Account Hijacking By iFriends

In May 2009, I noticed my account settings on iFriends had been tampered with. My private information had been changed.

Upon further investigation, I was able to connect the information to an employee of Webpower Inc. (iFriends).

 

**** Screenshot edited (information blocked out) at WordPress’s request, due to a complaint of a Terms Of Service privacy violation ****

 

According to this (see screenshot below), the person named Jaime L Hamed, lived in St Petersburg, Russia. There are two problems with that. There exists no “7121 Fairway Drive” in Russia and (I didn’t know this at the time, but) Jaime Hamed resided and worked in Florida just not at that address. Jaime is an employee of Webpower Inc. (iFriends).

I did some poking around and discovered that the address listed, 7121 Fairway Drive, is the Florida address of Webpower (iFriends’) company lawyer, Andrew H Kayton.

Here is proof Andrew H Kayton actually represents Webpower Inc (iFriends). See screenshot below or check it out on the official trademark website. Just scroll down to Correspondent and see for yourself: Trademarkia

Having established that Kayton is Webpower’s lawyer and 7121 Fairway Drive is his office, let’s continue on. We know that Jaime used her real name along with the address of iFriends’ lawyer in my account settings.

I reported this to Stacy (in upper management). At the time, I didn’t know Jaime was an employee of the company. This only came to me in light of extensive investigation much later on.

The screenshot below shows Stacy’s very first e-mail to me. This is just to show her position and highlight the fact that she knew everything that was going on in the company. Note: the Alan Rogers she refers to is actually Allan E Hadhazy, the founder and owner of Webpower Inc (iFriends), who I previously reported issues and findings to.

 

 

When confronted with this account settings issue, Stacy (who, as you can see, was clearly in upper management) assured me it was just a glitch and that ID card information just got mixed up. Her exact words were “I’ve been reviewing this situation this morning and found that it was caused by an unintended glitch” and along the same lines “My understanding from what was described to me was that somehow information from your IDCard got mixed with another IDCard”. Having worded it the way she did gave me the impression she thought I was unaware Jaime was an employee of the company. So a mix-up with another ID card implies that Jaime is another chathost. This would relieve the heat from the employees and make me think it was an innocent error (a true glitch). Had she told me it was an employee of the company, this would immediately sound alarms. Why would an employee of the company have an ID card with the same fields as I have in mine? Jaime doesn’t need one. The fields don’t apply to her position in the company. She does not have ‘host screennames’. Furthermore, how is it that scattered conflicting information under her name attaches itself to my account settings? The information isn’t even consistent with one person’s identification. The street address is the lawyer’s office in Florida, the country entered, however, is Russia. Jaime L Hamed is the name. The ssn is a real one (not a test) and belongs to someone residing in Pennsylvania, where Jaime just happens to be from and where her family lives. I prove this a little further down.

 

Read on and have a look at the screenshots and links I provided. This is fairly simple to put together if you follow closely. Here is what happened, from the beginning:

After a failed attempt to login one night, I alerted Stacy to the fact there had been tampering in my account. Below is our conversation:

My original report to her

 

Her reply

The word “glitch” was too commonly used. Frankly, I felt they were trying to insult my intelligence. So, I wrote her back.

Her reply:

Again, something about what she wrote didn’t sit right with me. This was no glitch. A glitch does not change the fields in a form like that. The information in my account was changed though I was logged in, password protected and all. Information doesn’t just become mixed up with other information and jump from one account to another, with only the login information intact. So, I wrote back:

To this, I received no reply from Stacy.

Several months later (fast-forward to November of 2009), I called iFriends to find out why my check was so late and was informed that I didn’t have one coming. In fact, I owed them money. It appears some pretty hefty refunds were issued to a couple of big spender customers the week before. I immediately brought this up with Stacy.

These sudden huge refunds got my back up where other things were concerned now. Especially where revenues are not shown to me. I grew very suspicious.

 On videochat sales amounts, 10% is held for a period of 6 months. We were never given a report of what was in that “10% reserve” account. We had to specifically ask for it. So I did.

I requested a report of that 10% rolling reserve and everything that went along with it; the figures they don’t like to furnish us with on the site.

Stacy replied:

 In the meantime, Jaime was busy tampering in my account settings again. I reported this to Stacy.

