benjamin kerensa nationhosts story
10-19-2004, 07:30 PM
- Join Date:
- May 2002
- Location:
- Florida Panhandle
- Posts:
- 1,975
The Nationhosts Situation
Hello.
I just wanted to bring to your attention that if you are a client that has services through nationhosts there have been sent out from a "employee" of mine claiming the company will be closing. I wanted to also bring up about this Benjamin Kerensa who supposedly works for me. Nationhosts used to be run by Yazan and I (Matt Cohen) alone. We had some people that were doing freelance jobs without pay that would admin our servers and we knew them pretty well. Once one of our most popular admins had to leave we hired someone from WHT that used to go on the boards as Nova now known as NH-Benjamin. Yazan told me about the guy and he wanted to do some work which Yazan said he would give him a free game server as well as pay.
A few months later Benjamin was wanting to get heavily into the Nationhosts picture, he wanted to be on the contracts for the company and become an official employee and basically control all the operations. He had promised the company we would turn a profit as during the whole run we never really turned a profit because most of those funds were reinvested into gameservers. I worked a second job to fund Nationhosts as bills for colocation and server lease were not cheap. Benjamin said he would run the company and would not take pay even after I offered him it but rather he wanted the recognition.
Within a few months Benjamin opened up a domain registration service, I was not aware of him doing so but we figured it was just one of his multiple projects as he was going to form his own domain registration site called nameranch however Directi's API would not allow it so he kept on using the domains.nationhosts.com domain. All the funds were being processed to yazan@rogers.com paypal. Ben would constantly call me on the phone about how he was angry at Yazan and how Yazan made too low of deals. They would constantly fight and I'd normally have to get involved for them to both get along again.
During some times while we were at ethr.net I noticed there were constant outgoing DDoS attacks and Ethr would have to cap our connection resulting in hundreds of calls to the tollfree number of why speeds were going slow. I asked several times for a source IP but I never once was told by Ben who was causing it and that it would be fixed.
Benjamin decided he would become the COO for nationhosts and started getting into fights with Yazan constantly and eventually terminating him because Yazan was going to college. I told him that was my decision and that Yazan could stay but to let him do sales. Ben said it was a bad idea and started acting pretty immature over the whole situation. Eventually Yazan just got fed up and quit. Ben changed the paypal address to my personal one and Yazan sent 600.00 dollars from Directi sales. Ben also set up a citibank account which he transferred funds from my bank account to paypal to the citibank account and he did not even tell me right before the ethr.net bill was due. He said I would receive a welcome package with the account setup but I never received it. About a week later he told me that they required a 2400.00 dollar balance and originally told me it was a 1700.00 balance. He even told me that citibank would send me back the funds within 30 days but I have yet to receive them.
The last 2 weeks have been hectic. I had received a phone call from Ben saying some company called Etrade put 25,000 dollars into my account but then I called my bank they told me it was 25,000 dollars overdrawn. I noticed it was some service similar to paypal as they put deposits in your account and you have to confirm it. I soon noticed another charge from a company called Paydirect HSBC who charged me 200.00 without my authorization. I became suspiscious when I couldn't log into my bank account via internet because the password was changed and that my paypal account hadn't exsisted anymore. I tried my matt@nationhosts.com username and it said the account didn't exsist. I called paypal and asked them to look up the account Matt Cohen and they told me the new address was a bkerensa@gmail.com name. I told them that the accounts email should not have been changed and they marked on the account that it was unauthorized and that a bkerensa@nationhosts.com domain was also on the account. They closed the account and Ben called me complaining saying I had shut down his "personal" paypal account. The strange thing was paypal told me this was the nationhosts business account registered under my name.
