Customers of dead house-cleaning startup Homejoy are being funneled to a copycat site
But, it turns out Fly Maids just isn't a new partner to fill in the gaps.
It's apparently a new startup that Homejoy co-founder Aaron Cheung is launching, according to an apparent comment from Cheung on Hacker News.
Cheung confirmed that he was behind the startup after a Homejoy user found his credit card and profile information on the Fly Maid site - without even signing up.
We've reached out to Cheung for additional comment and will update when we hear back.
The weird tale begins with an email that John Salzarulo received Tuesday afternoon. A Los Angeles based user, Salzarulo received an email from Cheung that "$20 cleaning is back!" thanks to its local partner.
"I wanted to reach out personally today to invite you to join a private house cleaning trial with our Los Angeles partner, Fly Maids," Cheung wrote, not disclosing his connection to the company.
When Salzarulo clicked the email link, the Fly Maids' site logged him into his Homejoy account, which still had his credit card number and notes about where to find the trash can.
In a detailed Medium post, Salzarulo detailed how the site looked identical to Homejoy's competitor, Handy.
After the story was posted on Hacker News, Cheung responded and apologized for using the data he claims to have acquired from Homejoy.
Cheung makes no mention to two other sites that have been linked to Fly Maids, though. Although the site has now been taken down, an initial examination of the source code linked the site to Homeaglow. The two shared the same privacy policy, including the same European registration number. According to a UK government website, the company registered with that number is actually Homejoy Europe Limited.
Another website, Cleanr.Ca, has the same European registration number and is listed as being headquartered at Homejoy's old headquarters.
A profile for an "Aaron Cheung" on LiquidSpace, a network for people looking for offices, shows that Cheung was in search of a space for Homeaglow, a 1-4 person startup in San Francisco.
Fly Maids has since been taken down, but the other sites are still up.
Business Insider asked Salzarulo to check whether his information was available on either. Cleanr didn't have an account for him, but a password reset option on Homeaglow sent him an email, even though he had never signed up for it.