Pharos Mobile Pro - Scam Affiliate Program Pharos Mobile Pro is a SCAM and FRAUD Broken Arrow Oklahoma

Kody keeps promising to refund me the balance $900 from his fraudulent sale of the softweare he made to me.

See the latest email he sent me

DATE: Jan 12 2016

FROM: KODY SMITH
TO: THOMAS PRENDERGAST
MESSAGE: Ok Thomas I'll get it together and get you a refund.

There is now a BBB report on him


I still have not received the refund from Kody Smiths ripping me off selling me half of what I paid for.

Sometime in February of 2015 several acquaintances, we had recently met at a conference in Las Vegas, introduced us to a company (PHAROS) selling advertising via Mobile WIFI hot spots.  After showing some initial interest my wife was contacted in March, 2015 by Kody Smith either a partner or the sales manager, with Russell Deming of Pharos Mobile Pro. 

After many lengthy conferences with Kody, discussions with other affiliates already joining (the recent acquaintances from the conference in Las Vegas) and a web conference with Russell Deming as well as my wife’s due diligence of this opportunity and lengthy conversations with Kody Smith I requested names and affiliates who paid the registration fees of almost $3000 and had received commissions.

We received one name and that person (a Dr. Wise I recall), via email, affirmed the legitimacy of the business. I decided the $3000 was an acceptable low cost risk and after lengthy negotiations to acquire New York State as our territory, I made a Credit Card payment with a side signed agreement from Russell Deming that if not unconditionally satisfied he would return the full charge without question within 30 days.

We entered into this agreement   May 12th of 2015. At the same time, Kody Smith pitched a software solution for being able to contact via Personal Messaging the huge databases in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Upon his testimony that this software was helping him recruit new signups in any business as many as 2-5 per day and his offer to sell us 2 one year subscriptions to this software service, “Traffic Socially Software” He also offered a third account as an incentive and to allow me to reinstall the software to a new computer down the road (Apparently, the software’s registration serial number) was not transferable once installed to a particular PC.

In November of 2015 both my Traffic Socially Software and my partners Traffic Socially Software stopped functioning display a warning that the registration number had expired.

When I confronted Kody Smith in this regards, he immediately admonished me for interrupting him during the morning of his recently passed away mother. Kody Smith is a business associate, not a friend, and I was not aware of his personal affairs nor did I care to be. This was business, and he owed me an explanation and a solution for what I had paid for.

Here are a few excerpts taken from that Face Book messaging. The screen capture of the entire conversion is uploaded. There are two accounts the first is with my professional Facebook account up to the point Kody Smith blocked me. The second continues where he continues to admonish me and contradicts his own statements up to where he promises to refund me “TODAY” then blocks that account.

I did not invest with Kody with this money. I did not loan this money to Kody. I bought 2 software products and 2 one year licenses from him. He sold me, without my knowledge, 2 six months licenses. That is a Rip Off in my book. And then attacking my character and admonishing me for making this claim tells me Kody Smith lacks integrity and owes me $900 or 2 six month extensions on this software.

I was able to recover my$3000 investment spent on Pharos. It took some doing; I had to show the banks the written guarantees of refund from Pharos, the recorded phone calls, etc.  and we did request full refunds within those 30 days we were guaranteed.

However, we have no solution to recover our Paypal payments with Kody Smith because it has been 6 months and that prevents us from making a charge back. Our only option is to make claims here and other sites like Yelp, BBB and small claims. I prayed this would not occur. But Kody Smith left me no options. I was willing to work with him to resolve this, but he made that impossible by blocking me after promising to refund me that day. (He has not refunded me as of this post).

Having technical difficulties loading the screenshots into RipOffReport.

Sorry for the un-organized content.

A Playground Bully Always Cries When Confronted

We’ve all seen or heard stories about the playground bully who runs to the teacher crying when his victim stands up to him, in attempt to play “victim” himself and cover his own transgressions against the victim.  This is called “playing the reverse victim card”.

Pharos’ owner has apparently enlisted the assistance of the City of Tulsa Police Department to cover his transgressions against disgruntled affiliates, and attempt to intimidate them and silence them from exposing his scam to the public.  A TPD detective from the Financial Crimes Unit is calling affiliates suggesting that they are “incriminating” him, and committing “slander”, “libel”, and “defamation of character” against him.

Let’s examine each of these assertions:

Incrimination is the act of making an accusation or presenting proof of a crime.  Pharos’ owner’s own actions are “self-incriminating”.

Slander is the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person's reputation; a spoken defamation.

Slander would be one person speaking a false statement to another for the purpose of damaging a third party’s reputation.  For instance, one person falsely telling a Church member or members that a business owner is a homo-sexual with the intent of damaging the business owner’s reputation and standing with the Church.

Libel is a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written defamation.