We called back paypal and they told me that they would add matt@nationhosts.com as the main account holder again and sent me my details. We were already late on the ethr bill and there were no funds for the directi account since all the money was in this inactive citibank account, and the paypal account was closed. Well I finally got access to the account and I found a bank account added and both the citibank and my bank removed. It was a union bank and ben said he added it because he was going to help "pay" the bills. While I was busy doing some errands I received a call from ben and he called up my old business partner Yazan and accused him of stealing the domain funds and starting using racial terms towards yazan and I hung up as I did not want part of it. 4 days later my paypal account was inactive. I checked bens email which he gave me permission to and it showed that the email was changed to bkerensa@gmail.com again and that the account was closed.
I received a call from a client about his domain and he said an employee from nationhosts called him asking for his credit card number saying his order was voided and then he found all these unauthorized charges to western union etc. Benjamin told me he wrote a check to ethr to pay the bill and transferred the domain money from my paypal to his bank account however I called paypal noting I did not authorize the closing of the account and they said the account would be investigated and because of that all funds would be reversed. As soon as this happened approximately 2-3 hours later I had an amazing mass of phone calls on both my cell and homephone. The next morning I noticed all my emails weren't working and the passwords were changed. I also noticed my personal email there was an email saying Ben had no affiliation to the company and that I had never done anything for the company and that all clients should request a charge back. He also listed all my contact details with street address and even dual logged onto my aim name impersonating me. He said that I better talk to clients and that I was rude to them even hung up. He's even told me that I will most likely go to jail, be sued, and that he has contacted the IRS, Okaloosa police, told clients to contact their police, that I have stolen clients money, told me that he contacted CDG, and Ethr and both have agreed to take me to court from what he says, and that clients will be disconnected from the service as because we haven't paid the bill that ethr will pull us.
I talked to CDG, they said that everything was in the green, I had to close down my bank account due to the fraudulent charges however have a new one. I talked to ethr they said they would agree to keep me up and that I could sell my clients if I wanted to. I've even talked to clients on the phone and tried to discuss the matter with them. It seems like the biggest concern is the domains over the hosting.
I would just like to state that I do not have any of the clients money. All the money in the paypal which was about 1700 total was transferred to citibank from ben. The money was originally in my business bank account which was transferred from my account to paypal and then to Citibank without my knowledge when there was an ethr.net bill due from ben. The 600 dollars from directi was received later as yazan owned the old nationhosts paypal account and he sent the money to us. That was used to pay the ethr bill from what ben said and paypal reveresed it due to an unauthorized close of my paypal account without my permission. The only money I have is 200.00 in my new bank account which is from a reversal on the paydirect [HSBC which was a fradulent charge. As for the other money Ben claims directi sent the rest of the money to Yazan but is accusing Yazan of holding the money and not sending it to us.
I talked to Jay and Josh who both work for Ethr and they said that Ben has been very rude to them to the point they cannot stand talking to him as they are nice enough to provide support and helping us without charge, Josh thinks that Ben is bluffing as he has threatened lawsuits in the past on them and multiple businesses, and I even brought up the fact that maybe Ben has been scamming me and clients all along to transfer there money as it seems a bit odd that I would have these unauthorized charges and this client who was charged for a western union since Ben is the only person to have access to our billing information and contact information.
Ben and customers have been calling me constantly as well IMing me, I am on AIM but Ben dual logged on my AIM which he is impersonating me, he is claiming I have clients funds, he is telling them to call the police and take me to court, he is contacting the IRS saying I am avoiding wages and taxes, as well as making petty threats and constantly calling me to harass me. He has threatened to format the boxes, he has disabled access to my emails, and has even told me he has backdoored both yazan and I with VNC.
I don't know if posting this is going to make a whole lot of a difference but this is just my experience with Benjamin Kerensa, I've read some things on him how he was arrested in San Francisco on Valencia for calling in a bomb threat
http://www.sfexaminer.com/article/in...101603n_arrest
http://www.sfexaminer.com/article/in...101603n_arrest
and I guess he used to run a company called namenerds, he is attempting to convince me that I am the one who screwed him over but I would say it's the other around. Any comments?
Nationhosts, LLC
http://www.nationhosts.com
"Nationwide hosting solutions"
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