Last updated on December 5th, 2015
Oh What a tangled web we weave…
Oh What a tangled web we weave…
Back on May 1st I checked out this particular morph of the Google Money Bollox Kit Chest Scheme Plan… See here. I just had to show it because of the naff spelling and wordage, plus the inconsistencies in the text and graphics, and company name changes.
Normal
Of course, I’ve now realised that this is all totally normal and is done on purpose to keep Propellor heads busy.. At the time, the penultimate link in the chain of signing up, was:
So I thought I’d check if it still worked, it being a “secure” connection with session ID, and myself having been through several incarnations of Firefox as well as frequent cache and cookie clearances….
Copyright © 2009 Google Profits™
Well I was still laughing at the dinky trademark sign when I fired up (in)s3curehost dot com. They obviously consider it something worth protecting!
Work from home with google
You’ll not be surprised to know that s3curehost.com still exists (so much for security and session IDs?). I’m actually surprised, in a small way, that they still keep pumping this stuff out. A Whois shows that s3curehost.com is “IntelliPay, Inc.” a.k.a. “Pacific WebWorks, Inc.” who we’ve already looked at in Salt Lake City on the original Google Treasure Chest – It’s a Scam and a Half posting.
The “Google Profits” web-page has changed slightly, but the incompetent spelling and characteristic inconsistency is reassuringly still there!
It’s to good… Earn $978 a day… Google Profits – eAuction, which one is it?
I left my “qualifying” to another day, so I haven’t found out if I’m ‘eligable’ yet.
Pacific Web Works
Pacific WebWorks, Inc.
There are two things of note about this business, apart from the “Microsoft Certified Partner” logo. [added 26/10/2009: Matt at scamtimes.com has checked out the claim to be valid here in this comment below. However, it seems very easy to get this ‘logo’ certification.]
- The phone number at the contact page here: http://web.archive.org/web/20100507231016/https://www.pacificwebworks.com:80/contact_pweb.htm, which is:
230 West 400 South 1st Floor
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
phone: 801-578-9020
fax: 801-578-9019 - It’s business is an integrated solution for other internet based businesses – my description(SP).
At first glance it’s a normal business for this line of work. Here’s what they say about themselves and their custom software suite:
- They have “assembled a staff of professional trainers, coaches and support specialists”
- They have “built a state-of-the-art data center” which takes “care of everything, including hosting, manpower, and technical details”
- They provide “Tools for creating, managing and maintaining a web site”.
- They provide “Electronic business tools, including storefront hosting, shopping cart and Internet payment systems.”.
- They provide “Internet Marketing tools, including automated customer database, survey, and e-mail marketing tools.”.
The Plot Thickens
So far so good. And the database – that must be where all the contacts are kept, securely, private?
Now check that telephone number again. It was the 9020 that did it! Like primeval intelligence, it’s come back from the depths of my mind.
It’s listed as the main contact point for Google Treasure Chest, etc, many times. See here and here for two of my posts. Now check this google search for the phone number 801-578-9020.
There are 1780 results, nearly all are complaints about being ripped-off or scammed.
Another word for rip-off or scam is the legal term, theft.
Conclusion
Like links in a chain
Pacific Webworks are still in business – in fact, business is booming and they are reported to be in the top 40 Utah companies! (https://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/pacific-webworks-receives-recognition,890942.shtml). I’m not sure who this lot are doing the reporting, but I can guess the connections…(added 3/3/10: Link to Earth Times removed. This ‘business’ contains several puffs for PWW. Like most dodgy websites, it’s domain WHOIS is hidden, by Domains by Proxy, again! – SP)
What a tangled web we weave…
This industrial resource, http://resources.bnet.com/topic/pacific+webworks+inc..html, shows that the company had sales >$9m last year for its 34 employees. This is very interesting! The same source shows, on this page, that profits are doubling at the company this year.
This is good news for all the people ripped off by Eborn et al.
Because the company, having exactly the same phone number as the main protagonists in the Google Treasure Chest scams, now cannot fail to be connected by the FTC in their investigations and imminent court cases.
And from what I recall from the closure of the call centre, is that 200 employees lost their jobs. This is the same call centre that had 801-578-9020 as the contact number! It was people working at the call centre who said that 200 people worked there(see https://www.topix.net/forum/source/fox13now/T28A5BU37IS57DC8C/p3).
So there isn’t just a partial business relationship between Pacific Webworks and one or more plaintiffs mentioned in the FTC charges, they are intimately connected.
It's been all go at Pacific Webworks (PWW) so far this year.
So far we've seen the executive count drop from 3 to 2 with the departure of Robert Brett Bell. See http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks…
We've also seen their former accountants "Chisholm, Bierwolf, Nilson & Morrill, LLC" booted off the shop floor and then barred by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board ("PCAOB") on April 8, 2011 . See http://biz.yahoo.com/e/110427/pwebe.ob8-k_a.html
We've also seen the familially named Michael J. Larsen last 4 days as their new accountant, see http://xml.10kwizard.com/filing_raw.php?repo=tenk…
The best of all is the last bit from the current two directors' CVs, which is identical! See https://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyOffi…
It states:
So correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the director's responsibility to hire accountants and weren't these accountants sacked and then booted off the accountancy register?
Also, let's not forget the "Google Slap" against all the directors and many members of their immediate families who were all involved in the "scheme to deceive" as the court was told…!! This is what was reported here: https://www.allbusiness.com/legal/legal-services-l…
So could someone please explain how Larsen & Bell can coolly say that they have:
…when plainly, they have?
This is what happens internet marketeers when they have…
https://www.internetretailer.com/2011/01/17/ftc-im…
This was the case for Daniel Greenberg, the former CEO of ClassicCloseouts.com, yesterday.
For a quick reminder of past complaints, try this one about Darth.
https://www.ripoffreport.com/misc-health-specialis…
Here we have a nice list from a Just Think Media employee apparently, of several former businesses of the dark lord. Plus the complaint mentions the Cyprus address specifically.
And who is the current registrant of the Wu-Yi Tea domain?
A. Kristen Orsen
https://www.ip-adress.com/whois/wu-yisource.com
Of course, Just Think is now hidden;
http://whois.domaintools.com/justthinkmedia.com
But the history is there for all to see should they care to look.
I wonder what the duck that is the FTC is doing right now? Just Think!
@Not Kevin – well spotted.
The lures, the common addresses, the linked business relationships. 249 East Tabernacle Street, must be choca-bloc with creeps.
A key bit of the FTC case is that the defendants were all engaged in a
This is something we've been banging on about for years now!
Several of the names and businesses have crossed our radar over the past two years, and for once, I'm all for the FTC on this one, who now seem to bely their appearances and now appear like a duck (all activity below the surface!) They seem to have been acting under the mantra of "give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves".
They are also using the deluge of spam as evidence and forcing the defendants to have responsibility for the content of their advertisers. This can only be a good thing, because I'm fed up of the shite.
As you pointed out, their activities have much in common with the dark lord.
Speaking of whom, the caring head has now outgrown terramarketing.com which is up for sale. It's now terramarketinggroup! (WHOIS N/A natch!)
In the quest to change search results and eliminate the web history, the WHOIS ownership of Voldemort's websites have hopped about a lot recently. The weirdly named (and email addressed) Kristen Orsen is a case in point. (see this comment on scamraiders here) There's not much on the person online, but if you happen to make a few typo errors lots of folk with similar names appear in Utah, Nevada and California, many of whom are engaged in the internet/marketing/media type of thing.
Such as the one on 'swipeauctions.com currently which although it's not trading and just trying to get all the refunds out, still manages to claim so many thousand wins each day etc! That must be a typo, surely?
(and don't call me Shirley)
It’s the same old thing when you check it out, with regard to naming. These class actions are being brought because only the behemoth of Google had its interests served. That I must not click on any adverts, but as a reminder or a description of how this works for those that don’t know, if someone clicks on the PWW advert, then they pay Google some cash.
There is no society and the world would be a very nasty place indeed; one in which BB would probably not survive because everybody needs help at some time in their life, and you get that by being part of a cohesive world. Thank you for your article that you post.
The SaltyDroid mentioned earlier has this video hosted in Sweden. (The YouTube one was pulled by the guys chatting in the video).
@2:00 we hear them talking about "Refund Rates"…
Essentially, the gist is that the more is charged for an "offer" for a "coaching" program, then the lower the refund rate.
He's taking about $500-$5000 which is considerably more than the PWW systems, but it actually proves that these people talk about refunds as a standard business cost…!!!
In fact, refunds seems to be their biggest business cost!!!
Which is a very strange way to run a business, eh?
Google Treasure Bollocks returns!
I got a popup from a website called petitchef ('http://en.petitchef.com/recipes/grilled-tuscan-game-hens-fid-381810) which went straight to this website:
'https://www.news11today.net/money-news/uk-breaking-news.php?ex=001
It has ALL the hallmarks of the old web templates which proves that these things will be around for years.
The domain is hidden of course.
It picks up a geographical location from your ISP's server.
It uses stock images.
And worst, from Mr Google's viewpoint, it blatantly states that Google has "… opened their doors and allowing the public to post links from the comfort of their homes on their website."
Screendump of news11today:
Screendump of TinEye's view of 51 versions of the same happy family with dogs image as shown on the site:
Here is another one: Yooglemoney – yes really!
http://govnews7.info/images/header.jpg
Now we just need YoogleMoneyTree and we'll be back to square one. 🙂
We'll be able to measure the passage of time by the number that's appended or inserted to the words "news" and "com" soon.
How about http://www.newsdaily300033.com?
Singapore. There and India are popping up a lot in WHOIS searches.
Interesting article on BBC News today…
It's a scam that actually makes use of the credit card companies' chargeback system that we've recommended people use as a way to get their money back from scam websites with dubious and misleading T&Cs.
But the killer punch comes when, as part of their "service" following the expected deluge of complaints, they advise people that,
Brilliant! Innit?
In essence, they are scamming the credit card companies, and deliberately set out to do so! So far, £12m has been stolen this year!
Now quoting Reg Walker, of Iridium Consultancy,
Now where have we seen that technique recently?
Read about it all here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11715225
Seems to also go by the name Direct Commerce Academy :
https://www.raief.com/4201/home-income-wealth-syst…
And Kevin Bloody Hoeffer is back too!
I know! Bloody ridiculous.
More dodgy lookalike web sites in the Google Treasure Bollocks mould:
This one's called 'exclusivecashsecrets.com or possibly "Home Income Wealth System" or even "Home Business Start Up Kit" – who knows, but the template, anonymity and general feel are all unchanged from last year apart from the "google" logo omission.
Its contact phone number of (877) 875-6080 is generating lots of grief, Belize and Utah pop up in the complaints!
<hr />
Meanwhile, back from the dead comes Tom Bosley!
This website even uses his other-worldly endorsements!
See: http://mergemedia.com/offers/business/smc_live_th…
His image pops up in quite a few places too, when checked on TinEye!
<hr />
And meanwhile, again, Facebook, #2 website as the CPA guys keep telling us, has spawned a veritable miasma of pages that now seem to overtaking Fake Blogs and Fake News web-sites as the favoured place to sell their evil products…
Check out this page which I found by following links from the above:
https://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=36772172240…
It really is the pits. Needless to say, apart from the link above, I won't be "sharing it on Facebook"
Text of comment left at "the Inquirer" here: https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1790829/…
It was a wishy-washy article from something "inquiring" by its title. A little bit of extra "enquiring" or journalism instead of link-promoting copycat-ness, would've made the connections that they missed all too clear….
<hr />
Pacific Webworks still don't think that they've done anything wrong!
The latest financial results statement from Bell the gaffer contains the phrase:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20101115007…
Fortunately, a few sensible folks in UTAH think that the actions of PWW over the last year or two with regard to the negative option unauthorised bank withdrawals or illegal use of trademarks (say) are not frivolous.
These class actions are being brought because only the behemoth of Google had its interests served, not the ordinary people who lost megabucks through PWW's business plan, business designs and business actions whereby they provided the means and wherewithal for a host of scammy affiliates and spammers to proliferate by their supply of deceptive web templates, web contacts and web cash handling that contributed to so many people's financial loss.
At least the local paper gives a more realistic picture than the PR fluff churned out by PWEB:
"Revenue at embattled Pacific WebWorks dropped 88 percent in the third quarter from the previous year."
No surprise there.
"The company said it anticipated continued profitability, with growth beyond 2010 from 10 percent to 20 percent as its ramps up marketing efforts. "
Oh dear – I wonder what those "marketing efforts" will entail?
"Pacific WebWorks continues to blame its woes on “abuses in our affiliate marketing system” — outside companies with which it had contracted to create websites and advertising material directing potential customers to the Utah company’s products.
But the company still faces at least six lawsuits alleging it actively participated in defrauding customers."
Oh nothing to do with them then!? But hang on, the cheesy keyboard and coffee cup template and keyboard and iphone template – in other words the actual "product" pages (advertising material) were all hosted on websites owned by Pacific Webworks!
https://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/50697868-79/pa…
Well said.
Likewise, our mate Willms blames much of his woes on the affiliate websites that bring him custom. Until it can be proved otherwise, that's how it'll stay, but in PWW's case, they provided the templates, the hosting, the money handling facility and much of the advertising and other "nous" behind the Google Money Bollox scam. They really can not blame anyone except themselves for their predicament and, (because affiliate handling has been compared to herding cats), they would be a lot better off getting out of the web business altogether and back to tarmac-ing roads.
