Greg's Reason for Closing- EXPLAINED

[MatrixWatch]

Here is the new announcement found on GotMatrix.com. It will be copied here in its entirety, but we have provided you with a "between the lines" version in red.

The reason that we are giving a commentary on Greg's announcement is because we have seen this happen time and time again with other owners of matrix sites. For those of you who still believe that Greg is a saint who could do no harm, please answer these questions for me...

1) The GotMatrix site went up again over 48 hours ago, and all of the forum messages were still there. INCLUDING those messages that were posted while the site was "down". That's right, there were messages posted and information and questions were provided. Yet, today, they are all erased. Why did Greg delete them?

2) If the original forum messages were still in tact, and the site was still accessible through an IP address that Greg provides in the new announcement, then this means that the customer-email database was still available to Greg. Why didn't he just copy all of those email addresses in to a working email server (yahoo, aol, etc.) and send out a message to everyone to let them know what was going on?

3) Why does he NEVER respond to the questions and claims that we make here at MatrixWatch, and instead make personal attacks on the nature of the people making the claims. Over the past year we have successfully helped thousands of matrix victims get their money back from scammers. Did Greg let his customers know about this? Did Greg, like his friend Ashu, come clean with his customers and pledge his cooperation with MatrixWatch.org to ensure that everyone is compensated?

4) Greg says that he doesn't read this site, yet in a recent forum message at GotMatrix.com he directly responds to a claim that his customers have complained about over the past 2 weeks:

From: the GotMatrix Forum (http://www.gotmatrix.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1945)

They do not know me, they may think the system is flawed but that doesn't make me a scammer by any means.

This site is not a scam, you know that personally and that's why you supported me for so long. You have received several thousands of dollars in gifts from cycling. How can you say it's a scam when it worked for you and is working for everyone else?

Umm.. We call you a scammer, Greg, because you pull tricks like the one you are pulling now. Just because a few people from April of 2003 get an Xbox does not mean that everyone on your site will. That is why it is a scam.

And now, without further delay, here is the 'between-the-lines' version of Greg's announcement:

[MatrixWatch]

Here is Greg's Most recent announcement at GotMatrix.com (http://www.gotmatrix.com/shop/customer/home.php), explaining the reason for his disappearance and the recent changes to his business plan. Greg's words are in bold-black, and our explanations are in italics.

December 17, 2004 -

GotMatrix.com is back online. I want to appologize for the downtime that the site has occured. The website has been available via ip address http://67.18.249.66/~gotmat/ but the domain name was not resolving.

However, there are several ways that he still could have notified his customers. If the website was still operational, then he could have accessed the database and sent out a mass-email to his members with information about where to access his website, and why GotMatrix is down.

[Note: Within 10 minutes of this post going up, Greg has posted an interesting update (http://www.gotmatrix.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1946) on his forum. It is interesting that he reads the posts here, yet never responds to the concerns of the customers whom he should refund out of good will.]

The reason for this was the domain name gotmatrix.com was put on hold by Tucows, the registar. The domain lock has been removed and the domain name will once again resolve. Once again I'm sorry for the inconvenience, the site was not taken down by myself.

It doesn't matter who the site was taken down by. Every administrator of a website will receive notification via email from Tucows long before their website is shut down. So, Greg know that this would happen, since Tucows is obligated by law to notify him about it. Could Greg have allowed Tucows to close it, intending that this would be a good excuse that people would believe?

And what about the fact that he owned the company which hosted GotMatrix.com? Why has his host, GotHost.com, and the matrix site now been moved over to "The Planet"? It seems that he had planned a clean getaway, which then was hampered when everyone started looking for him. Now, he's going back over his steps and making ridiculous excuses for his actions. Actions that were planned and calculated long in advance.

The list will be fixed over the next week to reflect the correct positions. There are several errors with the list, mainly where the automated script has duplicated entries. We will no longer be using this automated system for the list. Several duplicate names and orders that were charged back will be removed.

So, there were chargebacks made then! That would have cost Greg a tremendous amount of money in penalty fees. How does Greg plan to get those funds back to pay out the cycled customers. Oh, and one more thing... Credit Card Companies do not just allow people to file chargebacks simply. Rather, an investigation is made by the company to determine whether or not the seller was fraudulent. So, if the CC companies were allowing GotMatrix customers to process chargebacks, then it seems that they agree with us when we say that GotMatrix.com is a fraud.