Two days later, Stacy responded to the other concerns I brought to her attention but offered no explanation as to why Jaime kept appearing in my account settings. The tampering was still happening, despite Stacy’s long, heart-felt apologies and assurances that nobody was to go in there without my permission.

The more she avoided answering why my account settings kept being tampered with, the more suspicious I became. I finally decided to conduct a few searches to find out what I could about the information that kept re-appearing in my account. At first, I looked at the social security number that was there in place of mine.

I went to this site and entered the ssn I had on file. It returned this:

It lists someone living in Pennsylvania, born before 1951 so this definitely wasn’t Jaime. A family member or close friend? Perhaps.  Keep in mind that the information in those fields in my account settings were not consistent with one person or place. For example, 7121 Fairway Drive didn’t exist in St Petersburg, Russia but the postal code was Russian.

This is clearly falsified information. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to use “test 123” in the fields rather than select personal information from a few different individuals, if this were for testing purposes? The only reason an actual social security number would be entered there is if funds were being sent through it. Since that was someone’s social security number, that can only mean the funds went into that person’s account. Since Jaime Hamed’s name was in my account settings, that can only mean money was being sent to her through my account.

I’m sure for many of you reading this, it seems a little hard to believe. It may be a lot to take in. Well, the best I can offer is for you to look at the screenshots I provided, click the links and see for yourself.

This is Jaime’s resume  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaime-hamed-ab136877

This is her on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jaime.hamed?fref=ts

Lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

From New Castle, Pennsylvania.

Same person. No doubt.

Let there be no confusion. This is indeed the same person that has her name on my account settings and in my payment information. She works for Webpower Inc (iFriends). She is not a chathost, as one can clearly gather from a good glance at her resume and her e-mail address jaime@webpower.com which were also in my account settings. So, there could not have been a “mix up” with ID cards. This is clearly the one tampering in my account settings on iFriends.

I will go even further to prove my point. You’ll notice the birthday in my account settings belonging to someone else is April 8, 2012. It was hard to find any solid proof this was Jaime’s birthday but I did find a birthday wish with an old childhood pic from her mother to her on Facebook April 8th, 2012.  That’s good enough for me. Jaime herself even responds to a comment on that post. Here’s the exact url to the post to see for yourself.

Jaime’s birthday, April 8

To sum up what I have, let’s revisit the ID card information and then connect the dots.

Birthday: 19_ _ – _ _ – _ 8.  <— Jaime’s birthday (edited to avoid privacy violation)

Place of Birth: New Castle, Pennsylvania <— Jaime’s place of birth

Social Security Number: 195 _ _ _ _ _ 8 (issued to someone in PA) <— Likely a relative’s SSN

The next card (address) shows:

Full Legal Name: Jaime L Hamed <— This is an employee of Webpower Inc (iFriends). I have proven this.

Street Address: 7121 Fairway Drive < — This is the address of the office of Webpower’s lawyer, Andrew H Kayton.

City: St Petersburg <— Above address, “7121 Fairway Drive” does not exist in this city.

Country: Russia

Zip/Postal Code: 198504

I believe I have proven my point as to knowing, with 100% accuracy, who had been tampering in my account settings. A major problem I have with this is the fact that test accounts don’t use a person’s actual social security number.

 Let’s have a look at the many revenue-generating options we have in and around the platform that a performer would have no idea whether or not sales have taken place.

There are fan clubs which members pay a monthly (often recurring) fee to join, replay sessions, DVD sales, just to name a few. In fact, the only revenue a performer can track with any accuracy is live videochat sales because we actually perform them and can check the stats for them immediately following the session. There were a variety of ways for our money to disappear on and around the iFriends platform, and it did.  I managed to spot a lot of strange activity that appeared to be coming from members of the site, until I looked closer. The multiple accounts I saw with the same handle (only slightly varying) in my fan club list looked more like internal job and not the actions of a member at all. In a short period of time, several instances of this same activity occurred. This wasn’t testing either because I asked about that. Their claim was always that the “account was fraudulent”. Revenue from fan club sales would also vanish. See the video in this article for a general idea of how this happened …  Revenue Discrepancies (video). Below are some screenshots (just a random few out of hundreds I have archived on my computer) that prove this was no glitch or temporary hiccup, as they would claim. The first card below is just an example, to explain what you’re looking at. It shows a member’s activity on the site and what he has spent on me, specifically. His card shows zero renewals although he was in my fan club for 1 year and 7 months. This didn’t just happen one time. The rest of the cards below that all show the same discrepancy in number of renewals missing. Their computer can’t count. Isn’t that funny? At least that’s what I am seeing, according to these reports. It wasn’t a glitch either because it kept happening, over and over again. This wasn’t just an error in the reports; I was never paid for those renewals. Care to guess where the money went?