At least we'd have a clearer view of the current web scammers on the net.
Maybe they'll be joined by zillions of people filing "frivolous lawsuits" against banks who were accidentally foreclosed on!
"Oh, the frivilosity of it all!"
I got notified in my reader there was mention of Ryan Riddle, but I don't see it here.
Is he still around?
@Paul
It seems some old posts & comments have sparked some sleuthing interest right from the heart of Utah…
It's looking quite relevant.
I think I figured out where the newfound interest is coming from.
There's a post here:
http://saltydroid.info/emailing-with-the-enemy/
that references iWorks, etc.
And just yesterday there's a hugely popular (and quite interesting) post that references the "emailing with the enemy post" here:
http://saltydroid.info/syndicate-shit-storm/
Thanks @Paul. I check them out at leisure later. Unfortunately, I have a day job! Ha Ha.
Definitely do.
It's crazy stuff.
Looks like i Works, Ryan Riddle, Jeremy Johnson and some other Utah cats are in a bit of hot water with the FTC:
http://ftc.gov/os/caselist/1023015/101222iworkscm…
A little extract from the charges:
"For instance, in 2009 Defendants incorporated more than 50 Shell Companies using maildrop addresses and straw-figures as owners and officers because they
knew that it was unlikely they could obtain additional merchant accounts using existing companies, due to these companies’ negative chargeback histories" "Defendants then applied
through intermediaries called Payment Processors for new merchant accounts in the names of these “front” companies in order to continue processing the credit and debit card charges for the online memberships Defendants sell. They have also attempted to drive down their chargeback
rates by threatening to report consumers who seek chargebacks to an Internet consumer blacklist they operate called “BadCustomer.com” that will “result in member merchants blocking [the consumer] from making future purchases online!” And they have attempted to counter the large number of complaints about their conduct by flooding the Internet with supposedly independent positive articles and other web pages."
Hmmm. Sounds familiar. I can think of a certain individual in Canada who uses a rather similar modus operandi… 😉
Anyway, good to see the FTC finally do something after the Utah Attorney General failed to do anything. I wonder why?
https://www.cityweekly.net/utah/article-6061-news-…
https://www.cityweekly.net/utah/article-7772-calle…
Speaking of fake news,
Have either of you seen my (self-proclaimed) hilarious video of fake news sites?
https://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2010/08/23/th…
I'd also like to credit the so-called "product" with finally having the intelligence to change the NAME of the scheme within the template.
I mean if you're going to put the same template across multiple urls in an effort to minimize complaints/complaint history then at least change the NAME for the scheme that you use IN the template.
I'd like to be the first to commend them on that achievement. 😉
Looks like the "Google is hiring" scam ads and websites are back:
http://content.yieldmanager.edgesuite.net/atoms/6…
Leading to: "News 9 Today"
news9today.net/money-news/uk-newsflash.php
and "News 9 Online"
news9online.org/home-jobs/
Tom Harvey, in this closely-worded piece in the Salt Lake Tribune yesterday (https://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50126367-76/webworks-pacific-google-company.html.csp), notices much the same as me about PWW's latest financial report.
Being a local chap, Mr Harvey tried to contact PWW for further information, as really, their statement is not clear and the missing pieces provide ambiguous truths. But as he says,
One such ambiguity that he highlights, is,
This, of course, means that chargebacks for illegal removal of money from one's bank account, ACTUALLY WORK!!!!
So go for it folks. Any time you're conned on-line, get a chargeback!
Mr Harvey also tellingly mentions another reason for PWWs pathetic share price – apart from the fact that earnings per share for anyone except the directors is ZERO,
Well done Tom. Just keep shouting about it. Make sure everyone knows and that nothing is forgotten. Google have dodged the issue – let's hope the others open PWW's dealings right out into the open.
Checked out Pacific WebWorks latest earnings?
See http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Pacific-WebWorks-Re…
In here you'll find that 2009 to 2010 2nd quarter earnings have dropped from $8.6m to $3.3m.
Earnings per share have gone up, thanks to a dramatically reduced share base. You can now get $0.03 per share….
Except you can't, can you?
What a bunch of sharks.
CEO Ken Bell lists the company's achievements over the past quarter as:
* Better Management of Customer Servicing to Increase Customer Loyalty
* Release from Google Litigation
* Full Release of Web Wizard Version 5
* Repositioned company to operate consistent with new credit card association guidelines
Which is nice – but investing in his apparently now legal company still won't turn you a profit or income unless you gamble purely on share price movements!
Looks like the usual suspects of Cyprus, UK and Nevis St Kitts:
https://www.workathometruth.com/not-recommended/20…
Most of those websites on that list were/are run as "offers" by most of the cpa affiliate networks – it seems that the whole cpa affiliate marketing industry exists for the sole purpose of being a "middleman" for scams! (Although increasingly not even the 'middleman' as many of the networks now simply create their own 'offers' (scams) rather than taking on advertisers: more control and much more profit! )
It's the same old story of churn and burn – with constantly changing product names and websites promoting the same thing!
http://odigger.com/?q=Biz+Opp&network_id=
bejeezus @Not Kevin….
That's a helluva lot of bizops.
Just back from holiday so it'll take me some time to wade through all the extra information and clues from you guys. Thanks a lot. I also saw some Get rich with Google sites just before I went away..now where are they…?
Looks like these are the same people as myincomesuccessvault.com :
https://www.trustedsource.org/blog/425/Facebook-Sc…
It's the same old thing when you check it out, with regard to naming.
They're obviously trying to take some care with the templates being used, but the old mistakes about the main URL not matching the page header or page title, or the page title not being the same as the "business" listed in the Terms & Conditions etc – they're all re-appearing again now in their haste to get as many websites up and running as possible.
The plethora of websites in that list you produced show exactly what is going on. This is it here again: https://www.sameip.org/174.143.30.126
BTW, have a fish around for XM Brands and their shape-shifting owner or owners… (This is a Google search on someone that is claimed to be the shape shifter on some complaints' boards. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Issa+Asad It's a family affair and appears to be big business in telecoms, mainly in bottom end card sales)
I've still to check out some allegations made about the Asad's (if that's their name) and their "businesses", and if they are actually the same business… (This is the trouble when people actually lie and deceive as a pastime).
But see these links for now, and the huge URL list compiled by Chuck Turner. Follow through on the Asad searches and some pretty strong words are spoken and research is made.
https://www.seflorida.bbb.org/Business-Report/XM-B… https://www.myfloridalegal.com/lit_ec.nsf/investig… https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/xm-bran… https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/xm-bran… https://www.complaints.com/2009/december/15/XM_Bra… https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/xm-bran… https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/xm-bran…
https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/xm-labs…
The paid version of DomainTools turned up 224 domains on IP 174.143.30.126
I only posted the bizop ones at the WorkAtHomeTruth site, but I think what I'll start doing is uploading files that contain all of them outside the actual site so that people can have access to all the domains.
Hmm – link clipped. Try: http://bit.ly/cAovuM
Seems the company behind this is XM Brands in Florida – the same people who came up with the "Google Profit Library":
https://www.sameip.org/174.143.30.126
(Not all their sites are on the same ip address, myincomesuccessvault.com and vividwhitesmiles.com for example are all on their own)
https://www.sameip.org/173.203.232.227
I make it 328 returns now on that Google string search!
Ironic indeed – which makes it easy to find their other websites (all 327 of them!) which feature all the usual suspects: colon cleansing, acai, teeth whitening and work from home scams:
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="Th…
Fake news just in – for the fake news websites it seems that cashing in on a disaster is not stooping too low. Hence gulfcoastnews9.com and gulfinquirer.com For the latest news on the Gulf oil spill? Nope. For the latest work at home scam? Yep.
http://hphosts.blogspot.com/2010/06/scam-alert-ww…
Not only that but the "make a fortune with Google" stuff is back! Either these scammers have very short memories or they figure that the Google lawsuit thing is done and dusted or they realise that mentioning the big G is so profitable they will take the risk..
http://hphosts.blogspot.com/2010/06/scam-alert-ne…
…and er….yeah. Google (and others figure highly splashed across the top of his last image at the end of his posting…along with
Facebook
YouTibe
Yahoo!
Twitter
Ebay (wah?…)
Bing
and MySpace
This crap is on 'http://myincomesuccessvault.com/ which handily and ironically, at the bottom of the page says:
I kid ye not!
The "Google pays me…" ads are still around! Check out:
http://content.yieldmanager.edgesuite.net/atoms/9…
Clicking on it took me to newsdaily7.com (yet another fake news site) but the site was down…
Amazingly, the newsdaily7 website is up and running now – and I got two addresses that match when chasing through the tedious T&Cs!!
They are here, http://whois.domaintools.com/homebasedincomeacade… although the newsdaily7 whois gives a London address:
http://whois.domaintools.com/newsdaily7.com
The registrant of Belglay etc via business searching further takes you to a woman called Suzanne Treisman from Finchley who has published an e-book on better Bridge playing.
Nice.
However,the addresses for the Home Based Income Academy are peculiarly wrong…. How so?
Well
'http://newsdaily7.com/ will take you to…
'https://www.homebasedincomeacademy.com/incomeacademy.php, the home based income academy, I kid ye not.
The design is like the old Google Treasure Chest template with "Google" stripped out…. (They do mention the normal 'as seen on' Yahoo!, MySpace, facebook and MSN, presumably because they haven't been sued by them yet)
Now amazingly, the T&Cs at the top are the same as at the bottom! They take you to:
'https://www.homebasedincomeacademy.com/algterms.php, which is even the same domain!
It's all run by "Lake View Holdings".
Well actually, the WHOIS for the two domains is so far identical.
It claims to be in the …..
U.S. Virgin Islands!!! ….which is the peculiarly odd bit as it claims that all legal stuff is subject to the laws of Utah?
But no….there it is! It's Provo in good old UTAH! Ha Ha.
It seems that it's a private house and that the value has fallen a bit. This website puts it in default on a loan, I assume.
https://www.thejimmyrexteam.com/utah-county-notice…
…and this website lists the house as for sale.
https://www.trulia.com/property-sitemap/UT/Provo/8…
Trading up, perhaps. LOL!!!
Now somewhere in the sign-up process, you'll undoubtedly be charged for some extras, like the ALG Bucks mentioned in the T&Cs.
This seems to be a quiz thing and anyone signing up to do this "quiz" is called a "student".
(I really could NOT make this up)
ALG stands for:
It's about buying property, apparently.
I know where there's one for sale in Provo.
Wow, glad to see you guys are still at it. It does seem like it's all come back with a vengeance. I think instead of putting up/taking down offers with different names that now they are dispersing a lot of different names with the same templates all at once – I would guess to keep the complaints of each one off the radars as much as possible.
There are 3 different ones that I saw being promoted by News7Daily that I did some videos of here:
https://www.workathometruth.com/not-recommended/20…
Also, I'm pretty confident that a disclosure after EIGHT separate order links wouldn't really be considered "clear and conspicuous". LOL.
Did you check out the "General Refund Policy" at Home Based Income Academy:
"General Refund Policy
In accordance with standard practice for online digital sales and our terms of sale for each transaction, we are unable to refund any payment after any purchase is made. This no refund policy is a result of the non-returnable nature of digital products.
Digital products sold via this website are like software purchases made at a store that are not refundable once opened. Once you have been granted access to the product, upon payment, it has been subject to being "opened", read/viewed/listened to, and/or copied and it cannot be returned and therefore cannot be refunded. Access to your purchase is defined as having been granted as soon as your payment is completed and we have sent you an email with a login url, your username and password."
…I think of Charlie Brown (of Peanuts fame) when they talk about "standard practices"…
Q: Just where did you come up with these "standard practices"
A: Home Based Income Academy/Charlie Brown – "We just now made them up!"
<img src="http://homebasedincomeacademy.com/images/billboard-large.jpg" alt="twat" />That'll be 'http://homebasedincomeacademy.com/refunds.php
And he looks such a nice man!
[warning: sarcasm alert!]
It's soooo fortunate that they have that ALG quiz going to make up for any contractual shortcomings. As they say,
Here is that home based income academy scam being advertised on Yahoo:
http://stopmalvertising.com/malvertisements/anoth…
The newsdaily7.com fake news website that the ad leads to is registered to addresses in London and Israel.
Speaking of newsdaily7.com – the "Google pays me" ads are back. This one: http://i915.photobucket.com/albums/ac355/scamscre… takes you to newsdaily7.com when you click on it.
Speaking of fake news, this Courthouse news service post on a Pacific Webworks class action lawsuit shows that prosecuters still haven't quite got to grips with the whole cpa affiliate networks > affiliates > advertisers triangle:
The complaint claims that Pacific operates under a variety of Internet names including Tracking202 Inc.; Media Trust LLC (Advaliant); CyberPlex inc. (CX Digital Media); Coleadium Inc. (Ads4Dough); JAR Media LLC; Sybtrackcom; eSynergy Media LLC; W4 Media LLC; Bskytracking.com; GMB Direct Inc.; Elite Clicks Media LLC; Tracklead.net; Track606.com; Intermark Communications Inc. (Copeac); Zoomleads.net; Vetrue Incorporated (Neverblue); Lidango; and Convert2Media LLC.
https://www.courthousenews.com/2010/07/14/28799.ht…
Yes those all play a part in the scam, but they are seperate companies and not part of Pacific Webworks.