It is also interesting that Greg does not mention all of the reports that have been filed against him to law enforcement. Could the legal pressure upon him be the reason that he put the site back up?

I suppose that Greg could prove that his business is legitimate by still accepting payments through another Credit-Card company... Oh, wait:


We will not be accepting credit cards any longer. Current payment methods are check & money orders only.

This should be the single most important hint that you must continue to file complaints to law enforcement, get your money back from Greg ASAP, and get the other customers to do the same thing. If Greg is not accepting electronic payments, then the payment cannot be traced. Other matrix owners who have been brought to only accepting checks and money orders have put that money straight into their pockets. If anyone doubts this, then be sure to read through the posts in the ExExpo sub-forum (http://www.matrixwatch.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=76). The exact same thing happened, and customers were still not paid. Those who paid via check/money order never saw that money again either.

[nicoleeubanks]

Here is Greg's Most recent announcement at GotMatrix.com (http://www.gotmatrix.com/shop/customer/home.php), explaining the reason for his disappearance and the recent changes to his business plan. Greg's words are in bold-black, and our explanations are in italics.

December 17, 2004 -

GotMatrix.com is back online. I want to appologize for the downtime that the site has occured. The website has been available via ip address http://67.18.249.66/~gotmat/ but the domain name was not resolving.

However, there are several ways that he still could have notified his customers. If the website was still operational, then he could have accessed the database and sent out a mass-email to his members with information about where to access his website, and why GotMatrix is down.

[Note: Within 10 minutes of this post going up, Greg has posted an interesting update (http://www.gotmatrix.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1946) on his forum. It is interesting that he reads the posts here, yet never responds to the concerns of the customers whom he should refund out of good will.]

The reason for this was the domain name gotmatrix.com was put on hold by Tucows, the registar. The domain lock has been removed and the domain name will once again resolve. Once again I'm sorry for the inconvenience, the site was not taken down by myself.

It doesn't matter who the site was taken down by. Every administrator of a website will receive notification via email from Tucows long before their website is shut down. So, Greg know that this would happen, since Tucows is obligated by law to notify him about it. Could Greg have allowed Tucows to close it, intending that this would be a good excuse that people would believe?

And what about the fact that he owned the company which hosted GotMatrix.com? Why has his host, GotHost.com, and the matrix site now been moved over to "The Planet"? It seems that he had planned a clean getaway, which then was hampered when everyone started looking for him. Now, he's going back over his steps and making ridiculous excuses for his actions. Actions that were planned and calculated long in advance.

The list will be fixed over the next week to reflect the correct positions. There are several errors with the list, mainly where the automated script has duplicated entries. We will no longer be using this automated system for the list. Several duplicate names and orders that were charged back will be removed.

So, there were chargebacks made then! That would have cost Greg a tremendous amount of money in penalty fees. How does Greg plan to get those funds back to pay out the cycled customers. Oh, and one more thing... Credit Card Companies do not just allow people to file chargebacks simply. Rather, an investigation is made by the company to determine whether or not the seller was fraudulent. So, if the CC companies were allowing GotMatrix customers to process chargebacks, then it seems that they agree with us when we say that GotMatrix.com is a fraud.

It is also interesting that Greg does not mention all of the reports that have been filed against him to law enforcement. Could the legal pressure upon him be the reason that he put the site back up?

I suppose that Greg could prove that his business is legitimate by still accepting payments through another Credit-Card company... Oh, wait:


We will not be accepting credit cards any longer. Current payment methods are check & money orders only.

This should be the single most important hint that you must continue to file complaints to law enforcement, get your money back from Greg ASAP, and get the other customers to do the same thing. If Greg is not accepting electronic payments, then the payment cannot be traced. Other matrix owners who have been brought to only accepting checks and money orders have put that money straight into their pockets. If anyone doubts this, then be sure to read through the posts in the ExExpo sub-forum (http://www.matrixwatch.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=76). The exact same thing happened, and customers were still not paid. Those who paid via check/money order never saw that money again either.


One thing I have to say is pretty amazing. My post to him is still up and he responded to it. Except he lied when he said I had cycled. I have never once cycled at Gotmatrix. I put him a response again also so I am interested to see if the posts are now deleted or he will continue to "explain himself" to me. So far he has done nothing but lie to me further verifying that I am in the "right" to not trust him.

[pillsbury09]

Very clever you guys, clearly catching him in the act. He almost had me.

Watchdog, your right he could have notified cutsomers in other ways.

