GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - View Single Post - Chio's VerifiedCharge not paying their WMs

MrGuy · 09-29-2009, 12:07 PM

Hello,

First off - big apologies for the massive and somewhat belated bum, I only discovered this thread recently and felt my reply relevant. Feel free to flame away should you desire.

Most of you will have no idea who I am, a few of you may have spoken to me through Verified Charge - but I am possibly the only person who can actually answer a lot of the issues raised in this thread.

I'd like to apologise for dragging up old dirt - but after doing some midnight searching a few days ago I ended up stumbling across this thread and have been considering how to reply. In good conscience I cannot ignore it so wanted to give some answers that may not have been forthcoming elsewhere.

My name is Guy and I worked on Verified Charge with Chio for the duration of the project which originally started in late 2005/early 2006. I am based in the UK and have worked with Chio since 1999 on various projects - from his AVS (GetVerified), through a number of sites and most recently with Verified Charge. During this time I have got to know him well and would consider him a very close friend.

The Chio the pirate figure actually originally got invented around a picture of me being molested by a Spaniard in a pirate outfit from 2000... where somehow I became Lord Chio then CHio the Pirate originated thanks to the wonders of photoshopping (which is a past time Chio has spent a little too long).

It is with a heavy heart that I'm writing this post - on the basis I could possibly lose a friend over it for a few dozen people I don't even know, who are earning far more money than me and most likely just enjoy a good bit of internet flaming. That said - I feel anyone who lost money at least deserves to know some details of what happened.

Firstly - addresses and telephone numbers. The domain registration details are a fake name, registered at my old postcode in Bristol (it's not a pub... but there is a pub there too - The Hatchet I believe... very good if you like rock music, if not you won't fit in). Quite how they ended up there I don't remember but I do remember agreeing to it at some point.

The telephone numbers are indeed all Vonage ones that ring the same phone. There is no UK office. There is no Netherlands office. There is no New York office. There is, however, a Florida office... within a house. It's a nice office and the chairs are exceedingly comfortable. You Americans certainly know how to turn a dead cow into a comfortable seat in ways that us Europeans just cannot fathom for an affordable price.... I do, however, digress.

My involvement in VC was as a developer. The basis was on low-pay (I received aprox USD5000 over the course of 4 years), 50% return of profits (I saw $0 of this - it made none as far as I'm aware) and I also received 2 all-expenses paid trips to stay with Chio - in September of 2007 and 2008. You will note this was the time that new features were added en-masse and the VC Beta was initially launched. I have had the priviledge of travelling in Chio's tan Ford Expedition (which has now been replaced) and it is just as exciting as I always imagined a tank with leather seats would be.

VC was originally going to launch using a template script purchased off the internet as Bliggle (which then became Bliggo and a separate company completely unrelated). This turned out to be a steamy pile of wank and so in late '05 I agreed to start working on the initial development of VC which was finished for aprox March '06. The code then sat unused for the best part of a year whilst Chio worked on other projects - at this time all of you nut jobs were buyign ABP left right and centre. Whilst Chio definitely did not make anywhere near the huge sums projected here off ABP (that's just bullshit... I've seen accounts to know he's not got any Yachts stashed away) - it was enough that he could bring in $5k a month more than he had been doing before after expenses for paying others related to ABP.

I was originally offered to work on ABP but turned it down in favour of VC - I found the project more interesting and wanted to be behind it. I thought it had great potential and so work began... once it sat there for a year I eventually poked Chio in to finishing the web templates and then in '07 flew over to finish the site and launch it.

So whilst I was over in FL everything went fantastically - I got a crap load of dev done, the new parts of the site (person to person payments amongst them) were coded on a new .Net infrastructure over the already-now-archaic Perl one and we started taking your feedback. After I left back for the sunny shores of Blighty (some of you probably have no idea how depressing going from 100 degrees to 40 degrees is in the same waking day) I continued to provide support for a while.

Back in the UK I set up (3 months prior to my trip in '07 to Florida) a software development company that writes and sells EPOS (tills for retail shops) software and complete retail management software. As any of you know setting up a real business takes a significant investment of time - and I could not operate on the basis of no pay, yet still do all the work. I created a series of things for Chio to chase up and finalise and I would allocate 3 days a month to do my wide of it.

Things that were being worked on included:
Debit cards (fully integrated with Payoneer - but the cards have serious issues internationally, their API is more flakey and an old man's dandruff filled scrotum and after talking to their head of IT during a telco I was left pondering their most basic technical knowledge)

Moving VC's processing internationally away from US to accept other "dodgy" types of payment

Diversifying VC's portfolio to generate a return on all of your money we were sitting on

Continuing to deal with support

Paying customers

Integration with NATS so that we could actually get some market penetration (I had to use that phrase on an adult board)

Actually getting PCI/DSS acredited was quite a big one for me. That's right folks... if you check the list VC isn't on it. One person spotted it and the rest of you shot her down. I was emphasising this long before launch - along with all other legal requirements of the business. I won't be drawn on how VC was actually setup technically, legally or infrastructure wise - but it was more creative than the kind of business I'd usually like to be involved in. I'd also like to clarify that my name is on no paperwork - and I've merely worked as a contractor from a technical perspective. Point was a lot wasn't right around this. New company appears, offers to do billing. "Great!" you all said... now only a couple of people pointed out that "You agree to our T&Cs" was required - when we had no T&Cs... and I don't think a single person ever pointed out that no company called Verified Charge, Inc. actually exists. Amazing what some HTML footer will do to people. I pushed for the correct infrastructure for servers so we could have sufficient security with offline racks and online racks... and I ended up with 2 VMWare virtual servers which powered the whole lot... not quite my original request, nor compliant.

