Frozen Midnight Staff Confession
When I first posted my theories on Frozen Midnight a year ago, I had no idea what kind of reaction it would get (from the company or its users). Little did I know that so many existing and ex-customers would come forward with their stories of outrageous fees and unnecessary charges. No less than 8 in the past few weeks alone, even to this day!
Still, even if I had known in advance that I'd be inundated with complaints, I don't think it would have prepared me for the statements made by an ex-staff member who got in touch at the end of June. After taking simple steps to try and ensure that this person was in fact an ex-staffer, I asked him a few questions to get a better idea about what was going on behind the scenes at FMH and why people had been landed with ludicrous charges. I've gathered his response below; please note that any emphasis is my own.
Me: Given my accusations aimed at the company last year it would be interesting to hear from your point of view whether or not clients were charged for malicious actions they never comitted?
When I was working there a lot of clients never cared about account security so they gave away there cPanel login information which lead to accounts being hacked, so you could say that many clients never did those malicious actions directly. From what I understand a lot of clients were accused of malicious actions but I'm not sure if they are responsible for it and I don't understand where Managment [sic] made up with those crazy prices for the hacks as it didn't cost the company anything.
When SoftLayer contacted us about the malicious activiy and I was online I put a stop to it right away and just close the issue and put behind me and the accused client. Some other staff decided to notify the Managment right away so the client can be charged a fine which I thought was a little crazy. I remember looking in the ClientExec invoice program there were a lot of open invoices of crazy amounts for a lot of money.
Me: Has the company folded due to lack of business, or is Jamie simply bored of it?
We got an internal e-mail that Jamie is having some "personal legal trouble" and he will be away for a while while he tries to sort out the problem. Later I find from an online article that he was accused of hacking his school's computer system and that is his legal trouble. The company was being funded from Jamie parents but mainly his father and was also being funded from some other servies we offered customers that include hosting, web design, domains, exchange, dedicated servers but his parents were funding almost the entire company including the office building in Las Vegas where the staff were located. After his legal troubles his parents cut him off and decided not to fund the comapny anymore so the company shut down a couple months later.
Me: Jamie advertised FMH as having over 200 employees, but I was under the impression he did it all from his bedroom and that those who said they worked for him were just him in disguise - do you know roughly how many people he employed?
I would say FM had around 50 employees (based on the number of people on the Exchange/Outlook internal e-mail list) when I started and this was being reduced to around less than 30 when the company shut down. He was based in Michigan and that is where all the company bank accounts were and where the INC part of the company is formed and based. The LLC part was based in Las Vegas, NV and FM had its very own office building there. If you find the Vegas address and look in Google Maps Satellite View as I can't find the address anymore you will see the building.
So there we have it: a member of Frozen Midnight staff describing a company obviously smaller than advertised, and not bothered by the thought of making charges to customers for problems that may or may not have occurred, despite neither affecting the company financially.
I have no regrets outing the behaviour demonstrated by Jamie Timbre and his company, I only wish that it could have happened sooner so that we — those who contributed to my fact-finding mission and subsequent publicising of the original article — could've saved more people money.
Staff member's identity not published for privacy reasons.
Comments (14)
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On Fri 11th Jul 2008 @ 17:41, Mumblies said:
Good! Go Jem
On Fri 11th Jul 2008 @ 17:57, Stephanie said:
This just goes from bad to worse...
On Fri 11th Jul 2008 @ 18:01, Annie said:
I hope he suffers the consequences. Did the customers get their money back, which they shouldn't have been charged for?
On Fri 11th Jul 2008 @ 18:15, Kristine said:
I was once close to being hosted by FM. Glad I found another host.
On Fri 11th Jul 2008 @ 22:23, Sarai said:
Wow. Seems karma has come to bite him in the ass, which makes me feel a little better.
On Fri 11th Jul 2008 @ 23:20, Stephanie said:
You know, I was skeptical, at first, about how much your "outing" Frozen Midnight would help; apparently it did, a lot. Now what you need to do is compile a list of "good" hosts for people to look through when they're looking for domain hosting.
I'd obviously think of Site5 first, but apparently Site5 sold out.
On Sat 12th Jul 2008 @ 00:45, Aaron said:
Ever consider a side career as an online detective?
On Sat 12th Jul 2008 @ 03:00, Marie said:
Bet you this will look good on his resume
.
On Sat 12th Jul 2008 @ 07:38, Mackenzie said:
About time somebody gave us the inside scoop.
I always wondered what they were doing on the inside,
I'm so glad I got away when I did :]
On Sat 12th Jul 2008 @ 11:44, Regina said:
Woah that is some information! Legal trouble? Tsk he'll have to pay those legal fees, and they definitely won't be cheap!
On Sun 13th Jul 2008 @ 20:14, Barbilee said:
lolz thats funny
there stuff talkign GO JEM
On Mon 14th Jul 2008 @ 22:38, Mike Haddad said:
As I was reading this I couldn't help but think that anyone who did pay those fees must feel like a fool. I doubt there is any sort of legal protection people have from hosts who decide to do something like this.
On Tue 22nd Jul 2008 @ 16:22, FreakyT said:
Interesting, I was always among those who believed Frozen Midnight was run by one guy in his basement.
On Wed 1st Oct 2008 @ 17:43, GoDDaM said:
April 26 2007 I had an email for "Damages/Security Fee $ 91.24", I sent a mail back encouraging them to get the authorities involved, and if I didn't get a response within 24 hours I would get them involved myself. After a few mails bouncing back and forth to two other people from FMH the charged were dropped, suprise ! Still they had the last laugh I fell when the hosting plug was pulled on me and other unsuspecting paying customers.