Beware of JLPHost/ Joshua Jones/Joshua Prout/IT Network - Scammer

[lozano]

I would like to post a thread to warn everyone here about someone who I have found out to be a scammer a little too late unfortunately.

I posted a thread requesting quotes for an IPB skin and some IPContent/Pages work. One of the people who responded is a member of this forum with the name IT Network.

We agreed to the work to be completed and to a price, he sent me an invoice and I sent the payment via Paypal on July 29th. He agreed to have the work done within 2 weeks. As part of his quote he offered a lower price if I switched my site to his hosting business (JLP Host). I agreed and so I worked with him to move my site over to his hosting service. The hosting service supposedly had a 99% uptime guarantee.

As time passed and the project was not completed he brought up that he did not know IPB 4 that well yet and that he was having some trouble with the skin and asked for a little more time. Time and time again he kept saying he would send me a link to the test forum with my skin on it. Then suddenly last week his hosting site disappeared as did my site. Luckily I had a semi-recent backup and was able to bring my site back up at my old host. But not without losing about a week's worth of content. I tried to contact Josh to refund me my money, both the payment made for skinning/coding that was never completed as well as the year of hosting I prepaid. He never responded. I submitted a paypal claim and he responded to it claiming to have finished the whole skin on the site. Paypal is still investigating as we speak. I asked him again to refund all of the payments i made to him and he has yet to respond. ( I can provide screenshots of all of our conversations done through PM on this site) While I was researching to see if there were any other ways to contact him I found out a couple of things that led me to believe he is in fact a scammer.

He tried to scam someone on LowEndTalk http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/61816/jlphost-itnetworkhost-scammer
He was also banned from Sythe for trying to scam someone http://www.sythe.org/dispute-forum-archive/1878781-jlphost.html

Please be wary of who you deal with. I'm still trying to get my money back from Paypal for making the mistake of not dealing with someone more trusted. I thought since I saw him post here a lot he'd be more trustworthy.

 

[OptimusVault]

He sounds like a lowlife idiot.

 

[LeadCrow]

LowEndTalk

The host listed there surely 'delivered', since the plaintiff got what he paid for...

Thanks for sharing this week's reminder of why it's crazy thinking to seek services or hosting from pennypinching companies without confirmed origins and representatives with verified identities.
Their margins tend to be so small obtaining refunds is a major achievement, and after-service brings rarely brings peace of mind.

It boggles my mind that a host would consider their reputation worth less than 60$ and trash it out of principle. The only credible reason I could think of is that they may plan to ditch that identity and branding and convert to another, falsely depicting themselves as a 'new company with a pristine record'.

 

[PoetJC]

Gasp at the whole situation!! I've worked with JLPHost a few times on a few different projects as requested here at TAZ. He owes me $20 actually. And I need that $20 tbh... But hmmm. I've been trying to contact him since August 27 -- at which time it seems he changed Skype handles or simply went off the grid. I saw his http://truecolortalks.com forum went offline a week or two ago. And now this thread. GASP!

The host listed there surely 'delivered', since the plaintiff got what he paid for...

Thanks for sharing this week's reminder of why it's crazy thinking to seek services or hosting from pennypinching companies without confirmed origins and representatives with verified identities.
Their margins tend to be so small obtaining refunds is a major achievement, and after-service brings rarely brings peace of mind.

It boggles my mind that a host would consider their reputation worth less than 60$ and trash it out of principle. The only credible reason I could think of is that they may plan to ditch that identity and branding and convert to another, falsely depicting themselves as a 'new company with a pristine record'.

I was actually offered a substantial discount on a hosting package I had plans on using as an automated backup source for my main VPS. Actually. A free account for services rendered well. And TBH - I was leery of the offer. I mean - during the 2 weeks I'd assisted with a few of his projects - he'd changed the JLPHost.com WHMCS theme 2-3 times and then settled on an HTML template. Um ==> Red flags!

I had a feeling dude was up to some pretty shady **** - but had no idea the scope.
Interesting stuff. And yeah... I'd be on the lookout for alter-egos and additional identities. In fact - My bit of paranoia/intuition tells me that there are probably already-established TAZ member accounts. It seems to be a particularly interesting game of his...

Anyway. Wow. Live and learn.

J.

 

[Lisa]

Ahhh Joshua, we know him well. I'm sorry you got caught up in that situtation.

 

[LeadCrow]

Getting offered discounts in exchange for moving to someone's hosting is pretty much being taken hostage...