No wonder scams thrive when the lawyers can't even work out the basics of how all these scams operate!
@Not Kevin
The little link at the courthouse news page foot takes you to the actual court summons as a pdf, https://www.courthousenews.com/2010/07/14/FakeNews…
If you read carefully, the lawyers do separate PWW from the rest, collectively called John Doe. However, I agree with you that it's a bit of a job for them to go after all the businesses…
The trouble is that the whole THING together, is a scam, but the scam is separated into notionally separate entities who, on the surface, appear to generally operate legally, and in isolation. I don't actually believe this, of course, as I think they're all in it together, colluding in a massive collective conspirational scam.
And so while they may be able to claim immunity from prosecution within their own particular fields, in both the UK and USA, conspiring to commit a crime, is a crime nevertheless, even though an individual's part in it may not be criminal. (In fact, this notion is part of the court case, count III, in the pdf. It's a pretty stunning read actually.)
Much like the getaway driver in a robbery. The CPA networks and the rest are like him. He, as the driver, could say that he was only driving a car, legally, as he has a licence and the car is insured (say). But handling stolen goods is the crime of the driver, and PWW, via their money dealing services, are doing much the same!!!
The CPA networks could be said to be breaking in or cracking the safe doors, and the ad networks could be likened to dodgy cafes and bars, always on the lookout for new suckers or skilled fellow thieves to join in the heist.
However, this court case could be the reason that PWW's share price fell – even when the Google court case was settled!!!
So are you endorsing Pacific Webworks now?
Just kidding, of course. I just haven't seen enough inane questions like that recently and thought I'd fill in the gap.
Somewhat irritating Google Advert appeared on this post, this morning. If you haven't seen it, here's a screenshot!!
Now the Google T&Cs say that I must not click on any adverts, but as a reminder or a description of how this works for those that don't know, if someone clicks on the PWW advert, then they pay Google some cash, and then Google pay me some cash!!
Given the way that PWW have scraped money off all and sundry and are claiming a no-fault semi-victory from their being sued by Google itself, my thoughts on the matter of getting money from PWW are clear to me – but of course, I couldn't possibly say, could I?
There is a bit more on Bloosky here:
Google recently added Bloosky Interactive to the lawsuit. The company is registered in Nevada, Utah and California.
According to the Google lawsuit, Bloosky promised "$200-$907 per day to anyone with a computer and basic typing skills" and used the Google name and logo to help persuade people to give up their credit card numbers.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_15205576
If you type bloosky into Google it suggests "bloosky interactive scam" so I guess other people have issues with them too!
Tom Harvey really has it in for the bad guys, and fair play to him! The SLC Tribune has all the best reporting on this subject. I particularly liked how a whole family of Larsen-ists have been rolled into the schemes:
..and meanwhile, it continues, the normally ebullient and expressive self-publicist….
Tom Harvey finishes with the revealing, and killer, line,
….which gladdens me no end!!! At Least Three!!!!
Continuing the UTAH scams and court case leading to scammer crack-down theme…..
Oprah Winfrey, in her case from last August (see https://strangelyperfect.tv/6305/monavie-gillmap-i… has finally forced the "businesses" concerned to back down.
See "Two Utah companies settle Oprah lawsuit" https://www.sltrib.com/ci_15017177
Just keep a close eye on these businesses in future everyone… It won't be long before we'll see them again!
MonaVie of South Jordan
456 Health Systems of Spanish Fork
B67 Nutra Pure Systems
Crush LLC of Sandy
TMP Nevada
In typical scamster mode, whereby phone calls are not answered etc and a wall of silence exists for all communications except incoming cash from conned folk, I quote from the SLCT article:
Interesting link popped up on my Google Alerts feed today: https://www.socialtoolkitscammed.me/google-ends-ge…
"Google Ends Get-Rich Scam Suit With Pacific Webworks
Law360, New York (May 25, 2010) — Google Inc. has settled a trademark suit alleging Pacific Webworks Inc. infringed the Web giant's name to hawk a get-rich-quick scheme.
Google's target has shifted to Bloosky Interactive LLC, a Nevada company whose alleged role in the scheme was uncovered in discovery, Google said in a stipulated final judgment Monday in.."
Bloosky you mentioned here:
https://strangelyperfect.tv/3099/google-treasure-c… where you said "In the source code for SecureCartCentre we find that images are served from bsadn.pantherssl.com Click that and you’ll get the folder structure for bloosky.com who serve advertising campaigns. Fish through the folder structure and examine various files. Google Treasure Chest is there. Check out some css files and you’ll find that some are loaded from discovertotal.com , which has a contact of bloosky.com"
Wonder what's up?
Looks like thecnnews.org changed their page in the past few days..
<a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7H_lTdrd5zAJ :www.thecnnews.org/+thecnnews&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk”>http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=ca…“>:www.thecnnews.org/+thecnnews&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
That clickncopysystem is one pile of steaming poop. It's designed to confuse from the top to the bottom…
After clickbooth redirects becuase I'm in the UK, it goes to internetprofitsuccesssystems.com
But check at the bottom and the terms are for,
Blackbelt Profit System …!
But when you click the terms they are for
clickncopysystem.com.com
Complexity, LLC
1812 West Sunset Blvd #1-138
St. George, UT 84770
Customer Service Phone
#888-201-5203
Complexity just about sums it up!
Now in an effort to find the Black belt stuff, whacking "scam" against them pulls out two likely suspects:
'https://www.blackbeltprofitsystem2010.com/ and
'http://blackbeltprofitsystem.com/
One is gaudy and horrid, the other calm and re-assuring in appearance.
The gaudy one links to an IQ test (yes really) which is a cover for a games subscription service by Celldorado.
The non-gaudy one soon reveals it's stripes by clicking through a hidden link, 'http://tinyurl.com/Orderblackbeltprofitsystem to,
ROBERT ALLEN !!!!
Here, 'https://www.msicourse.com/campaigns/rgahd/index.php
It's the same old stuff, again and again.
Interestingly, the walnutriver email address gives a WHOIS here, in Utah again!
Domain name: walnutriver.net
Registrant Contact:
Tech Support ()
Fax:
1055 W. Red Cliffs Dr.
#C-124
Washington, UT 84780
US
It's a pretty holding page.
It'd be good if I could stumble upon some open templates again (like the Bloosky thing), to give early warning of all this and the various permutations that exist….
From homecareerfinder.info:
"The biggest online company pays me between $5 and $30 for every web site link that I post. No one needs to buy anything from me or the company in order to get paid."
Yep, the only thing they have changed is Google has become "The biggest online company" / "the company"
No suprises either when you click on their link for the Home Income kit:
clickncopysystem.com
IP Location: – Utah – St. George – Hole In One Media
internetprofitsuccesssystems.com
IP Location: – Utah – Sandy – Viawest
Looks like Paul @ workathometruth.com already knows about this lot:
https://www.workathometruth.com/not-recommended/ta…
That's my point about things like &lsquo ;https://www.homecareerfinder.info The fact is that they've hardly changed at all…. same source (Utah), same templates, same modus operandi(small print, difficult to cancel etc), same countries (US, Cyprus, UK), same scam.
Another year has passed and bog all has been done to collar the rogues.
No idea who is behind this latest scam but check out the blatant rip-off/fraudulent misrepresentation of the CNN website by this work at home scam:
https://www.frogenyozurt.com/2010/05/cnnews-suppor…
That's just asking to be sued by CNN!
Ha Ha. No chance there. CNN, Fox et al have had heaps of time to get their name cleaned up from these websites, and quite frankly, if the smell of scam is permanently attached to people like Fox News in the public's mind, I'm all for it!
<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-7638" title="News6Report – Diet Trends- A look at America's Top Diets_1274373310817" src="https://strangelyperfect.tv/wp-content/uploads/News6Report-Diet-Trends-A-look-at-Americas-Top-Diets_1274373310817-134×500.jpg" alt="" width="134" height="500" />Check out the target of your link's article now. I've just checked and it's quite different – see screenshot.
'http://thecnnews.org/
The subject, Kelly Richards is now "Julia Miller" but is actually a photo of the famous and beautiful French TV newsreader, Melissa Theuriau, https://www.google.co.uk/images?q=Melissa%20Theuri…
…and by an amazing stroke of luck, the two errant CNN reporters are… Jennifer Theuriau and James Field!
Down at the bottom are two products that you'll get dumped with. They have English addresses and WHOISs!
Registrant:
Cho Yung (UK) Ltd
136-140 old Shoreham Road
Hove, East Sussex BN3 7BD
United Kingdom
Domain Name: CHOYUNG.COM
Created on: 27-Nov-08
Expires on: 27-Nov-10
Last Updated on: 31-Jul-09
with a registered address here,
Cho Yung (UK) Ltd Company No: 06708912.
VAT 941 9708 96
Registered Address:
48 Broomgrove Gardens,
Edgware,
Middlesex,
HA8 5RN
The other business is another cleansing one, "New Life Cleanse". It's other nom-de-crap with details is,
DOMAIN: PROHEALTHCLEANSE.COM
RSP: Growing Your Business
URL: 'https://www.viveraglobal.com
created-date: 2009-06-23 20:25:46
updated-date: 2009-11-16 10:01:13
registration-expiration-date: 2010-06-23 20:25:47
owner-organization: Trading Planet Ltd
owner-name:
owner-street: P.O. Box 13511
owner-city: Bradley Stoke, Bristol
owner-state:
owner-zip: BS32 8AX
owner-country: GB
owner-phone: +44.2031399027
Now despite being in Brizzle, they say,
"The laws of the Cyprus, without regard to its conflict of law principles, will govern these Terms." – which means you can all get stuffed as far as they care.
All in all, a nice heap of bollocks, and my old Bollochio email spam magnet still keeps drawing them in. Try this one from "Teresa Boyd" for instance….
'https://www.homecareerfinder.info
The template has hardly changed from the Google Treasure Chest/Money Tree/Profit System ones and even has the same stupid cheques etc
And to show how the same circle keeps getting squared and how the same names keep popping up, go back to last October here:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.ph…
There you'll find that Trading Planet has the same address as viveraglobal.com (above) on it's homepage,
Vivera Ltd
Unit 5, Mill Road Industrial Estate,
Linlithgow, West Lothian, EH49 7QY
Company No: 354623
Read the comments and you find that people in Bradley Stoke, Bristol were being used as addresses for this business… (confirmation link)Also, in the same comments, other businesses at the same Linlithgow address are,
Genesis Group (UK) Ltd
Health Food Suppliers
Tel: 01506 845762
Unit 5, Mill Rd Industrial Estate,
Linlithgow Bridge,
Linlithgow,
West Lothian
EH49 7QY
Linpharma Herbal Products
Health Food Suppliers
Tel: 01506 848649
Unit 5, Mill Rd Industrial Estate,
Linlithgow Bridge,
Linlithgow,
West Lothian
EH49 7QY
Brainchild Nutritionals
Health Food Suppliers
Tel: 01506 846931
Unit 5, Mill Rd Industrial Estate,
Linlithgow Bridge,
Linlithgow,
West Lothian
EH49 7QY
Houston Nutraceuticals
Health Food Suppliers
Tel: 01506 848555
Unit 5, Mill Rd Industrial Estate etc
Looks like Vivera Limited, Viv3lab Limited and Trading Planet Limited are no more:
https://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/view/pressrelease/in…
FANTASTIC news! Only one problem – the winding up orders are well before some of the most recent complaints about some of the businesses, the last of the three was on 09 April 2010…
Does this mean that the website owners promoting the rubbish are getting ripped off as well by the upline dudes flogging them promises?
Does it mean that the payment processors are still in business?
I can still see a lot of what-ifs around this.
Still. It's fantastic news and it's a pity that our American & Canadian friends can't just wind up crooks in the same way as us, isn't it? After all, when examined closely, what happened here was that petitions to court were made, someone decided that the businesses were a load of Scottish mist covering some dodgy dealings, and then the businesses were wound up in the public interest.
But in reality, no-one has been charged and no-one penalised or found guilty of something (according to the article). Which is in itself a weird form of peculiarly British justice.
If you go to:
http:// 69.167.141.44/
(Remove the space before 69.)
You will find the set-up of a scammer promoting the full collection of acai, teeth whitening, work at home, cho yung tea scams etc.
Using:
consumer-daily-news.com
consumer-news-report.com
consumer-news-today.com
joysdietsuccess.com
le-succes-du-regime-de-sabine.com
male-pornstars-exposed.com (eh?)
steves-ripped-blog.com
topcoloncleanseguide.com
Well spotted mate. If I get time I'll pull them all off for reference, but for now, we'll just let people view them in their natural state. It's just like when I stumbled into the folders of bsadn.pantherssl.com and bloosky.com when looking at Google Treasure Chest last year.
