8Now the fun begins as we can look into the history of this Mike69 user.
First hit on google for "mike69 gfy" is a thread titled:
Mike69 biggest ripoff programmer - GFY Webmaster Board
http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=966290I 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.
Now to be fair it is a pretty long thread with some people supporting Mike. However, all this just sounds way too familiar to me. It is pretty much the same story as what has been exposed in my OP. Lots of promises, delays and broken time limits, fancy screenshots, but no working product, bad coding, more promises that everything is almost done etc.
When you start looking at more threads about this user, you find more of the same:
Mike69... What the Fuck??
http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=838181It's been well over five months since I hired you as a developer for my project. Two months ago I even doubled the agreed upon amount paid to you. Since then you've given me virtually nothing but excuses. Now you're ignoring me completely.
Another example of him not delivering:
So I bought some content from LexiLexxx and Mike69!
http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=539601Not gonna quote this one, but it is another example of Mike not delivering on his promises and making up excuses. (Should probably warn about it being NSFW
)
One more
MIKE69.........When are you going to give me my money?
http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=591820There is also a ton of threads around where people ask for Mike69 to get in touch with them. If I am going to speculate it is probably because he has gone MIA after starting some project for them.
Anyone seen Mike69?
http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=406460Mike69 Please CONTACT Me ASAP!
http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=588373Looking for Mike69
http://www.justblowme.com/showthread.php/10486-Looking-for-Mike69Mike69
http://www.justblowme.com/showthread.php/13452-Mike69Finally an interesting thread from his (former) wife. Not going to judge, read it yourself
What happened to the post on Mike69?
http://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=146958
