Hollywood Box : A story fit for a movie when a colleague steals the entire Meta surface of the company. The incident happened to us a few years ago.
The whole Hollywood Box story started in December 2020, just a few days before Christmas. At that time, there was also a major algorithm update, and the private Facebook profile I registered in 2009 was simply blocked or hacked. This has not been discovered since, all in the middle of a messenger call with a member of my family.
I received a panel on my mobile phone saying that suspicious activity had been detected and I had carried out an unprincipled activity. I was deleted! Just before Christmas, I lost my memories, my network of contacts, groups, followings, but most importantly at the time, I lost 22 companies whose sites I managed. I couldn't reach anyone, everything stopped. Literally everything! Plus we had just moved to London, so it was complete chaos. For me, living in the online space.
In addition to business customers, the site now known as Hollywood Box was already up and running, but under a different name. It had 50,000 followers at the time for organically, and no matter what I tried to do it wouldn't grow any further, for some reason we were stuck. However, what was very fortunate was that for some reason I forgot to put myself into the Business Manager that went with it. That was linked to my wife's profile. The rest of the site was complete within a week or two, as I had a spare admin and had good contact with the companies. The target of the attack was most likely this site, it was not taken. In return, Facebook did not let me re-register for three months. I registered six temporary profiles, but all were deleted.
Then I got back in touch with a former colleague for a job who said she was an excellent marketer and worked with several big companies, running all their online campaigns. As it was a very old acquaintance I believed her. So much so that she got top level access to Hollywood Box. We had no problems for a while, then a disagreement led to a parting of ways, but we didn't fall out. I didn't bother with it for a little over six months, everything went my way.
But one time we came up with a new strategy and the site started to grow. We went on to reach 100,000 followers, all organically, and with great momentum in a few months, at a time when all other sites were losing reach. The new direction came, we had tens of millions of hits worldwide. Then we thought that we should change the name of the site and do something more serious. That's when the site became Hollywood Box, and that's when the next cold shower came, we didn't have access to Business Manager. Why?
We contacted everyone we could at the time, but no one could help (or didn't want to), so I finally started looking for contacts for Meta. No info on the net, just forms everywhere and nobody answered. Kapufa! I tried to find the better known Hungarian companies to ask them for help, but except for two vague pieces of information, I am no wiser.
I got any kind of vague information about what to do from two professionals, one of them was Richárd Lévai, the owner of "LiftUp", and the other was Richárd Majsi, the owner of "The PALM Group Creative Agency". I knew both of them personally. I thought it important to mention their names.
I had to go through some information morass to somehow get back what we had worked for for years before. Needless to say, how did I feel? Alone against the world!
I've been researching contacts in parallel and writing to every email address that came to me, trying to see if anyone somewhere knows anything about it. It took me months to find a working support contact and in the meantime I sent out hundreds of emails with usually no response. At that time they started to turn on support for high traffic sites. Business support as we know it today is nowhere near what it was then.
Finally, the correspondence and sending of documents has started. Some of the papers were thrown back because they were not in the right format, but I didn't know what the correct format was because they didn't tell me, and all this happened with sometimes a week between email exchanges. It seemed hopeless, but I was moving like a tank. There is no such thing as not getting it back! Months passed in the meantime.
In the meantime, I contacted my former colleague again to make sure she didn't have it, because I remember I didn't take the admin rights. She didn't show me the screenshot, but claimed it was nothing to do with her.
In the meantime I was in constant contact with support, learning how the system worked without any coursework, putting the papers together because I couldn't fail. After months of correspondence and submitting close to a hundred documents, I was beginning to feel that this was not going to work. It's all a battle of the windmills, I've run out of energy and I simply don't have anything to send them anymore because everything has gone back years.
On several occasions, I have been refused and the error records have been closed without justification, saying that the evidence has failed. I reopened each time, finally got a call. Finally! Then a week of silence. It was suspicious but I tried to stay calm and not to pester them this time. That's the longest week I think I've ever had.
The following Sunday, I woke up in the early hours of the morning, around six o'clock. Maybe it was the nerves. I checked my phone and immediately woke up without coffee. The notification I was waiting for arrived. The verification process was successfully completed, I got my full admin access back! When I entered, I was shocked to see my former colleague, who I had known and trusted for about 15 years, there as admin. She was the only one! Quick screenshot and I was out the door. I bought a bottle of champagne that day if I remember correctly and it was gone.
All those months of suffering, research, learning, seemingly hopeless situations have finally been resolved, and all thanks to a man I have come to know over the years as a well-educated, well-read, literature-loving, reliable, very good professional. So trust anyone!
At the end of the whole story I might even be grateful to him, because if it wasn't for all this, and he didn't steal the business manager for revenge and lie to my face, I would never have started this. In short, that is my success story. Thank you for reading!