Now Bloosky. Where've I heard that name before? 😉
Oh yeah and the blog post here on the Cho Yung Tea scam shows a list of their other sites:
http://hphosts.blogspot.com/2010/07/scam-alert-th…
which include:
acaiberry-plus.com
choyung.com
cho-yung.com
cho-yungdirect.com
choyungaffiliates.com
choyungtea.net
choyungtea.com
choyungteareview.co.uk
choyungteareviews.co.uk
choyungteareviews.com
mysisters-dietsecret.com
mysistersdietsecret.com
procleansegold.com
procleansegoldformen.com
slimmingsolutionreviews.co.uk
visionmarktech.com
So they have "reviews" of their own site and fake blogs (mysisters-dietsecret.com) too. Nice.
Looks like PWEB have released their 2010 first quarter results: .
Note the statement: "Profits for the quarter, while strong, were down somewhat from 2009 first quarter levels, and below expectations, as a result of significant unexpected costs assessed by the card associations during the first quarter of 2010 relating to our merchant processing.”
Chargebacks in other words!??
Looks like the Google lawsuit is ongoing too:
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-utdce/case…
Also found this site which is owned by Pacific Webworks: domaintools.com/esuccess2u.com
Appears to be some sort of software for spamming people which dates back to 2008:
moneymakingblog.net/esuccess2ucom-the-next-internet-boom/
Note the quotes on esuccess2u.com from entrepreneur.com and MSNBC are actually both from the same 2008 article on entrepreneur.com and unsuprisingly have nothing to do with Pacific Webworks/esuccess2u :
entrepreneur.com/marketing/onlinemarketing/article195250.html
According to whois "Pacific WebWorks, Inc." owns about 853 other domains, so who knows what else they have out there! A few are listed at Scam Times : https://www.scamtimes.com/get-rich/pacific-webwork… but there must be hundreds more…
The financial report is good…
I particularly like the phrase you highlighted, and this one,
By frivolous actions, these will be the Google one you mentioned that now seems to have taken on a new life after previously being played down by both parties, and maybe the Oprah Winfrey one about claiming she endorsed something they provided by their
…when clearly she didn't.
As I keep saying, the Bell & Larsen triumvirate of former tarmacers provide both the ideas and the means for easily led people to be sucked into a pyramid scheme that does nothing but sell hot air and promises from a shopfront of thieving chicanery and deception that is unfortunately emulated and mimicked in it's devilish contortions of entrapment by Jesse Willms and others of his type.
As you said, credit card charge-backs are the only recourse for folks sucked into the miasma. PWWs own words spell it out.
The latest news from the Pacific WebWorks' (PWW) head office is that one of the chiefs, Christian R Larsen (CRL), has taken up a share option from 2008 on some PWW shares.
See https://www.istockanalyst.com…4059557 for the stock filing and https://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=PWEB.OB…sour… for a nice graph of PWW's share price.
Some things to note are that CRL's option was exercised on 300k shares at a price of 4 cents. After this purchase, he had 300k shares in total – which means that he had none up to that point! (n.b. he still has 1275k shares options to exercise at this price before 15/10/2013)
Now at the option issue on 15/10/2008, the share price had just hit a 15 month low all of two days previously and then had a minor surge, probably because of his option grant.
So what's going on?
CRL appears to have stumped up 300k x $0.04 = $12k of his own money when previously he had no shares, just options. By anyone's rule, he is paid quite handsomely so can easily afford the $12k and by all of PWW's public statements (see posts passim) they are absolutely loaded with cash and all is going swimmingly for them…..
Again. So what's going on?
The $12k that he's pumped into the company only covers about a week's wages for the 27 (last estimate) staff, excluding the directors, natch.
Hmmm.
One thing that must irk the three directors (because they own nearly all PWW shares in one way or another, and since they pay no dividends and never have done, a lot of their monetary income comes from flogging their self-issued shares when the 'market' is right), is the state of their share price back in their halcyon days of post 2000…
Then, at their peak, it was common to see volumes of 100k – 200k shares exchanged daily at a price of ~$5.
Recently, they were lucky to get 100k shares trading at $0.07, although I see that ~250k shares traded @$0.18 today.
Self-issued? Well yes. The two Bells and CRL own and run the company, they decide who gets what shares and how much each gets paid. In short, CRL gave himself the option to buy shares at four cents with all the attached dates etc.
Their employment contracts are online that show how many hours they are supposed to work for their money and the exact means by which any potential personal litigation will be handled by the company. (see https://www.docstoc.com…PACIFIC-WEBWORKS-INC—3…)
The company's much hyped Web Thingy version 5 is now out and the online run-through seems great! In it, you'll see that the key to great earnings for your business is to get online and pay for all their services using the experience of men like CRL to help you on your way…..
Just one thing, before you take it up, just check out the downward-sloping sawtooth graph that is PWW's share price since 2000, bearing in mind that the three directors have been in charge all this time…
Some experience, huh?
https://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=PWEB.OB…sour…
Another aspect to these Utah scams, apart from ripping off gullible punters, is the damage being done to legitimate businesses, like mine, whose trading names they appropriate as their merchant IDs.
Over the last 2 or 3 years I've received hundreds of emails from people demanding refunds of unauthorized charges made, according to their statements, by GRANTSEARCH.
It's galling to search my business name and see it mentioned time and again in scam reports. Not much point taking legal action as the scammers are millionaires. Any suggestions about what I can do?
Vogel in this comment on a huge posting devoted to the dubious business that is Monavie, make some fine comments about the close-knit community of F-rated scammers in UTAH, just based on ACAI alone! See
https://www.lazymanandmoney.com/monavie-scam-was-m…
Also, see this post on the UTAH grouping:
https://strangelyperfect.tv/5612/mybookface-google…
Pacific WebWorks and their supporters seem confident that the bad old days of being sued by Google are over…
Their share price is up to 11 cents.
Their Google case has been settled (apparently).
They're up to their old tricks with templates, phones, unwarranted credit card charges etc – and it's all done via a blistering mirage of shell websites and affiliated 'businesses'. e.g. makemoneyonline.nanacity.com/make-money-online-with-google-money-tree/ auto-dated to today…
Here's a nice share price graph saying buy, buy, buy…. except the vertical scale is logarithmic to emphasise the small values: https://www.hotstockmarket.com/forums/showpost.php…
Another hot PWW topic, is something I'd previously missed from last December, 2009.
It's ANOTHER court case with PWW in the dock. This one seems to be a private matter, listed as:
Nature of Suit: Torts – Property – Other Fraud
Cause: 28:1332 Diversity-Fraud
Further information about Deanna Pelletier and her case against the PWW creeps is very hard to come by. These are the only links I can find:
…so I wonder what's going on with that one?
<img src="nurture-varietal.gif" height="1" width="1" border="0">
This is not Ryan Eagle but another affiliate network:
https://www.findaffiliateoffers.com/NDustry-Clix-415.html
Page looks familiar though.
Note the ‘offer’ start date (31/12/09) ie: well AFTER Google announced a lawsuit against Pacific Webworks etc!
The company running the offer is:
NDustry Clix Inc.
1622 West Britton Rd.
Oklahoma City, OK 73120 USA
President: Mike Pacheco
Office: 888-665-6165 ext.1
Cell: 405-618-3559
https://www.warriorforum.com/ad-networks-cpm-cpl-display-sem/168236-eleadmedia-ndustryclix.html#post1731800
…familiar enough indeed, @Not Kevin!
This is the thing. These templates are circulating everywhere – Google has a big job if it really wants to protect itself – but does it?
Interestingly, (and this shows the already extant status of NDustry Clix Inc), I use OpenDNS to block lots of stuff from my home router and NDustry Clix Inc is already on the blacklist. I'd have to open the settings up a fair bit to be able to view the landing page. In essence, peer reviewing within OpenDNS has deemed ndustryclix.directtrack.com to be pants for internet users!
One thinking occurred to me while looking at the screendump on the link you provided….
Currently we only know about the English versions of these scams (sorry, business opportunities). The two biggest internet markets by user numbers will soon be China and India.
Now my knowledge of both Chinese and the various Indian languages is zero, so has anyone seen a,
…in Chinese, or a similar Hindi offering? You know, complete with the 100% satisfaction guaranteed splash etc!
This could already be going on, and I'd never know. Anyone bi-or tri-lingual could make a real fortune in those countries.
Not sure – but I am not quite sure of the point of Twitter either!
I think they ('Tweets' hang around a while though – quite tedious to keep clicking 'more' to get older ones but you can also try Googling for them.
Eg: https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=site:+…
(There are some there from early last year)
Hmmm….
It's just that the way that Ryan at EWA etc bandies around all the latest 'offers', they are essentially UN-TRACEABLE!
There are no links in tweets just these quick-fire bursts of information. Therefore there are no back-link algorithms for search engines etc.
This all means that these crap websites that we've been examining can fire up and close down even faster than before once the few people in the know are listening in on the 'broadcast'. It's a neat way to trap the curious and unwary as well which further enhances the expansion of these websites.
This is why it's important to make the companies that host and provide credit handling facilities, and the ones that provide the rest of the 'vertically integrated web marketeer package' are held accountable for their actions (e.g. PWW). Without them, then Ryan etc can tweet away into the ether without any web foundation….
Now we know that Ryan on his EWA website has already said that he's intending to provide "the full package" to people for a fee that will include hosting etc. Once he's done this, then he becomes another PWW and thus more visible….
Do you see the change and difference between the two things going on here?
Here is Ryan Eagle aka EWA pushing the scammy grant offer (Grants 360 aka Fed Pack aka Radish Caddish Rondeaux or whatever they are calling themselves this week) yet again :
"Scale your existing grant campaigns into Canada and the United Kingdom with Grants 360! The UK is a huge unsaturated market waiting for you!"
http://twitter.com/ewanetwork/status/9948263036
And here is another affiliate network (CONvert2media) looking to exploit the 'UK market'.
"I have 2 Private Teeth Whitening – UK campaigns looking for some traffic."
http://twitter.com/convert2media/status/968636343…
@Not Kevin
Do you know how long tweets float round in the Twitter ecosystem? This is a serious question as I don't know. In other words, is there a tweet archive or do the tweets only float around in a defined memory space and disappear once they are past the edge?
So the circle of scams begins all over again?? How depressing! Can we expect ‘Google Kits’ to make a re-appearance in a few months, followed by Acai and teeth whitening mark 2 (maybe Acai which whitens your teeth or something who knows!?)
Caddish indeed. Fed-pack is yet another US site with a County Durham address. Note the 1 day (yes 1 day) trial period before they rob you: fed-pack.com/static/terms
The grantsdot.com/uk/ website even has a ‘testimonial’ from Jon P., London who got a check – yes a check not a cheque, perhaps he is confused as to which country he is in. Or more likely he doesn’t even exist.
Caddish Rondeaux Enterprises Ltd does however exist – at least according to Companies House. They even filed a company return just last week: http://ukdata.com/company/06818199/CADDISH-RONDEAUX-ENTERPRISES-LIMITED
https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?hl=en&gws_rd=ssl#hl=en&q=%22Caddish+Rondeaux%22&meta=&aq=f&oq=%22Caddish+Rondeaux%22&fp=33a9a577caa4e7cb
Some recent victims:
https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/caddish-rondeaux-enterprises-flint-michigan-c308805.html
From your scam.com link above it seems Fed Pack / Caddish et al is just another re-incarnation of an old grants scam called Grants 360 (Grants360).
Here we can see another scammy affiliate network encouraging their affiliates to promote this crap:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ewanetwork/status/9838133788
Their whole Twitter feed indeed is an A to Z of scams – Acai, teeth, Home income etc, it’s all there:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ewanetwork
Seems this ‘dude’ called Ryan Eagle is the man boy behind EWA:
https://www.nickycakes.com/ryan-eagle-super-affiliate-e-thug-yo/
@Not Kevin
Ryan Eagle and his family look sooo nice. It's hard to imagine them all being involved in "premier adult" websites, and that Ryan was (is) a reformed drugs and liquor addict? I can well believe that his faith in god is immense though…
See ryaneagle.com/family.php and
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryaneagle (look for Fathom Adult Technologies)
.-= Strangely´s last blog ..The Hell of Incessant Suffering and the Land of Tranquil Light =-.
Could this be the connection between the USA and County Durham? !! 😀
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/8544045.s…
Durham Police: https://www.durham.police.uk/press/news.php?id=138…
The police link is now down, but the text from Google's cache reads as:
Texas is the state that first collared Jonathon Eborn in April last year.
Spennymoor is just down the road from Consett etc.
<iframe width="425" height="350" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&gl=uk&g=Spennymoor,+County+Durham&q=Spennymoor,+County+Durham&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Spennymoor,+County+Durham,+United+Kingdom&ll=54.695276,-1.608872&spn=0.155954,0.279465&z=12&output=embed"></iframe><small><a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=embed&gl=uk&g=Spennymoor,+County+Durham&q=Spennymoor,+County+Durham&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Spennymoor,+County+Durham,+United+Kingdom&ll=54.695276,-1.608872&spn=0.155954,0.279465&z=12" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left" rel="nofollow">View Larger Map</small>
Interesting. A post made today on this website also points out the connections between the Google Kit, Acai, Teeth scams etc and County Durham:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=2071617&page=2
Not sure all his/her facts/allegations are correct though (Brock Felt, BBB) but a search for the address in the post + the word scam threw up a lot of porn sites: https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=trD&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&q=18+Millfield+Court%2C+DH8+8TN+scam&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=&gws_rd=ssl
and this: lancashireecho.com
Lancashire Echo – Online News You Can Trust (yeah right!!) where the address is buried in the (very small!) small print below all the garbage about free Govt grants for UK citizens.