09-29-2009, 12:07 PM
MrGuy Registered User Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 3	Hello, First off - big apologies for the massive and somewhat belated bum, I only discovered this thread recently and felt my reply relevant. Feel free to flame away should you desire. Most of you will have no idea who I am, a few of you may have spoken to me through Verified Charge - but I am possibly the only person who can actually answer a lot of the issues raised in this thread. I'd like to apologise for dragging up old dirt - but after doing some midnight searching a few days ago I ended up stumbling across this thread and have been considering how to reply. In good conscience I cannot ignore it so wanted to give some answers that may not have been forthcoming elsewhere. My name is Guy and I worked on Verified Charge with Chio for the duration of the project which originally started in late 2005/early 2006. I am based in the UK and have worked with Chio since 1999 on various projects - from his AVS (GetVerified), through a number of sites and most recently with Verified Charge. During this time I have got to know him well and would consider him a very close friend. The Chio the pirate figure actually originally got invented around a picture of me being molested by a Spaniard in a pirate outfit from 2000... where somehow I became Lord Chio then CHio the Pirate originated thanks to the wonders of photoshopping (which is a past time Chio has spent a little too long). It is with a heavy heart that I'm writing this post - on the basis I could possibly lose a friend over it for a few dozen people I don't even know, who are earning far more money than me and most likely just enjoy a good bit of internet flaming. That said - I feel anyone who lost money at least deserves to know some details of what happened. Firstly - addresses and telephone numbers. The domain registration details are a fake name, registered at my old postcode in Bristol (it's not a pub... but there is a pub there too - The Hatchet I believe... very good if you like rock music, if not you won't fit in). Quite how they ended up there I don't remember but I do remember agreeing to it at some point. The telephone numbers are indeed all Vonage ones that ring the same phone. There is no UK office. There is no Netherlands office. There is no New York office. There is, however, a Florida office... within a house. It's a nice office and the chairs are exceedingly comfortable. You Americans certainly know how to turn a dead cow into a comfortable seat in ways that us Europeans just cannot fathom for an affordable price.... I do, however, digress. My involvement in VC was as a developer. The basis was on low-pay (I received aprox USD5000 over the course of 4 years), 50% return of profits (I saw $0 of this - it made none as far as I'm aware) and I also received 2 all-expenses paid trips to stay with Chio - in September of 2007 and 2008. You will note this was the time that new features were added en-masse and the VC Beta was initially launched. I have had the priviledge of travelling in Chio's tan Ford Expedition (which has now been replaced) and it is just as exciting as I always imagined a tank with leather seats would be. VC was originally going to launch using a template script purchased off the internet as Bliggle (which then became Bliggo and a separate company completely unrelated). This turned out to be a steamy pile of wank and so in late '05 I agreed to start working on the initial development of VC which was finished for aprox March '06. The code then sat unused for the best part of a year whilst Chio worked on other projects - at this time all of you nut jobs were buyign ABP left right and centre. Whilst Chio definitely did not make anywhere near the huge sums projected here off ABP (that's just bullshit... I've seen accounts to know he's not got any Yachts stashed away) - it was enough that he could bring in $5k a month more than he had been doing before after expenses for paying others related to ABP. I was originally offered to work on ABP but turned it down in favour of VC - I found the project more interesting and wanted to be behind it. I thought it had great potential and so work began... once it sat there for a year I eventually poked Chio in to finishing the web templates and then in '07 flew over to finish the site and launch it. So whilst I was over in FL everything went fantastically - I got a crap load of dev done, the new parts of the site (person to person payments amongst them) were coded on a new .Net infrastructure over the already-now-archaic Perl one and we started taking your feedback. After I left back for the sunny shores of Blighty (some of you probably have no idea how depressing going from 100 degrees to 40 degrees is in the same waking day) I continued to provide support for a while. Back in the UK I set up (3 months prior to my trip in '07 to Florida) a software development company that writes and sells EPOS (tills for retail shops) software and complete retail management software. As any of you know setting up a real business takes a significant investment of time - and I could not operate on the basis of no pay, yet still do all the work. I created a series of things for Chio to chase up and finalise and I would allocate 3 days a month to do my wide of it. Things that were being worked on included: Debit cards (fully integrated with Payoneer - but the cards have serious issues internationally, their API is more flakey and an old man's dandruff filled scrotum and after talking to their head of IT during a telco I was left pondering their most basic technical knowledge) Moving VC's processing internationally away from US to accept other "dodgy" types of payment Diversifying VC's portfolio to generate a return on all of your money we were sitting on Continuing to deal with support Paying customers Integration with NATS so that we could actually get some market penetration (I had to use that phrase on an adult board) Actually getting PCI/DSS acredited was quite a big one for me. That's right folks... if you check the list VC isn't on it. One person spotted it and the rest of you shot her down. I was emphasising this long before launch - along with all other legal requirements of the business. I won't be drawn on how VC was actually setup technically, legally or infrastructure wise - but it was more creative than the kind of business I'd usually like to be involved in. I'd also like to clarify that my name is on no paperwork - and I've merely worked as a contractor from a technical perspective. Point was a lot wasn't right around this. New company appears, offers to do billing. "Great!" you all said... now only a couple of people pointed out that "You agree to our T&Cs" was required - when we had no T&Cs... and I don't think a single person ever pointed out that no company called Verified Charge, Inc. actually exists. Amazing what some HTML footer will do to people. I pushed for the correct infrastructure for servers so we could have sufficient security with offline racks and online racks... and I ended up with 2 VMWare virtual servers which powered the whole lot... not quite my original request, nor compliant.