Firepay, FireOne Group FIREPAY ripoff, incompetent scammers, terrible customer service, negligent Dublin republic of ireland

Someone approached me saying he was hard for cash, and needed money right away. He said he had $400US in his Firepay account and would be willing to give me the $400US he had if I could send him $300CAD in an e-mail money transfer.

The reason he needed me to do this was that the e-mail money transfer is generally instant, while his Firepay withdrawl would likely take a couple of days to process.

Anyway, I agreed to this deal as long as he sent me the money first. (We completed another deal earlier in the year where he transferred me $600US in pokerroom vouchers for $400CAD - everything went fine). He asked me to deposit with his Firepay account since it would save the trouble of sending vouchers.

Just before the transaction took place, I received an e-mail from Firepay saying that the person I was dealing with (a guy named Mark Hauk (haukmark@hotmail.com)) changed the e-mail address associated with his Firepay account from his to mine. I thought nothing of this as I assumed it had to be mine in order for me to do the transaction.

So...he gives me his Firepay ID number, I make the deposit for $400US and send him his $300CAD...everything is great. A day later I get an e-mail from pokerroom saying my account is blocked (which has hundreds of dollars in it) until I pay a $400 fee to firepay. This guy changed his firepay email to mine for the transaction, and then cancelled or reveresed the transaction after it was made...now firepay thinks I owe them $400 when I don't even have an account with them.

I have tried to explain the situation at least a dozen times in e-mail to firepay's support but it's like dealing with a bunch of monkeys....they keep calling me Mark and say they will review my account when I don't even have one and I am not Mark.

I tried contacting this Mark guy, but no response yet. I have tried calling the FireOne Group in Ireland, but both numbers are 'out of service'. I just called FirePay's fraud department number which took 2 days to find and had to leave a message for someone.

If anyone has any suggestions as to what else I can do it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot for your time.

B
north bay, Ontario
Canada