Alleged Oracle Scammer: I Am Not a Crook

Alleged Oracle Scammer: I Am Not a Crook
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Updated: In an exclusive interview with eWEEK.com, Ed Haskins, the subject of scores of Internet complaints regarding his alleged Oracle training scams, said that he's "working his butt off" to payBeware, Oracle training and/or security expertise buyers.

Ed Haskins—the purveyor of Oracle training materials that paying consumers complain often fail to appear in their mailboxes, the mastermind behind Oracle security pitches that he admits tout a completely fictional "expert," and a man who admits that he owes customers and experts more than $30,000—is still at it.

Haskins started the now-defunct Oracle certification training site OraKnowledge some four and a half years ago. During the first two and a half years, he did "very well," he told eWEEK.com in an exclusive interview, with at least 150 customers managing to get through online training or having received CD-ROM training materials.

"My training prepared them for Oracle certification exams," Haskins said. "People came back with exam scores and said, Hey, I passed."

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eWEEK.com was still attempting to verify these claims when this story was posted. Haskins faxed completed test scores for people who passed Oracle Certified Professional exams for topics including Oracle 8i Architecture and Administration, Introduction to Oracle: SQL and PL/SQL, and Oracle8i: Performance Tuning. But there is no way to determine whether the documents are genuine and/or if the exam takers actually paid for training materials provided by OraKnowledge.

OraKnowledge recently became defunct and is now the subject of multiple Better Business Bureau complaints filed in Haskins home state, New Jersey.

The portion of the BBB file thats publicly available states that the company has "an unsatisfactory record with the bureau due to unanswered complaint(s)." The complaints concern delivery issues and refund practices, according to the BBB.

A spokeswoman for the BBB declined to state how many complaints have been filed. Judging by the many sites where Internet users have posted complaints, though, the number is likely multiple. Those sites include Exam Notes, an Oracle FAQ segment and LazyDBA.

This is a typical complaint: "I purchased the Oracle 8i & 9i e-boot camp from OraKnowledge last year with the guarantee that you could take the classes as many times as needed until you passed all the tests," wrote a poster on ExamNotes.net. "I was forced to suspend my training due to family matters.

"When I tried to contact OraKnowledge some months later, neither my e-mails nor phone calls were returned. I did have [OraKnowledge president Ed Haskins] personal address, so I gave him one last chance to make good on his word. He offered to send me a CD-ROM with all the classes I was taking recorded. He never did."

Don Burleson, a noted Oracle expert, also claims to have been stiffed—to the tune of more than $30,000.

Next Page: The OraKnowledge reincarnation.

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