I bet he shut down, and so many people contacted the fraud dept. of the police in his area, that he was ordered to put it back up or go to jail

[concerned]

I bet he shut down, and so many people contacted the fraud dept. of the police in his area, that he was ordered to put it back up or go to jail


They wouldn't have ordered him to put it back up. It is a fraudulent business. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have asked him to continue to scam more people. They would have simply taken action. Unfortunately they haven't yet, so more reports need to take place.

[Dreamer]

Last year I went to a site (non matrix). One day that site was down. I think it was down for 2 days. During that 2 days the webmaster bought the same name with a .tk extnesion (or something). So, I was able to get updates for the site after I googled the name and found the new extension.

Hell, I found asfx lame site that way. Well, I didn't google it, but I tried to use a new extension.

Does anybody have gotmatrix.org gotmatrix.tk or anything else you can get? Hes not even trying with his lies anymore. He deleted all the old posts because they were all outdated (meaning he didnt' want to waste his busy time away from his job deleting individual posts saying its a scam so he deleted all of them).

[samslack]

I filed a complaint with every one possible so far I have recieved responses from every organazition from everyone stating that the site is still running and the terms and conditions state that since I paid and agreed there is nothing they can do for me .

The local police even told me that since I agreed to pay I am also doing an illegal action. Is it just me or do these organizations seem lazy and not willing to actually help.

so far complaining has not got me anywhere. any thing else I can do cause this guy Greg Day is really pissing me off bad

[Dreamer]

I think the police are right that since you paid you are also doing an illegial activity. Kinda like when a junkie goes to the cops cause he paid his buddy for some drugs and never got them.

As for anybody saying the site is still running and you agreed to the terms and conditions is stupid. I'd respond to them asking to speak to a supervisor or somebody esle.

Here is where they are flawed. In order for a terms and conditions to be held up in law, it MUST be such that you MUST accept it to continue. They can say "You understand that you are buying ebooks and not the product" is not good enough.

When you install software you must click accept in order for the software to start installing. If you decine it, the software doesn't install anymore. There is even some agreements (I think yahoo uses this version) where you actually have to scroll down to the very end in order to click accept.

Even on adult orientated websites, the "legal" ones will have a splash screen "If your over 18 click here, or under 18 click here". That way if they are sued they have a defense that they did what the could to verify the age of the individual accessing the site. And, honestly thats really what they could do. There are more precautions they could take, but I think that will hold up in a court of law showing it was the deption of the person viewing the page.

And, if it was simply a matter of having terms and conditions, I'm going to sell drugs on the street, and before each transaction, I'm going to read my terms and conditions.

I think honestly the scam is too new and I think most people will want to just pass it off because they just don't know if its legal or not, etc. You can't blame a hack for not wanting to take the initiative about investigating some website somewhere and risk losing their job because its not their responsibility. But its worth asking them what recourse you might have availalbe or who better to contact.

[nicoleeubanks]

I filed a complaint with every one possible so far I have recieved responses from every organazition from everyone stating that the site is still running and the terms and conditions state that since I paid and agreed there is nothing they can do for me .

The local police even told me that since I agreed to pay I am also doing an illegal action. Is it just me or do these organizations seem lazy and not willing to actually help.

so far complaining has not got me anywhere. any thing else I can do cause this guy Greg Day is really pissing me off bad

Yes, I know how you feel. I responded to the BBB with copies of emails showing subject line: "spots" where Greg was responding to me about my purchases of "spots" in the matrices. Don't know that they will say anything else to him, but since they said respond if their letter did not resolve my issue, I responded. I think as far as the whole "we were doing something illegal" crap, I do not buy it. First off, Noone yet has provided a law that says that the matrix sites are in actuality illegal, just that they follow the same schemes of illegal ones. Therefore, if the law does not exist making them illegal, we cannot be counted as knowing we were doing anything illegal. Especially not when I made my purchases back in '03. Heck I did not even know a thing about matrix sites or Matrixwatch then. If and when a specific law is instated making matrix sites illegal, then they will be illegal, but before that we cannot be counted as breaking a law that does not even exist. Secondly, I figure I will never see my money back, but I am hoping the more I(and hopefully others) complain, the more someone will finally do toward instating a law making these sites illegal, that way Greg does not get away with keeping on scamming more people and their money.

[mercinary]

Just a little aside here...

I think one thing that may have been lost in (some) customer complaints was the fact that Greg is running a pyramid scheme. The fact that he closed up shop was a side-effect of the self-destructive business model he is using. If letters to officials were really focusing on the fact that Greg's website no longer existed, and when those officials went to check the site and it was up...well....what are they going to say?