Below are several examples. I have hundreds more on my computer, as well.

What also made me suspicious were discrepancies in fan club member counts. I sent an e-mail through their system to my 29 active fan club members but it returned a confirmation that my message was sent to 342 fan club members. No mention if these were past or present members, or a combination of both but the number of inactive and active fans totalled far more than 340, so the number couldn’t have come from a count of both active and inactive. If it were listing fan club members from only the last two years, it still doesn’t add up. I have gone through extensive calculations to determine where they came up with this number but to no avail.

One particular incident had many girls on the site upset over a customer that was allowed to keep returning to the site, despite the fact that he had apparently defrauded many of us, creating large refunds. Some, myself included, out hundreds of dollars. Ask any girl who worked on iFriends in late fall of 2009. This so-called ‘customer’ actually went by 3 handles (that I know of); TROLLYMAN, TROLLEYMAN, and TROLLYMAN2 and when confronted about this strange occurrence, Stacy tried to convince me that TROLLYMAN and TROLLEYMAN were different members (that just happened to be on the site at the same time, creating such similar handles and scamming the girls all in the exact same timeframe). This is a beaut! Her explanation was classic condescending bullshit 101.

Following the TROLLYMAN incident (where not only several handles were used in this ‘true knowledge fraud’ but large amounts were spent, turning into refunds, sweeping the platform), I began to ask questions in the iFriends public forums. IFriends became increasingly agitated with my behaviour (how dare I speak out, how dare I question them in public).

Upset over all this, I posted my concerns in their public forums. It soon became apparent that their preference was to keep the conversation secure within the confines of e-mail exchanges. I received an e-mail from Stacy, basically reminding me of what I stand to lose if I don’t shut my trap. Here’s how that conversation went:

 Of course, my reply:

And finally, when I asked for a full report of my earnings, including deductions and the ins and outs of the 10% hold they took from videochat sales on every pay, I was delayed:

I wonder if anyone else kicked up a stink and got a TROLLYMAN credit …in the form of a bonus rather than treated as revenue earned, which is what it was. Hmm.

On the 10th of December, I received those reports I asked for.  After the holidays and when I had a good chance to look them over, I realized I was just looking at more discrepancies. The real challenge was in matching up any of these amounts with what iFriends gave me in my reports on the site.

So, on February 2, 2009, I sent another request for information. This time, requiring more specific, detailed information. All transactions, ins and outs, with balances and every minute by minute sale I made on the platform. A week had passed and still no report. I asked Stacy about it.

She replied:

Two days later, I received this from Stacy:

Several e-mails to Stacy, following this conversation had bounced back to me. I finally got through.

Note: I never asked for members’ personal information. They never furnished us with that before anyway. Why would they do so now?

  I asked for a more detailed report, this time, threatening legal action:

Her response:

My reply:

This is the best explanation she offered and it still told me nothing:

My reply:

Rather than give me a complete report of my revenue, the information I asked for, she decides to lawyer up:

IFriends knew they owed me money. The amount they offered to settle was nowhere in the range of close to what they owe me. A couple of zeros were missing.

This is a screenshot of my lawyer’s e-mail to me, referring to Webpower Inc’s (iFriends) offer via Andrew Kayton.

That number they floated was the lowest lowball I have ever been humoured with. I couldn’t even entertain the notion, never mind find any justification for accepting this as payment for what they stole from me over the years. .

Despite this, I did however finally agree to sign their confidentiality agreement, just to have those reports in my hand.  This would have put the nail in the coffin for my case. There is no question that the information contained in those documents would incriminate iFriends and bring to light all the ways they defrauded me over the years.

I wasn’t bluffing. I did try legal action … but in the end, was met with the inevitable; being financially outmuscled. After finding Jaime had tampered in my account settings, committing what looks to me like fraud, all I asked for was a complete report of my revenues … and it’s evident that’s the last thing they want me to have.