@Not Kevin
Disappointingly this all seems to be coming around again….
Checking the address for the 'company' behind the 'Lancashire Echo' using my website (strangelyperfect.tv) only,
…I see several similar DH8 references. These are them:
LB Envision Net Worldwide Ltd. DH8 0LH
DH8 7QD
LB Eridanus Entertainment Limited DH8 7NG
DH8 0RX
DH8 0EP
Also LB LFP Internet Ltd used DH7 0LZ as well!!
Check out the new name,Caddish Rondeaux Enterprises Ltd… What's it mean?
Caddish is obviously behaviour pertaining to a cad, the old English term for a complete and utter twat. This part is highly accurate!
Rondeaux is French for a Roundel, a heraldic mark most famous as the emblem of the RAF. See,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundel
Also notice that the businesses at Millfield Court variously use No 18 AND No 28!!
It all shows that either half of County Durham is loaded up with scam companies, or else most of it is just pure fiction…? Just as the variously named LB etc is now morphing to Caddish whatever.
Brock Felt: You spotted him way back in September 2009 here:
https://strangelyperfect.tv/4308/google-revolution…
In the same comment you pulled out the DH8 7OS postcode which was used by a heap of 'businesses' as well as the cross reference to Steve Comer in UTAH.
Finally you pulled in ol' Jesse Willms who was using the same addresses!
That was a hell of a comment back then.
And now we're back to square one again! Even the porn is still tied into the same addresses and will probably pop up in a few Essex garages as well..
One thing about the ECHO bit. This leads me to think that there's at least one operation in County Durham, no matter how many addresses and postcodes pop up.
The reason is that the local paper in Sunderland and that part of County Durham is called "The Northern Echo" – https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/ Echo isn't used very often in newspaper names, so it shows a degree of local knowledge, IMHO.
Doing a quick search on
shows an earliest scam reference to unauthorised charges from about June 2009. The most recent are now and have ramped up in frequency since New Year. try:
https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/fed-pac… https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/grants-… https://www.scam.com/showthread.php?p=885276 https://www.scamfound.com/f13/grants-fed-pack-com-…
Finally, try this from the local history site for Consett!!!
https://www.consett-history.org.uk/forum/viewtopic…
<img src="https://www.consett-history.org.uk/forum/styles/subsilver2/imageset/consett.jpg" alt="" />
.-= Strangely´s last blog ..The Hell of Incessant Suffering and the Land of Tranquil Light =-.
Neat start-up information on Pacific WebWorks.
From this website which hosts a heap of related official documents, we have:
https://www.docstoc.com/docs/21711204/Public-Offering-Registration—PACIFIC-WEBWORKS-INC—5-30-2000
QUOTE (from 2000):
As you’ll see, I’ve been selective in my snippets, but there, from the pen of Larsen & Bell, is their business plan.
The last paragraph I’ve highlighted as they state categorically that they don’t know of any laws that will affect their operation. Here they state in their business plan that deceptive practices and the common law of the land from biblical times do not apply to themselves!!!!
Interesting that 7 of the 8 are in Florida whereas Pacific Webworks is the odd one out being in Utah. Perhaps the Florida AG got tired of the Utah AG doing nothing??! (Apart from taking political donations from the scammers that is)
The Florida AG is also investigating these people:
RNR Media, LLC., a/k/a "Cleanwhites", Rauscher Bekke, LLC., Green Bracket, LLC., Jesse Stein, Individually and Paul Nute, Individually.
Well Clean Whites is yet another teeth whitening scam – what is with people named Jesse and teeth whitener scams??
https://www.myfloridalegal.com/lit_ec.nsf/investig…
Note how the Just Think Media stable of scams by their own admission includes /included all the usual suspects:
AcaiBurn (Acai)
PureCleanse
ResV (Resveratrol)
Wu-Yi
Google
Grants
Credit Report America
Fraud Protection
ID Theft
Comprehensive Weight Loss
Insider Secrets
Dazzle White (teeth whitener)
PureLiftCream
List taken from the comment post by Mark A. of
JustThink Media at:
https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/just-th…
Well here is another crowd of swamp dwellers for the Florida Attorney General to look into:
XM Brands Inc.
Address:
3389 Sheridan St., Suite# 217
Hollywood , Florida USA 33021
Telephone Number: (800) 440-4397
https://www.seflorida.bbb.org/Business-Report/XM-B…
As can be seen here they too were running a 'Google Kit' scam:
http://sfholidays.blogspot.com/2009/11/scam-alert…
Google XM Brands or XM Brands Scam:
https://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&source=hp&…
and you will find a flood of complaints about their various 'products' as well as their website which shows that they too are flogging all the usual suspects: Acai, Colon Cleanse, Teeth Whitener, Resveratrol and Work From home garbage:
https://www.xmbrands.com/products.html
@Not Kevin
That FTC release that Paul quotes https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2010/02/ftc-cracks-down-con-artists-who-target-jobless-americans) shows the continuing and expanding extent to which the thieving conmen will go, doesn’t it?
Fishing around, I came across this TV News investigation video from New Zealand from last August…
http://tvnz.co.nz/fair-go/whiter-than-white-2889431/video
It’s quite a good “dummies” guide to how Jesse works.
Unfortunately, as we know, he’s still at it in his $40m Canadian house…. Here are a few links FROM THIS MONTH detailing how people have been thieved by Mr Willms and his ilk.
http://boards.answers.findlaw.com/index.php/topic/191280-refund-request/
https://www.complain-about-them.com/claims/196/activepro_866_417
http://tucsoncitizen.com/bbbconsumeralert/2010/02/19/teeth-whitening-products-sold-online-wipe-smile-off-consumers%E2%80%99-faces/
Now while not necessarily being Willms, the same methods are continuing with the same problems of tracking, stopping and catching the perpetrators from our law enforcers.
Even when we know who they are, quite often they (like Jesse Wills for instance), continue to act with impunity.
For instance, this posting starts back during last summer and still has recent complaints about Jesse!
https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/just-think-media-dazzlewhite-c232583.html?page=3
It’d be really nice if good ol’ Jesse ended up in Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone after the run-down by the Tucson Citizen, 100km away. That what happened to the bad guys in the old days….
More from Florida…
https://www.miamiherald.com/business/nation/story/1484959.html
The Miami Herald quotes the following from the FTC that on top of the sinful seven @not Kevin mentions above:
It’s a start, then.
Good to hear some tough talk from the FTC:
"“Federal and state law enforcement officials will not tolerate those who take advantage of
consumers in times of economic misfortune,” Vladeck said. “If you falsely advertise that you will connect people with jobs or with opportunities for them to make money working from home, we will shut you down. We will give your assets to the people you scammed, and, when it’s appropriate, we’ll refer you to criminal authorities for prosecution.”"
From Paul's blog at: https://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2010/02/18/ft…
As you say, it's a start.
Thanks @Not Kevin
This looks (because the Florida AG says that it's a civil case) that this is some sort of class action to me. See what happens then….
I see that two of the companies listed are from Clearwater, Florida. I picked up some shack address there back in August last year, here:
https://strangelyperfect.tv/5612/mybookface-google…
I wonder if they're related? The Florida AG has two different addresses for these "businesses" here:
https://www.myfloridalegal.com/lit_ec.nsf/investig…
and here:
https://www.myfloridalegal.com/lit_ec.nsf/investig…
But for me, the similarities in online name and physical locations are too close to ignore, after all the Google Bollox we've had to endure.
There's an interesting wodge of info on the Clearwater folks by NilsC here:
https://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thr…
The high charges and shoddy business practices are to be noted!
Looks like the Florida Attorney General is investigating Pacific Webworks:
"Now, the State of Florida has issued subpoenas to eight firms suspected of running employment or work-at-home scams."
…other firms under investigation include: "
• Pacific Webworks, Inc., located in Salt Lake City, Utah; Investigation of unfair and deceptive trade practices involving work from home opportunities
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2010/02/emp…
https://www.myfloridalegal.com/lit_ec.nsf/investig…
<img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-7212 alignleft" style="margin: 5px 15px;" title="Christian Larsen – Executive Profile & Biography – BusinessWeek" src="https://strangelyperfect.tv/wp-content/uploads/Christian-Larsen-Executive-Profile-Biography-BusinessWeek_1265980123115-47×100.jpg" alt="Christian Larsen – Executive Profile & Biography – BusinessWeek" width="47" height="100" /> This picture is a screendump of the corporate profile of one of the Pacific WebWorks'(PWW) directors. It can be found here:
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks…
Now remember, this company, fending off multiple lawsuits for extremely dodgy practices, issues shares, but has never issued a dividend (in the way that real businesses do) despite all the glowing profits & growth reports from Larsen & Bell.
Q. So why the screenshot?
A. Check out to the right of the screendump. You'll see a section labelled "Competitors Compensation", meaning something that the Business Week website sees as a competitor for PWW. It then goes on to list the salaries of the CEOs etc of these "competitors"…..
In an amazing twist on reality, PWW are now seen as direct competitors to:
Microsoft
Verisign
Yahoo
I had to laugh, it's so pathetic.
PWW (Pacific WebWorks) goes Gold!
The latest news plug hitting the wires from the dammed up slime in PWW, is version 5 of their custom software, now called WebWizard 5. See https://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100209005446&newsLang=en and http://blog.mybiosource.com/tag/pacific-webworks-to-release-webwizard-5-105012 for instances of such plugs.
Amazingly, for such a bunch of low-lifes, PWW have again purchased the status of “Microsoft Gold Certified Partner”, and Microsoft have accepted the cash.
“…we will be able to expand our prospective customer base substantially. We have access to online technical communities where we can network with other Microsoft Professionals and cross-promote our offerings to more than 170,000 prospective customers who search on Microsoft websites each month for technology experts like ourselves,” disingenuously stated Christian Larsen, President of PWW.
I now have a new definition for the phrase, “technology expert”…
Now it means someone who can set up a fully vertically integrated system that rips off people by the million by piling lies upon lies, shady phone lines upon scurrilous websites, all wrapped up by frightening legalese and shadow companies hovering in a limbo-land existence of false and near-false addresses.
Ho hum.
PWW (Pacific WebWorks): NOT GETTING AWAY WITH IT!!!
Nice news on my birthday yesterday from the folks at The Salt Lake Tribune…
“>https://www.sltrib.com/technology/ci_14096722
While Google and PWW may be all nice and cosy and have arranged things to their mutual advantage, THREE EXTRA class action lawsuits have apparently been filed against the 'company', named individuals and various John Does.
The news article lists a new suit in Utah, plus others in Washington, California and Illinois!
The good thing about all this is that ANYONE hit by the various scams (that myself and the hosts of much superior investigators than me have documented for the last few years), well, they can ALL be compensated by the attorneys in the class action suits.
<hr />
The Google/PWW arrangement obviously had some hidden meanings because the PWW website is now down and "under construction". Presumably, their 'software suite' for website creation has 'certain limitations' to satisfy Google's "quality guidelines"! 😉
This action, according to the SLT article, is costing PWW $1.4million a month.
<hr />
.-= Strangely´s last blog ..Some Words are Just ‘Right’! =-.
PWW (Pacific WebWorks)
CEO Bell made this release on 30 December also. In it we find that PWW has bought it’s building, with expansion room, outright.
He also says that he’ll vigorously defend the court charges against him, except for the previously ‘arranged’ case from Google.
https://www.getfilings.com/sec-filings/091231/PACIFIC-WEBWORKS-INC_8-K/
Kids are finally asleep! Our boy insists we grab a pic of Santa. LOL.
Just to be clear I wasn't saying the info in TechCrunch is related to Pacific Webworks – merely that there is a long tradition (at least in the U.S.) of stuff like this going on and on and on…and on…
on and on… You're right with that one Paul. Deception, theft and cons are nothing new. The bible, Roman and Ancient Egyptian history are full of similar tales.
The point about the PWW affair is that it's been operating for some time now, and is a beacon and template for anyone else planning to start in this line of 'business'. The web just makes it soooo easy to do. As a plan, it's almost foolproof as long as they get out and move on before someone latches on and stops them.
Also, we now have the proliferating remnants of owners and websites that PWW kicked off. They all have to be chased down and I can't believe that PWW manage the money collection for all of them. There must be tons of similar processing houses. This means that the 'scheme' will still run and run…; on and on….; just how I started…
LOL. I must be losing my mind with the kids home for the holidays.
The Does 1-50 has already been covered.
@Paul
I'm not sure what's been covered actually. The statements that have emerged so far are pretty thin, and all the more remarkable because of it given the length of the original court summons.
All we can actually say is that PWW and Google have come to "some sort" of arrangement. It only "appears" that PWW will be helping to uncover the missing John Does and it's not specifically mentioned that that's the area of "discovery" in which the work will be done.
All I see is ~50 John Does and a rising number of websites with each press release. It could be that more John Does will appear, which'll be good.
But as you've said about the Official Report in the TechCrunch post (https://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/17/ptm-scams-scamville-rockefeller-senatehearing-wallofshame/), this sort of activity has a long, long history.