As for those of you who received letters that were not pleasing to you, I suggest re-formulating your complaint and bringing it to a higher authority if possible. Don't get frustrated and give up. Think about Matrixwatch....if we had given up when things got tough, we would have been off the map a LONG time ago. :)

-Merc

[ycchen]

I agree with Merc. If the complaint simply state Greg abondon his website, then it is a weak complaint. Since his website is back, the lazy bureacrats is more than happy to dismiss your charge.

That is why I insist on filing a complaint that "matrix-site is a pyramid scheme, and a scam." If you haven't filed your complain in this way (e.g. pyramid scam), then you should probably rethink about your strategy to get attention.

That's my 2 cents.

[mercinary]

Since Gotmatrix is gone again, I wonder what Greg's excuse will be this time?....if he comes back.

-Merc

[Bob Williams]

That is why I insist on filing a complaint that "matrix-site is a pyramid scheme.

How many times?? Jeeeezzzz Ycchen, you just don't seem to understand that Matrix Sites are NOT pyramid schemes.

Either research the differences or change the script.....

You continually post the same inaccurate garbage.

[weirdid]

Pyramid or matrix, its still a scam, as its impossible for everyone that signs to receive the free gift.

There are always some members under the last person to cycle.


weird

[sisco50]

How many times?? Jeeeezzzz Ycchen, you just don't seem to understand that Matrix Sites are NOT pyramid schemes.

Either research the differences or change the script.....

You continually post the same inaccurate garbage.

hehehehe If you hang around here long enough, you will see how things go here on this level playing field. But then I think you already know. :)

[Bob Williams]

Level playing field hmmmmmm lol

[mercinary]

Bob Williams / Sisco50 / anyone else:

If you have a problem with someone's attitude / perspective, take it up with them. I'm seeing it over and over that you folks are ripping into Ycchen for his "everything is a pyramid" view. When Ycchen posts, he is not speaking for Matrixwatch....please do not paint Matrixwatch with the label that we call everything a pyramid.

This is a final warning to everyone who hijacks threads in this manner. I'm sick of it and I won't tolerate it any longer. If you don't have anything constructive to say, don't SPAM up a thread with it. Your views on this particular matter have been noted over and over again and do not need re-iterating. If you disagree, and would like to continue the debate, take it to private PMs.

-Merc

[MatrixWatch]

Or just have it out, once and for all, in the thread that Concerned started.

[concerned]

Or just have it out, once and for all, in the thread that Concerned started.

That's why I started it.

[sisco50]

Thank you very much. SOS

[mercinary]

Looks to me that Gotmatrix is now back. Any suggestion on his forums as to where he went?

-Merc

[anakin]

here you have what Greg wrote:

[anakin]

Posted: Feb Wed 16, 2005 10:24 am Post subject: Site down?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why was the site down? Also could not use the site through the alternate http://67.18.249.66/~gotmat . All I could get to was the front page.
_________________
LIfe is short drink and eat the good stuff...


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Greg
Site Admin



Joined: 04 Mar 2003
Posts: 26
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Posted: Feb Wed 16, 2005 11:43 am Post subject:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We were experiencing technical difficulties with the domain again. The server was functional and the above site mentioned also worked. Purchases were able to be made. Not all the links on that URL will work simply because when you click them it's taking you back to the domain name which was not functional. If you're trying to get to the forums it would be:

http://67.18.249.66/~gotmat/forums/index.php

[anakin]

Thats from the forum on GM.

[MatrixWatch]

Why doesn't he make any efforts to let people know about these problems until after the fact?

GotMatrix is dead... Let's face it. It is only a matter of time before the legal momentum catches up to Greg. He has tried for so long to convince everyone that we were wrong, yet with every passing day the matrix community finds more and more that GotMatrix is a scam.

:rolleyes:

[Dreamer]

I like gregs logic whenever his site goes down that the other site is up like anybody is going to know that its 123.45.67.89 or whatever. The links at the bottom of the page goes to the gm site, but if you want to go to the forums, you should have known the alternate forums address.

[anakin]

the link was added by Greg, not by me, if that helps.

[jokach]

Unfortunately and as its been stated all along, gregs actions with his website are all part of his game. He keeps moving hosts and IP addresses and doesn't give anybody any notice that the site will be down. Until the customers step up and start calling him on these actions, it is only going to continue.