Shady hosts acquiring control of people's domains, hosting and files can succesfully monetize the victims and strategically destroy their stuff to squeeze them dry without complaints.
We're familiar with the schemes behind upselling customers to more expensive plans (where they can still move to another host), but fly by night hosts operate using coercive control.

 

[PoetJC]

Offering discounts in exchange for moving to someone's hosting is pretty much being taken hostage... Shady hosts acquiring control of people's domains, hosting and files can succesfully monetize the victims and strategically destroy their stuff to squeeze them dry without complaints.

Content is King so they say.
I wasn't going to give 100+ GB of my data to dude. Are you kidding!?!? I've had a few hosting disasters chronicled here on TAZ. I've lived a lot and learned a bit since then. There was just all sorts of red-flags. You said it right though Cal = Do you due diligence when seeking hosting options! People like to cut corners a bit on cost and pay for the 'too good to be true' offers when they shouldn't. I learned that with MochaHost and HostV/Cirtex Hosting, which, incidentally noone should ever use!

When the offer sounds too good to be true - it just very well may be!

J.

 

[AdamD]

Ahhh Joshua, we know him well. I'm sorry you got caught up in that situtation.

Wondered why that name sounded so familiar.
Doesn't he have kids as well? Fine example to his kids if so.
What a ****ty thing to do.

 

[Lisa]

Doesn't he have kids as well? Fine example to his kids if so.

No idea. He always sounded pretty young to me.

 

[GTB]

Is this not related to this that I read SneakyDave replying to on Admin Talk yesterday.

http://www.**********.com/threads/thoughts-on-drivehosting.51096/#post-582425

Hmm, see you're blocking Admin Talk links?

yeah, probably the wrong person. Not sure why they'd say you were part of the family that owned it. Doesn't matter now I guess, site and twitter handle are gone, seems to be a scammer, and banned at a lot of gaming sites, for no apparent reason.

It seems strange that the lowendtalk.com thread seems to have made the same assumption I have as to who owned that web site.

"No idea what your talking about man".. Then why are you promoting jlphost.com on your facebook page?

 

[Lisa]

AT has been blocked on here for years.

http://www.whoismind.com/whois/jlphost.com.html Interestingly, JLPHost was only registered in July this year and is owned by a Josh Jones. So it looks like the same person to me, as he goes by both Joshua Prout and I've seen him referred to as Joshua Jones too.

 

[TJA]

Deja vu

 

[JadeBlade]

Is this not related to this that I read SneakyDave replying to on Admin Talk yesterday.

http://www.**********.com/threads/thoughts-on-drivehosting.51096/#post-582425

Hmm, see you're blocking Admin Talk links?

DriveHosting...

I've worked with them before..

 

[lol12345]

He offers me the XenForo license if I buy a web hosting from JLPHost

Ahhahaha

 

[AdamD]

DriveHosting...

Ah that's the name I remember.
Shame, he comes across a a decent guy, but it's obviously all a charade.

 

[DudeThatsErin]

Drive Hosting dude is the same dude who did this scam? He always seemed so nice!

I knew there was something up though. Anytime I gave him money though I always got it back in the form of a refund.... maybe I was lucky. His hosting always sucked though.

I'm sorry this happened to you OP! That sucks! I hope you get your money back!

 

[LeadCrow]

Maybe there should be a crowdsourced database of information about webhosts (technicals and owners)... These scammers thrive thanks to their past history not being associated with them in new ventures, and honest customers and venture owners being unable to verify wether specific people are honest or known scammers.

It's not just spambots and bad customers that need a blacklist. Some way for concerned webmasters to check if their current hosting has known shadyness going on right now or in the past would be really handy.

 

[Alundra]

Ahhh Joshua, we know him well. I'm sorry you got caught up in that situtation.

If people knew why was there no warning beforehand? I've been talking to this guy for a while and he seemed really nice. I feel like people have seen him in chat asking people to PM him or saying he's PMed them and talking to them about hosting, etc....did no one who knew anything want to warn those people they could be taken advantage of?

If I were in the situation that Lozano is in now it would be so awful I could not imagine it! It would mean my business would be over. If you know someone is dangerous you should warn people who are getting too close to the fire so they can back off before they're burned .

 

[Lisa]

If people knew why was there no warning beforehand?

Until this thread came to light, we didn't know that IT Network was Joshua. Had we known, he would have been banned immediately.

 

[Liam]

Woah. I actually sent him a PM a month ago for a server quote. Thank God I found a decent offer from another provider.

This is actually pretty surprising though. He seemed like a good guy. He PMed me once when I had that status about looking for providers and offered me a discounted rate. Fortunately I didn't bite. I would've bitten his price on the server quote I requested the second time but it just seemed a bit shady.