Which means the roots are very deep.
For now, I'm going to wait and see and stop second-guessing. It's Christmas.
After that, I'll try and work my way through that report in the Tech Crunch article. Thanks for pointing it out.
Wait,
I just reread the complaint – it's against Pacific WebWorks AND Does 1-50 so the discovery process would continue against Does 1-50.
I would guess that's all there is to it. Probably just that Pacific Webworks will co-operate in trying to uncover the Does 1-50.
@Not Kevin
Spot on with the last paragraph and the comparative whims that our laws seem to take and operate upon.
This isn't directly about Pacific Webworks – but more about the "getting away with it" aspect…did either of you read through the Oversight and Investigations report listed in this TechCrunch post?
I just finished the first 30 pages – the same guys have companies going all the way back to 1973 engaging in the same practices.
Probably even more stunning than the PWW scenario because of all the mainstream retailers co-operating in the deceptive practices.
Oh yes I agree absolutely – they do seem (to a greater or lesser degree) to be 'getting away with it'. Pacific Webworks should be shut down (with the company assets used to refund victims) and the Directors sent to jail. They are indeed the core and key to the whole operation. Pacific Webworks made millions from this as did Google (via adwords ads for the scam) so as you say where is the justice for the consumer!?
The affiliates and the cpa networks also seem to get away with it – they also both made millions from this scam and if you read certain forums and blogs they are literally laughing all the way to the bank. Perhaps the (Ford, Chicago) class action suit will address the issue of consumer compensation?
Today you can get up to 14 years in prison for selling a drug which was legal yesterday – but it seems you can effectively steal millions from people without any penalty – crazy!
Strange days indeed.
Just getting caught up on all this here. Definitely a lot of strange things going on.
"We're settling…let the discovery continue?"
I have a couple people I'll try to ask if there is possibly any sense to that who might actually have some idea of what might be going on.
Personally right now it's just making my brain hurt to live in that paradox.
Ha Ha.
There's deep and warranted cynicism about all this from many quarters, not least because of Google's tardiness in starting a court case as they continued to rake in adwords' cash. It seemed to me that it was Oprah's stand that was the turning point…
There verywell may be ~50 John Does but don't forget the 2,650 websites…. This number goes up with each Google statement. If you recall, it was ~1000 in the original court document. I suspect that it'll be >10k websites when some sort of closure is drawn over this.
And if, as everyone suspects, that PWW, Bell & Larsen remain intact, just what DOES this say about investigative justice for the consumer?
My opinion is that Google is engaged in dirty tricks on this, probably to protect their bottom line or public image which has maybe reached a tipping point in their own eyes.
Because there is no way that PWW are some innocent bystander in all of this. After all, they are the PAYMASTER!
As it says on ALL their company-speak literature, say on this business item on the case,
https://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/perm…
What this doesn't say is that they run the call-centres which have been the butt of many ripped-off people's ire.
They processed the money.
They refunded money (occasionally!!!)
They made and sold the software – on commission!!
They provided all these services – on commission!!
Mailing lists – on commission!
etc,etc,etc
Now in English Law, you are just as much guilty for HANDLING STOLEN GOODS as the thief that takes the goods in the first place!!!
You are just as guilty for planning a heist as doing the heist….
US Law is very similar to English Law in this regard.
So if we replace the word "Goods" or "heist" with services, then it's very clear to me exactly what PWW have been up to. They are not some entrepreneurial innocent. They are the core and key to the whole operation.
Doubtless, other operations exist that can do PWW's 'services', and undoubtedly many will spring up to fill the void. But for a long time, PWW have been at the very centre of this scam, and if it now appears that by a simple "agreement" with Google they'll still be in business with no apparent public chastisement, or redress for the thousands of people ripped off by their actions, it just proves to me how far removed, Google as a business, now is from it's initial lofty ideals.
.-= Strangely´s last blog ..Crawling Chaos Dishwasher =-.
Just came across this post too which says:
"So, if they’re agreed and moving toward a settlement, why do we need discovery? Discovery is the phase of the trial where each of the parties share pertinent documents—so perhaps Google is demanding this to find the other companies it believes are running the scams. Google said earlier this month that, “upon information and belief,” the other scammers were materially connected with Pacific WebWorks."
https://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/12/google-wo…
Yes, I think you are right there – I would guess that they will try to blame the affiliate networks and the affiliates (as it's true that the fake blogs/news sites claiming 'Google is hiring' were created by affiiates). A bit like the original dazzlesmile in their lawsuit vs Jesse Willms/Just Think Media also blamed the affiliate network (azoogle/epic) for creating the misleading landing pages and terms etc.
Of course Pacific Webworks must have known exactly where all this traffic was coming from (but did nothing to stop it – too profitable!) and also must have approved the landing pages and terms created by the affiliate network. So maybe by shifting the focus and helping to reveal clues to the identities of some of the 50 'John Does' in the Google lawsuit. PWEB hope to take some of the heat off themselves?
Co-operation in exchange for some 'leniency'/lighter penalty?
@Not Kevin
As always, the best news about Utah scams seems to come from the Salt Lake Tribune, as demonstrated by your link…
https://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_14012306
Have a little read of the few choice comments at the bottom of the article by Utahn locals. Nice.
Since the article, much of what it's said has come out via AP across all news outlets – this yahoo News article is typical.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091221/ap_on_hi_te/u…
However, it seems from the AP news article that something extra has happened yesterday – or else they are just interpreting the news from the 16th differently when PWW decided to roll over for Google….
Because as well as the original "agreement in principle" statement, a new one has emerged with the key phrase that PWW
To me, this suggests that they are handing over ALL their customer logs and database, certainly in enough detail to satisfy the words "expedited discovery". Presumably this means ALL their links to other affiliate companies, as you pointed out, and probably all the thousands of "like minded entrepreneurs" (a.k.a. suckers) who've bought into the scam.
Because; how else could they give Google enough information without burying themselves in shit right up to the nostrils?
I think this is the guts of the "agreement in principle" and it's my guess that in return for this wodge of information in a "Queens Evidence" kind of thing from PWW, Google will leave PWW with enough cash to remain viable as a business and the Bells and Larsens will stay out of the clink….?
What says you?
Pacific Webworks lawsuit settled already???
" Utah-based Pacific WebWorks has agreed to provide information in what Google Inc. says is "the tip of the iceberg" of a nationwide fraud that has scammed thousands of people out of millions of dollars.
Google attorney George Haley told U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins at a Wednesday hearing in Salt Lake City that Pacific WebWorks had consented to Google's demand that it provide possible evidence as part of a lawsuit filed last week against the Utah company and unnamed other defendants.
"There's a major national scam that's going on across the country," said Haley, adding that the alleged fraud involves roping in people by using pitches about making money with Google while working at home.
Google is being blamed for the massive fraud by some consumers and state attorneys general, and the Internet search giant wants to discover who besides Pacific WebWorks might be behind the efforts that involve at least 2,650 Web sites, Haley said.
Web sites linked to the Utah company "are the tip of the iceberg, and discovery [of evidence] is required to determine whether PWW or others are the masterminds behind the scam," Google said in a memo to the court before the Wednesday hearing.
Haley also told Jenkins that Google and Pacific WebWorks had reached an "agreement in principle" to settle the lawsuit, but he declined after the hearing to elaborate. Haley said others will be named in the lawsuit as their identities are discovered. "
https://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_14012306
Well if attorney George Haley wants to know who else is behind the scam he should be taking a look at all the CPA affilate networks that ran Google offers and at their affliates who created all the fake blogs and fake news sites…
I fact despite the lawsuit, plenty of the CPA affilate networks still are running Google work at home scam offers:
Global Ad Revolution
motive interactive
CPA Bullet
MaxBounty
Convert2Media
EWA Network
Copeac
Clickbooth
etc etc:
https://www.findaffiliateoffers.com/index.php?func…
@Not Kevin
Even more strange and laughable….
https://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/pacific-w../.
On the 3rd of December, this little plug emerged for PWW about infrastructure improvements for their burgeoning business… Now remembering that this is before Google waded in, CEO Bell's words are pretty neat:
Negative Commentary!!!
Now, cast your eyes to the right of CEO Bell's words and you'll see…. an advert for tooth whitener! These are a set of rotating images and links, so are not consistent. However, the now usual steps of Fake Blog -> two links to tooth whiteners are followed. Accompanied by the sentiment,
"two are better than one"
These links, at least one, anyway, are very interesting as it shows how PWW's main selling point in their company profile – their software suite – is becoming overcome with the too many rapid changes needed to get past the "Negative Commentary" CEO Bell mentions.
Try:
https://www.ivorywhite.com/CheckoutOrderZipCapture…
Now no where on this website do they make any mention of the usual claims of "as seen on ABC" etc, nor are there any logos.
And yet, in the footer, there is an itemised list of URLs from where these non-existent claims are supposed to be derived!!!
I haven't checked these links yet, but I may make a full post on this just to ensure I trap some decent screendump proof.
It looks like I've trapped a template in mid-change! Whether it's PWW related or Jesse Willms, is irrelevant, because the same methods are used and that's what's important.
These are the posts described above, as they look going from one to the next.
<img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-7119" title="Pacific WebWorks Discusses Infrastructure Improvements" src="https://strangelyperfect.tv/wp-content/uploads/Pacific-WebWorks-Discusses-Infrastructure-Improvements_1260722750118-86×86.jpg" alt="Pacific WebWorks Discusses Infrastructure Improvements" width="86" height="86" />
<img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-7121" title="Don't Break the Bank- A Mom's Trick to Whiter Teeth – London News Web Daily_1260722777134" src="https://strangelyperfect.tv/wp-content/uploads/Dont-Break-the-Bank-A-Moms-Trick-to-Whiter-Teeth-London-News-Web-Daily_1260722777134-86×86.jpg" alt="Don't Break the Bank- A Mom's Trick to Whiter Teeth – London News Web Daily" width="86" height="86" />
<img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-7122" title="Ivory White_1260722583058" src="https://strangelyperfect.tv/wp-content/uploads/Ivory-White_1260722583058-86×86.jpg" alt="Ivory White" width="86" height="86" />
LOL @Paul 🙂
You have to laugh at the posters on the Yahoo PWEB stock message board too:
"PWEB had an agreement with Google and PWEB does not offer Google kits. Google lawyers got their info mixed up."
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_(A_to_Z)…
Yes it was all just a little mix-up 🙂 (Not!)
This cnet news article shows a particularly bad example of a fake news site – not only did they 'report' a non existent news conference "that drew over 10 million viewers" about a non-existent work at home program called "Google Adwork" – but they even made up some fake quotes from Google's CEO Larry page!
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10410831-245.ht…
Let's hope the 50 'John Does' in the Google lawsuit include idiots like the creator of losangeles-tribunes.com (who will be an affiliate of one of the cpa affiliate networks) and those cpa affiliate networks too. Without the cpa ad networks and their affiliates these scams would never have reached the scale and spread they have – and even Pacific Webworks did not go as far as creating fake news conferences and fake quotes from the Google CEO!
Pacific Webworks CEO expresses surprise over Google lawsuit:
https://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_13962967
Other things that may have possibly also surprised him:
1) There has already been a manned flight to the moon.
2) The invention of television
3) No Santa Clause (sorry everyone)
4) That whole Oprah Money Making chain letter deal was a hoax
5) Google has a lot more money than Pacific WebWorks – uh oh!
Ha Ha, I spotted that as well, Paul. Initially, for a couple of days, there was a blanket news firewall round the place, and then a local station got a news release from them about him being surprised by the whole thing.
Still. You have to admire the ingenuity and his creative incredulousness. He's come a long way for a former tarmac bloke.
From ashphalt to collar felt!
Interesting job adverts info on Jesse Willms and Just Think Media… Full story here:
https://strangelyperfect.tv/7108/jobs-at-just-thin…
I think the left hand/right hand dichotomy of Google is closely top-down driven. The very top.
While Google's information reservoir can be used for many purposes, not least defeating thieves and frauds, their lack of thought to the draconian uses to which data can be put and many past brushing asides of their "Do no Harm" mantra, all cascade from the hypocritically self-serving mouth of their CEO Schmidt…
See:
https://youtu.be/A6e7wfDHzew
Moms Club, wonder what that's all about?
From that url about Moms Club:
Activity:
Day care center
Activity:
Supplying money, goods or services to the poor
How ironic! Given that her and her partner Eborn were allegedly stealing money from the poor (in effect given that all their Google work at home malarkey was aimed at the unemployed and others on low incomes)
I wonder if that earlier Texas Attorney General action has been through the courts yet? I guess the FTC case (from June) will be a while yet given the size of it.
No idea of the timescale of these things…
@Paul, perhaps you know?? And I echo the comments about deserving a pat on the back for all your hard work, digging and info.
He was just a robbin' hood.
Thanks Not Kevin and Strangely – it's really about all of us working together, isn't it?
Not sure about time-frames. I'll ask my friend Lynndell at Eagle Research Associates as he seems to have a better handle on those kinds of things.