Libel would be one party publishing a false statement for the purpose of damaging another’s reputation.  For instance, one person publishing a false written statement that a business owner is a homosexual, with intention of damaging the business owner’s reputation and standing with the Church.

Defamation of character is any intentional false communication, either written or spoken, that harms a person’s reputation; decreases the respect, regard, or confidence in which a person is held; or induces disparaging, hostile, or disagreeable opinions or feelings against a person.

The common requisite for slander, libel, and defamation of character is that the statements or communications must be false.

Perhaps the TPD is acting under the belief that it has the duty to protect Pharos’ owner’s personal privacy.

Pharos’ owner has been doing business as “DNA Advertising, INC.”, which is a ficticious entity formerly registered with the State of Oklahoma Secretary of State, but in “Inactive” status since the inception of Pharos’ scheme.  He and DNA Advertising, INC. have been doing business as “Pharos Mobile Pro” which was not registered with the State of Oklahoma until April 7, 2015, since the inception of this scheme.

If these ficticious entities were recognizes as “Active” by the Oklahoma Secretary of State, each corporation would be considered “public figures” because they were at one time or are now registered with the Secretary of State and would not be afforded personal privacy. 

However, since he has been doing business with the public as DNA Advertising, INC. which has not been “Active” with the State of Okalahoma anytime during the commission of these business actions, and since he has been doing business as Pharos Mobile Pro prior to registering “Pharos Mobile Pro, INC.” on April 7, 2015 all of his business actions are in the public realm.  One would reasonably expect that he would then be considered a “public figure” because his actions are in the public realm. 

At the very least, he would be considered a “limited-purpose public figure” and only his public actions could be published; his private actions would be considered protected as “private”.   In this example, the business owner’s business actions can be exposed, but his sexuality would be considered private and cannot be exposed because his sexuality has nothing to do with his business actions.

TPD will eventually come to the conclusion that Pharos’ owner is playing them (much like he played numerous unwitting affiliates into parting with their cash and receiving nothing in return), in attempt to bully the affiliates into silence.

I invite the TPD to request Pharos’ owner’s financial records, business records, agreements, published materials and videos he used to entice unsuspecting affiliates into sending their money to him through DNA Advertising, INC.'s bank accounts / merchant processing accounts / PayPal accounts.

I invite the TPD to contact EVERY AFFILIATE, past and present, to investigate his business practices. 

I invite the TPD to contact each and every client who has done business with or attempted to do business with Pharos Mobile Pro so TPD can discover the patter of financial abuse to which he has subjected them.  You can start by contacting Shiloh’s Restaurant in Broken Arrow Oklahoma.  You can also ask Pharos to disclose the name of the Century 21 broker who’s system is still not deployed.

I invite the TPD to ask Pharos’ owner to produce a list of clients who have had their “Pharos Mobile Pro” WiFi systems successfully deployed.

I invite the TPD to ask Pharos’ owner to produce the contact information for the finance company he duped into funding grossly over-priced finance packages and how he duped their loan officer into funding any of these deals.

I also invite TPD to contact the owner’s former “partner” to ask him what he knows about Pharos’ owner’s actions.

Perhaps upon completion of a thorough investigation into Pharos' owner's activities, this will become a career case for you, Detective.  Until you complete a throrough investigation into his activities, stop harrassing the real victims.

PUBLIC WARNING:  In addition to deception, lies, misdirection and receiving nothing tangible for your money, THIS is the kind of GARBAGE you will be subjected to if you enter a business arrangement with Pharos and it’s owner.  CAVEAT EMPTOR.

UPDATE:

The past week has been interesting...

We have received telephone communications from three high level executives from the company that developed and owns the WiFi technology platform.  They insist that they have nothing to do with how Pharos Mobile Pro conducts business and they do not want their company to be named.

These executives have stated that they are brokering a deal with Pharos to refund the money to the affiliates who Pharos has stolen from and they have promised the refunds will be wired to the affiliates by end of day today (by 11:59pm Eastern Time Wednesday May 10, 2015).

Something happened today that casts a shadow of doubt on all of this, though:  One of the complaining affiliates who is supposed to receive a refund from Pharos received a phone call today from the Tulsa, Oklahoma Police Department stating that the owner of Pharos has filed a complaint that this affiliate is "slandering" him.

It appears that either Pharos is PLAYING the technology owner, or the technology owner is playing us.

The President of Business Development and Sales for the technology developer/owner made contact today and we spoke for about 8 1/2 minutes this evening. 

He acknowledged calling me almost 2 months ago to tell me that his company would not be able to work with me because I had been speaking with Pharos Mobile Pro about working with them, and he apologized for not taking Pharos affiliate complaints seriously at the time they were previously informed of the problems caused by Pharos.  He stated that his company wants this problem to "go away" - that they will look more closely at these compliants and asked that he and his company not be named here.

I think it would go a long way with disgrunted Pharos affiliates if this company would terminate its relationship with Pharos Mobile Pro.