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OK, after many months of heartache and not wanting to harm any legal case, I have finally (after we decided legal proceedings were not to our advantage) been given the go ahead to blog about this.
Warning: This is going to be a long entry, theres a lot to say!
In September of 2004 I was approached by a person in #php on Freenode, his nick is either StormFury or DarthFury to take on a job. This person is Jason Macer, CEO/Founder/Whatever of OSI Hosting.
He offered me a good job ($80K/year, dental/health/optical benefits) and a work visa. It involved relocation to Texas and I was to be given a flat $10K to pay for this. Naturally, I didn’t believe it.
He drew up a contract (which was verified by a lawyer) and I signed it, at this point I got rather excited. I mean, I never wanted a “real” job, I like freelancing – but this would ensure security for my and my (then) girlfriend, and it was doing something I loved, coding.
I soon roped in several good friends of mine, one of whom in turn roped in a friend of his. We had a great team assembled – I’m not kidding you, this team was a force to be reckoned with. I was proud to be (jointly) spearheading this group.
The contract stated that payment would be backpaid 1 week after the site went live. It also stated one months pay would be kept in an escrow account – this never happened.
Between 3 people (3 others were not yet working because of other commitments) we put in over 1000 hours in 5 weeks. I spent 20hrs a day working non-stop, including during the 1 week “vacation” for myself and my (then) girlfriend to England. We couldn’t sightsee, we didn’t get the chance to meet some of my family, and quite frankly, she would have been better off staying at home.
Jason made things difficult, constantly moving the goal posts, making us continually move the deadline.
He also kept telling us about corporate jets, trips to aspen and more.
We suspected things weren’t quite right about 3 weeks in. We were right. He kept not answering our calls, was evasive, made outrageous claims such as buying out http://www.savvis.com“>Savvis], a major player in networking services.
Jason Macer is a scam artist. OSI Hosting is a scam, all its data centers listed are http://www.ev1servers.net“>EV1’s], or non-existant. The OSI Hosting website is on an EV1 server. No deal with IBM was ever forged, nor an official Apple deal.
Jason Macer is pure evil, 10 days before christmas he called me, after 2 months of no contact, saying there would be money the following week, just in time for christmas. Of course there was none.
For the work I did, including overtime, I am owed US$15,000, the other employees, $18,000 and $9,000.
My reason for blogging this is so that it will turn up on google, meaning anyone smart enough to research OSI or Jason before purchasing anything will find it and see OSI for what it really is.
The employees involved in this are hard working, kind hearted people who didn’t deserve this. One of them has had to seperate from his wife due to monetary issues, another has had continuous health issues from the stress and myself and my wife have gone through too much grief to think about.
In addition to the obvious fraud, there is plenty of evidence that Jason has committed numerous other crimes. So with that in mind, if any lawyers from IBM, Novell, Apple or any of the other companies whose reputations may have been harmed by OSI wish to take legal proceedings, I am willing to give evidence, with or without any fiscal rewards. There is a lot of information missing in this entry on purpose, I still don’t want to do any irrevocable damage… just in case.
To those I roped in to this mess, I’m truly sorry for the pain and heartache you have suffered. That you remain friends means a lot to me and shows your true colours.
– Davey
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