I was amused by some of the comments from the locals following the publication of the Google sues Pacific Webworks story in the Salt Lake Tribune:
https://www.tribtowns.com/comments/read_comments.a…
And speaking of Utah scams – looks like our old friend Google Money Tree has not even paid their tiny little slap on the wrist fines from the Utah Division of Consumer Protection:
"A Sandy-based company claiming to allow people to make tens of thousands of dollars performing Web searches owes more than $40,000 in fines for scamming customers.
The Utah Division of Consumer Protection originally fined Infusion Media in April, but has yet to see any fines repaid.
While the company has not paid any of its fines, it did come up with $25,000 for Attorney General Mark Shurtleff's political action committee and another $5,000 for his re-election campaign. Though Shurtleff's office is involved in the filing against the company, he has not returned the political donations.
"It shows campaign contributions buy you nothing," Shurtleff said.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13946476
Er…..or perhaps campaign contributions buy you avoidance of some hefty Utah Attorney General action but you will get a little slap on the wrist instead just so we can tell people we are 'doing something'? Allegedly. After all what's 40k compared to the millions Google Treasure Chest / Money Tree were probably raking in?
Not saying he should give it back to the crooks but a charity donation or something related to helping the victims of these scams perhaps?
Seems some of the locals agree anyways:
https://www.tribtowns.com/comments/read_comments.a…
P.S. PWEB stock price down 53% today (ouch!) and it was already more than 50% off the recent high before this weeks events.
http://uk.reuters.com/business/quotes/chart?symbo…
@Not Kevin
Interesting local comment there! A user called Laytonian pulled out Eborn stuff that we already mostly had here: https://strangelyperfect.tv/4308/google-revolution…
However, they also provided a URL, http://watchdog.net/ein/870675411/moms-club, which shows that Burnside, Eborn's partner, is in it up to her neck, and also, a possible source for the sickenly frequent usage of the term "stay at home mom" across all the scam sites.
@Not Kevin
Thoughts on the plummeting share price… (~6 cents when I looked c.f. ~30 cents a month ago)
Since….
we know that this is a private company,
and has no dividend issued to date,
and that CEO Bell et al own all the shares,
and that they've probably got all their cash stashed away in Nevis, Switzerland, London or somewhere anyway,
and that they always probably expected to get caught at some point and thus planned for it,
Those comments are great. I epsecially liked this one:
"Just what does our Utah Attorney General do for a living. He must think we hired him to hide his records and those of his friends."
Ha. Was just coming over here to make sure you’ve seen this.
Damn, I wish I had shorted PW. LOL.
Ha ha, @Paul.
@Not Kevin beat us all to it!
You know, just once, it's nice to gloat, don't you think?
Me? I'm like a tail-ender on the coat-tails of a long-running saga. You, Paul, have been at these monsters a lot longer than I, and deserve a huge great pat on the back for plugging away against all the snide 'comments' and threats from the creeps, plus, all the heaps and heaps of people that you've personally helped.
Now, what we need is a secure victory, and some sort of regulation for commercial activity like this….
Because now that IPv6 and the whole web domain thing is going open with the full languages' character set, this sort of activity will just roll and roll without some brakes.
It's relatively easy for us English speakers to spot obvious no-no's on English websites…
What sort of multi-lingual police could ever hope to police such a thing as the new open internet? Not me by a long chalk.
We are fortunate that this PWW thing is basically US-based and that they've been sued by big operations with real financial clout.
Have you any ideas on that?
I wish I were wrong, but I don't think any of this is going to do much to stop the worst criminals – they're just too smart.
I think Pacific WebWorks was a whole different game than the smarter scam operations being run out of eastern Russia, using anonymous corps and bank accounts. They even have their affiliate base covered because they are now setting up private affiliate networks.
The U.S. SafeWeb Act was designed to facilitate crackdown on cross-border crime and it's starting be used on cases, but as you've pointed out it's gonna be really, really hard for law enforcement to keep up with crime rings operating out of so many different countries who can so easily remain anonymous (as the Jason Sharman study proved).
On a lighter note…looks like Google forgot to disable Pacific WebWorks Adwords account:
https://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2009/12/09/go…
LOL!
@Paul
It looks like Google is so big that it's left hand and right hand don't meet much…
This guy, Gauder, a source of much merry spam to myself, is having a bit of a whinge about Adword account closures today.
https://www.gauherchaudhry.com/google-adwords-drop…
A whole heap of folks join in on the anti-google banter. Bothered? Me, no. It's a free market. Let them start their own search engine in a garage….
The point is that Google's timing is a bit awry. They issue summons but don't cancel the defendant's account and keep taking money from him.
And to compound it, in a probably related action, they sweep through loads of advertisers, many of whom supply the spam for the PWW heart, and close THEIR accounts! This is probably the right action, but you'd think that they'd be able to join up the dots properly, wouldn't you?
At last! Google is finally taking legal action against these scams to protect it's brand name:
Google is asking a federal court to shut down sites that allegedly use the search company's name and logo to trick consumers into purchasing "work-at-home" kits.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in district court in Utah, Google alleges that Pacific WebWorks and other companies infringe Google's trademark by incorporating it in ads for phony products. "Defendants deceive the public by misusing the famous Google brand and Google marks to sell to consumers work-at-home kits purporting to train and enable consumers to earn money using Google services," the lawsuit alleges.
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Article…
Google Sues "Google Money" Scam Artists:
Fresh from the official Google blog, we have news that Google is taking a group of online scammers to court………..
Google is suing Pacific WebWorks and a rash of unnamed defendants.
Google wants the company to stop using its trademarks in any promotional materials. It is asking for a jury trial, and wants Pacific WebWorks to pay damages and reveal a full accounting of its profits.
https://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_sues_…
Also named in the suit are 50 "John Does" that Google alleges are complicit in the schemes. Those individuals will be named later in the suit as their identities are discovered.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/183979/google_sues…
The official Google blog:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/fighting-f…
The lawsuit:
https://www.google.com/googleblogs/pdfs/pwwcomplai…
Good to finally see the big legal guns move into position and take aim against these scams – better late than never!
Ye-hargh!
“At last” is the phrase. I wonder what took them so long, @Not Kevin?
The actual Google court brief is a killer. Google say that two court cases & injunctions have reduced some websites and changed some things, but that THOUSANDS MORE REMAIN – which is what we’ve been saying for half a year, and other websites for much longer.
(In point 35 they say that they’ve collared >1000 websites using the WHOIS service – you know, the hidden ones!!!)
The bit about the John Does is good. They are saying that as the folk are using fictitious names, they’ll sue them as fictional and plug them in when they find them. Crucially, they say that the operations of these people is key the the continuing expansion of the scam…… This is ALSO exactly what we’ve been saying. These are the people who are part of the get-rich-quick mentality and who think that the web is a vast cavern where you can rob and steal anonymously. Now Google, with the biggest weblogs in the world, just need to do a bit more in depth analysis to see where the roaches are hiding….. Nevis, anyone?
Google say in their charge, “Because they have operated as a common enterprise, each Defendant is jointly and severally liable for the unlawful and infringing acts alleged below…” This what we’ve been hammering on about. The templates and methods like fake blogs, testimonials etc are just passed around like a hash joint, appearing that no-one has any real control over it. But of course, that’s not the case. The templates are changed and tinkered with. Which proves that there is a broad central control.
All we need now is for the lily-livered lawyers at ABC, MSN, CNN, BBC, Guardian etc to join suit and flush this whole snake-oil morass into the open. We can then get back to using the web for it’s original purpose – information exchange and discourse, as Tim Berners-Lee intended. Not theft.
By the way. Any idea on Pacific Webworks stock price? I’d call it a ‘firm sell’, wouldn’t you?
Sad to say…..but I'm one of the ignorant victims of Pacific WebWorks. It started innocently as a trial offer of Google Profits for $1.97. After scrolling down and reading the fine print, I IMMEDIATELY called eBay Resources and Google Profits to cancel. (Side Note: I had been subscribed to eBay Resources unknowingly through the same application). Cancelled eBay fine, but surprisingly the Google Profits cancellation number was for a voicemail box…..which was FULL and could not receive messages! Stayed that way for every time I tried to call. Finally got a valid number from my bank statement, but took three calls to finally get someone on the line. Cancelled and got a confirmation number. My $47.50 was refunded…..until some other company I never heard of charged my account $99 a couple weeks later!! Guess who TQGonlinebizkit.com is associated with? Yup, Google Profits and Pacific WebWorks! I have fought tooth and nail with them, but they won't refund the money because they already sent me a CD, which is somehow worth $99! Honestly, I don't remember ever getting a CD from them, but continue to search. In the mean time, I have filed complaints with the BBB, FTC, and FBI's online fraud division (IC3). Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and one of them will do something…..doubtful though.
@Sadly Duped
Instigate a chargeback against the company!
This person had similar only last Sunday: https://www.ripoffreport.com/bait-and-switch/tqg-o…
…and this person yesterday: http://emie-myrecollection.blogspot.com/2009/11/t…
There are quite a few similar ones, mostly in the last few days.
Filing complaints is okay, but not so good for getting YOUR MONEY back. So just ask for a chargeback to your card company from these rogues. Trust me, they won't query it, and you still have plenty of time to get this done. When you've done it, it's up to the 'scam company' to prove that they have a rightful charge against you for a lawful 'service'. They always fold.
You'll probably have to cancel your card and get a new one.
That voicemail box being FULL as a valid 'customer service' contact point is a new one on me. What a bunch of crooks.
Good luck.
[Yes @John = Not Kevin] – lastpass filled in the name and email sections automatically without me noticing. 🙂
Some of the investors in Pacific Webworks just don't get it, do they – check this out:
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_…
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_…
Interesting how the share price went from 2c in early May 09 to 39c in late July – a twentyfold increase in 3 months before a 50% drop back down to 20p in early August:
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/PWEB
(1 year chart)
Ha Ha.
I prefer John – not so many letters!
As for your phrase "Investors in Pacific WebWorks"…?
There are two things you can do on the stock market:
1. Invest, and take long-term dividends from the company in return for you investing money as part of the working capital for the business.
2. Gamble. Here you take a short to medium term risk that the share price is going to move favourably to your gamble (especially if you're using options).
Now because PWW pay no dividends, it's obvious that it's only the second 'gamble' option that's available to you.
Mysteriously, (for a long-term company as one of those folks in your links pointed out), PWW doesn't pay dividends, even though they're claiming tens of millions of dollar's profit!
A real company would have enough self-confidence to offer dividends and broaden it's share uptake to increase it's working capital (If you check on one of the finance sites, you'll see that only 10-15% of it's 50 million odd shares are actually taken up!)
So they're not bothered. Period, as the Yanks say.
And if they're not bothered, what's their game?
Simple. Get rich quick. Suck in as many people as possible. Get all the money offshore before the balloon goes up. Then pay the $1m fine, secure in the knowledge that you've made $30m – and start again!!
My share recommendation?
Sell now, and quick!
These are some business info links on PWW (Pacific WebWorks). One contains a neat graph showing their meteoric rise in profits this year. However, always remember that even though you can buy shares in PWW, THEY DON'T PAY DIVIDENDS!!! All the money goes to the directors!:
https://www.goldmood.com/cosmos/h/PWEB.OB.html http://markets.on.nytimes.com/research/stocks/fun… https://www.naymz.com/pacific_webworks_2177179 https://www.rfpconnect.com/organization/pacific-we… http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks… (neat graphs)
https://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thr…
@John
You'll be aware that Pacific WebWorks (PWW) were formerly called Asphalt Associates, Inc until the last nineties, and that they bought Intellipay a bit after that?
Now, try these two for size in the U.K., the other day.
<img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46726000/jpg/_46726253_ball_brothers.jpg" alt="Two conmen from Gloucestershire who ran a million-pound tarmac-laying scam have been jailed at Plymouth Crown Court." /> see:Conmen jailed over tarmac scams
Now note that there is NO connection between these million pound asphalters and the former asphalters in Utah.
What I AM saying, is to check out what UK Trading Standards said about the gurning two below;
And now consider the similarities in the two operations, especially when referring to the Google Money Bollox of a few months back.
e.g.
<hr />You see, it's the same old game but…. Different country, different method, same targets, same results.
@John
I like the "Smells like we're going to pop tomorrow" comment from one contributor in your InVestorsHub link. That was on Thursday.
As for Monavie, there are some pretty clued-up folks there knocking back the Monavie clones at every step. They're brilliant at countering here-say with properly researched and presented fact.
In a court of law, that's what you have to do. And Oprah has got Monavie AND PWW right in her sights.
Now, are the BBC, CNN, ABC etc going to do the same thing and bring these scum down?
I hope so. The evidence is as clear as day. Myself and a host of others have bucket loads of real incriminating screen-dumps for anyone to use!
Wow – that Monavie page is a long read – some good comments though! 🙂
Speaking of comments – interesting comment on a stocks message board re Pacific Webworks Inc (PWEB):
"Anyone remember Commerce Planet ? Their stock soared on increasing earnings, but they had a platform similar to PWEB and eventually the complaints, suits and FTC investigations did them in. Their stock went from $3.50 down to .01 and then they were gone. These types of companies are quick-hit wonders and then they disappear. PWEB will be no different."
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp…
Well at least one of their potential investors/ former investors has a grip on reality!
Unlike some of the current stockholders!
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.asp…
Interesting change in their share price today too:
(-28.57%)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?b…
And that on the same day that they "reported record results". As you said above – bluster!
