Our early stage startup was screwed by this guy.. Don't let it happen to you
Cory Torrella, Huntersville, NC - Professional Scammer? You decide.
What happened? Here's our story ..
October 12, 2017: We hired Cory to create a Whitepaper for our ICO startup.Unhappy with our existing Whitepaper, the deal was he would create a more professional Whitepaper for us including multiple rewrites if necessary. He promised a first draft one week from today. We agreed to pay 50% in Bitcoin up front - 0.62 BTC (approx $3500 USD at the time) and $3500 worth of the tokens in our ICO once it was launched.
October 21, 2017: Cory's self-imposed deadline passed, and after reaching out he says he is running behind but promised we'd have something soon. Instead of providing the whitepaper, he provides a random list of media contacts we didn't ask for. Strange.
October 26, 2017: "Hey mate, i’ve been giving you some space out of respect for the creative process .. hoping to see something soon" - This is where Cory stopped responding to all messages with both me and my team members in the Slack team chat.
October 30, 2017: After not receiving a reply on Slack I attempted to message Cory on Facebook: "Morning Cory, haven't heard back from you man. I need this Whitepaper done, if you're unable to do it thats cool just let me know so I can arrange someone else and the ICO isn't held up".. I can see Cory read the message but got no response.
November 1st, 2017: "Hey Cory, so I haven't heard back from you I can only assume you're unable to complete the job. Please send back the BTC I paid you as soon as you can so I can find someone else. Cheers.. " I can see Cory read the message. Again - Silence.
While this has been happening, my Colleague has also reached out to Cory in team chat multiple times and has also been ignored.
Desperate to get the Whitepaper finished for our Startup we started actively looking for a replacement, but needed our money back to pay for the service.
November 7, 2017: After being ignored for several weeks it dawned on myself and our team that we'd been had. Either Cory had ended up in hospital and was unable to respond to messages or we had been conned. He had simply taken the money and vanished.
November 14, 2017: In a final act of desperation, and as a warning to other members of the online community, we made this page. I sent it to Cory and promised I will take down this site warning others and transfer the domain to him once he returns the funds.
.. Cory responds immediately! Seems the communication lines were working fine after all and he is in good health with no emergencies to report. He claims the work was completed, claims it's all a misunderstanding. Totally ready to believe him we ask for proof, as well as the work we have been waiting for for weeks.
About 12 hours after he promises to provide proof, he produces what appears to be screenshots of chat logs asking some questions in slack. They appear to be fabricated as we could not find these questions anywhere in our chats and we could not locate these on the server. One of the screenshots shows him writing into a channel that doesn't even exist. Sorry Cory, if you're going to fabricate a cover story; do a better job next time. Requests to further clarify these screenshots were ignored. No proof of work is provided either.
November 16, 2017: Cory doesn't show any interest in returning the funds. Despite the damage he has done to our Startup he is now claiming that by making this page we are the bad guys and he is the victim. Returning the funds doesn't seem to be an option he wants to discuss and the work we were promised is still nowhere to be seen.
Cory's latest response: If a startup (or any company, for that matter) hires someone and disapproves of the work that hire is doing, they fire them. Heath, I respect you, but what you did by buying my domain for harmful intent, defamation, blackmail, and cybersquatting is beyond uncalled for. It’s also very illegal, and ICANN provides options and remedies as you’re not the first person to try this tactic. If the site is still up tomorrow evening, I will be contacting the registrar and filing a criminal report to send to them on Friday morning. Like I said, I respect you, and I will not retaliate in similar fashion by mirroring your tactics on you, your companies, etc. but I want you to understand that I am very familiar with the time, effort, and money that you’ll waste. I did the work, **there’s an obvious dispute**, and instead of arbitration you decided to unlawfully attack me. I have no more to say.
Our message to Cory Torrella
You can complain all you like about this website and pretend to be a victim, but you cannot dispute the facts. As a service provider, when you charge for a service, deliver nothing, then refuse to return the money you were paid, that's called stealing. Claiming you did work but we 'disapprove of it' after delivering nothing is factually inaccurate and slimey. You are attempting to change the facts to paint yourself as a victim.
When you take someones money and don't provide any type of service whatsoever AND cut off communication with them, that's not a 'dispute' as you say. That's just straight up fraud, my friend. And we have every right to report the truth for the whole world to hear about what kind of person you are.
After this chain of events, it is in our opinion that Cory Torrella intentionally scammed us or intended to cause us harm. When asked to produce proof he manufactured evidence which we can prove. And when he was repeatedly asked to provide work after stating multiple times work was done, he was unable to do so. Furthermore, he refuses to refund the money we now consider stolen.
This page will stay online until Cory Torrella refunds the 0.62 BTC has was paid.
You may find his social media links below:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/corytorrellaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corytorrella
Twitter: https://twitter.com/marketingcory
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/corytorrella
Zillow: https://www.zillow.com/profile/Cory-Torrella/