@Not Kevin
Yes. yes. yes. yes and Yes to everything you've said!!
I like the way you've kept my Bollochio reference going – neat!
One thing about the PWW profits. That's all bluster. Somewhere else on my website here, someone referred to their actual profits, month-on-month. NEARLY ALL the wodge of cash this year came in BEFORE the GTC/Eborn and the OPRAH court summons'. The graphs are actually flat now accordingly to that true business report which I can't currently find (not the Yorkshire based Utah puff which has some doubtful tales in it's pages because all it's stories are sourced from the people doing the plug!)…
So in true corporate stats massaging style, it IS better than last year, but as they've intimated in the bits you pulled out above, they've actually had a hell of a hit since the summer. Their employee count has actually dropped from 35 to 21 as well, which all ties in neatly, doesn't it!!
About the new rules you mentioned from December. In a related ferago of scammy scamsters, Monavie, on LazyMan's website, they're pointing out how Monavie distributors are doing the blog's round with exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims of Monavie's effectiveness. This is wholly against Monavie's (new) conditions (since they are one of the defendants in the Oprah case). These include the need to go on a 'training course' before they can post, and also that they must provide their distributor ID.
What this all means, is that the people's fight back is being successful all round, and that new laws CAN be draughted and implemented following people power and that even the companies (like Monavie) are taking action to save themselves…
See https://www.lazymanandmoney.com/monavie-scam-was-m… There are over 3,500 comments in this tread!!! Some of it is highly amusing.
Good comment – that could be a blog post on it's own! 🙂
This Pacific Webworks 'earnings statement' released yesterday makes interesting reading – well actually it's as dull as dishwater: all corporate speak bollochio – but one or two sentences are of interest:
Specifically:
"Our primary challenge continues to be in the area of managing our credit card processing demands with the unreasonable requirements of the credit card associations (i.e., Visa, Mastercard, etc.). Our continued success will be dependent upon our ability to constantly maintain sufficient processing capabilities to collect our multi-million dollar hosting portfolio."
Do you think they might be referring to all the chargebacks they have been getting? 🙂
So 'unreasonable' of Visa and Mastercard to try and crack down on unathorised transactions – how dare they!
And:
"In June and July of 2009 we experienced limited merchant account processing capabilities which created a situation where we could not satisfy payables to marketing partners. "
'limited merchant account processing capabilities'?
Another reference to chargebacks perhaps? And wasn't June/July around the time the FTC launched their big crackdown on Google Treasure Chest and other Utah scams?
And:
"We expect to see continued growth through 2009 and beyond. We have established excellent relationships with online media firms throughout the United States and anticipate working closely with them to expand our business."
"Online media firms?"
Could that be a reference to the cpa (cost per action) affiliate networks who are the 'middlemen' between Pacific webworks and the affiliates with the fake blogs and fake news sites?
The companies /networks which are listed on the left hand side when you search this site for 'Google' offers or 'Twitter' offers:
https://www.findaffiliateoffers.com/index.php?func…
[Names like Neverblue, Blue Phoenix Network, MediaTrust, Market Leverage, Global Ad Revolution, CPA Bullet, Clickbooth, MaxBounty, convert2media etc etc which show up on that site whatever scam related keyword you put in, be it the 'Google' and 'Twitter' stuff or teeth whitening (dazzle, premium white etc), acai, colon, crappy spyware/adware toolbars (zwinky anyone? etc etc……)
Clearly Pacific Webworks Inc is still raking in the cash though:
"For the first nine months of the year revenues totaled $21,624,424 compared to $7,351,878 for the first nine months of 2008, an increase of 194%."
https://www.your-story.org/pacific-webworks-report…
$21 million! With that amount of cash floating around they may yet attract the attention of some more class action lawyers or even the FTC?
Especially as there are some new FTC regulations coming into effect from 01 December:
https://www.walletblog.com/2009/10/deceptive-blogg… https://www.clickz.com/3635437
Just did a Google search on Pacific Webworks and the keywords triggered this adwords ad on the right hand side:
Work From Home Rip Off?
Scammed by work at home offer?
You may have a legal claim to get $
http://www.classactionconnect.com
🙂
Speaking of which, a bit more info in this article: https://www.courthousenews.com/2009/11/12/Work-At-…
And speaking of the Pacific Webworks scam empire – their latest offering is 'Tweet for Cash'
https:// secure4.s3curehost.com/tfc/
Also jumping on the Twitter bandwagon is 'Twitter Instant Cash'
https:// http://www.securelp.com/29/5/sale
Fill in some (false) info on the first page and click and it even claims to be "searching for work at home Twitter jobs in your area" (yeah right!) Amazingly no matter where you live it says "Congratulations…. we currently have positions available". And you can even pick your own earnings – more than $500 a day for 1 hour of work? No problem! After "checking against qualifications standards in your area" (WTF?)
I have been chosen! Amazing!
The people behind this pile of poop are CFN Media.com (who?) according to their privacy policy. But that also says "Where personal information is provided that enters a system of records, it is collected in compliance with section 33 (c) of the Alberta Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIP) Act. The University of Alberta collects, creates and maintains information for the purposes of admission, registration and other activities directly related to its education programs."
in your area"
University of Alberta!? WTF?
Although the domain was registered (on 9th Nov 2009) to an address in Texas:
3634 Long Prairie Rd.
Suite 108-113
Flower Mound, TX 75022 US
However if you click on their 'affiliates' link you get this company:
CPA Park
1042 N. El Camino Real
Suite B-226
Encinitas, CA 92024
(800) 787-9035
The "leader in performanced based marketing" apparently. Deceptive and misleading marketing might be more accurate!
@Not Kevin
That twitter thing is really putting on some weight now. I got my first spam along these lines a few days ago:
..and it appears to be ballooning.
I'm sure I've come across CPA Park and CFN Media before. Maybe I didn't write up any info on them..
That classactionconnect.com seems to be the inevitable consequence of the huge volume of scamsters out there and the even bigger volume of people stung by their scheming.
I predict that within a short time we'll have a lot more law companies jumping on THIS bandwagon, followed by a number of scams set up by the scammers pretending to be good white knights! I've already seen one like that in Utah!
Of course, the true way do it in a world governed by laws and international conventions, as well as the high tech internet world that allows spam to flow with impunity, is NOT to hire in fight-back merchants or self-help forums and websites.
No. This is bolting the stable door after the horse has gone.
The only way is to use laws and technology to catch the horse!
More importantly, it should be made physically and financially impossible for these merchants of theft to operate.
There've been a host of initiatives, especially on micropaymenting spam for instance, that only need concerted international government action that agrees a set of standards and behaviour.
People think that the internet is the Wild West where anything goes and you can disappear. But it isn't!
In that phrase lies the scammer's downfall. It just needs international action, similar to IEEE standards or the recent trillion dollar agreements around the credit crunch.
The key bit, I think, is to make the scammers get a financial hit just by doing their stuff. Spam would be easy – the system is already in place but not implemented. I wouldn't mind paying 0.01pence for every email I send!
Ads on webpages is a different thing though, and for this, Google holds all the cards and all the resources.
I'll be watching Rupert Murdoch's little game with Google closely in future as he intends to test them in the courts. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8351331.stm for Murdoch's tale.
Related, in a techy way, is the recent, and permanent X-Box block that Microsoft has placed on 600,000 live games users. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8356621.stm
It just shows the kind of things that are possible, and that all the while, people are coming up with new angles on the internet.
One constant angle though, is that the scammers have a very simple business model indeed. This simplicity has to be the way in to block and stop them.
"A class action complaint has been filed regarding "Work from Home" ads on the internet, asserting they are deceptive and misleading."
https://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/chicago-bar-tende…
Good on you Barbara Ford!
Well spotted!
This is the kind of thing we want. And just as it appears that PWW is rising up again on it's hind legs to frighten everyone with it's pathetic terms and conditions.
We need a few more like that -including that ridiculous "work from home, twitter is now hiring" fantasy advert that I spotted recently.
Barbara Ford, we salute you. Now will the rest of the conned people join her class action or start one of their own? It's hard, but in reality, the only people to do it are those that have been conned.
And they are publicly traded on the Over The Counter Market http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks…
Yeah. We’ve spotted their various share price & company infos previously. What’s interesting on the link you provided is two (main) things:
1. The shares shot up until mid-summer when the big FTC clampdown first happened. Since then they’ve been at a plateau in share price, so all the fluff where they say it’s a 208% rise in fortunes since 2008 is all actually in the first few months before all the anti-scam sites like yourself started hammering away at them, culminating in the FTC raid and the later Oprah court case etc.
2. Despite all the fluff about rising share price, THE COMPANY PAYS NO DIVIDENDS!!!! In other words, the only way to invest in this company is to hope that the price keeps rising, which is exactly the mentality of the banks and traders that led to the Credit Crunch. This means from the off that this company isn’t expected to be ‘sustainable’ so for all those ‘investors’ making the ‘strong buy’ recommendations as in an early @Not Kevin’s comment above, http://finance.yahoo.com/ – I’d not personally trust one syllable of it. Because it’s all anonymous in the forums, it’s probably the Larsen & Bell troops doing the posts anyway.
The sales puff in that report makes interesting reading as it reveals the total superficiality of the whole scammy setup. This is a cracker:
Well dah? What do you expect from an online credit card processing system? !!!
They also have:
…well dah? Amazon do that for you for nothing!!!
And for my final “well dah?” from their spiel, this one is good:
As anyone with more than a hint of web experience will know, my webhost does all that, for nothing; Google do all that, for nothing; I have a heap of plugins for my website that do all that, for nothing!!!
From your link, it’s also nice to know that all those $79 per month ripoffs have raked in $373,000 for the two Bell directors and $181,000 for the Larsen chappie…. Now Larsen. There’s a name I’ve heard before….. Hmmm. Could it be Monavie, the highly expensive fruit drink that makes all sorts of Lazarus type claims from it’s distributors and has an interesting line in charity’? See https://www.lazymanandmoney.com/monavie-scam/#comment-152048 plus all the rest of the work on that scam.
Finally, your post reveals a change in the number of employees at the business. Earlier I reported 34 from one business website – this link of yours says the number is only 21 now.
I've taken the liberty of seeing what wonderful things the "Amazon Amazing Webstore" can do.
Firstly, check out the amazing header image from the website at a typical website, say;
<img class="size-medium wp-image-6756 " title="Amazon Webstore Header Image" src="https://strangelyperfect.tv/wp-content/uploads/uk_index_011-600×135.jpg" alt="Amazon Webstore Header Image" width="420" height="95" />
<img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-6758" title="Amazing WebStores – Full Page" src="https://strangelyperfect.tv/wp-content/uploads/Amazing-WebStores_1257278750737-86×86.jpg" alt="Amazing WebStores – Full Page" width="86" height="86" />It certainly has all the style and charisma I've come to expect from Pacific Webworks!
But is it Pacific Webworks? A quick WHOIS pulls out this info for On1inetrack.com:
Well there we are!
So What's the Problem?
There's no problem about someone selling something that is freely available on the internet – caveat emptor, as they say.
The fact that anyone can set up their own Amazon web store for nothing, using all the myriad of various tools that Amazon provide, is beside the point.
The point lies in the following small selection of complaints:
http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-800-497-4988/12 https://www.ripoffreport.com/On-Line-Business/TQG-… http://forums.n4g.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=731569&mpag… http://freebiescoop.com/amazon-amazing-webstore http://ezinearticles.com/?id=1885064 https://www.amazon.com/AMAZONS-VARIOUS-SCAMS/forum…
This is the real Amazon Webstore which you can try for a month. If you are prepared to put in a bit of extra work, free 'stores' of your own invention can easily be incorporated in any website you choose…
http://webstore.amazon.com/
What we are seeing is a rise in the incidence of Pacific Webworks' Amazing Webstore in the complaints section of various consumer-type websites.
What is happening is that the old Google Money Kit complaints are morphing across.
The Reason?
PWW is just changing the product, that's all. Everything else is the same, or similar as before.
Same phone numbers.
Same Terms & Conditions.
Same servers.
Same IP addresses. (see https://www.robtex.com/dns/visualwebtools.com.html…
Same addresses.
Same artwork style.
So what do you expect?
Same complaints. Just check on1inetrack.com in Google search to see how this domain's complaints change through the years…
I have went and checked out the Microsoft claim and sadly they are a Gold level partner but not for development. For hosting.
https://solutionfinder.microsoft.com/Partners/Par…
Thanks Matt.
Microsoft are strangely non-committal to answering exactly what are the criteria for joining. There's lots of huff and puff about 'benefits' and 'advantages' and 'partnerships', but no real guts on the stringency of this 'agreement'….
The answer, is that anyone with a LiveID (like hotmail) account, which is the piss-easiest thing in the world to do, can then login and fill in an online form for your 'business', tick a few boxes, give Microsoft some money, and then that's it!
I didn't go all the way and pay, but I've a sneaking suspicion that the more you pay or the bigger the perceived size of your 'company', the golder you become! How much reverse checking Microsoft actually does on any business, I don't know. I suspect as long as you have a real email and physical addresses, then you are considered kosher as long as you pay.
This thing seems wholly different to the MCP qualification for It pros which is pretty hard to get and takes a wodge of study. All the developers in the forums with this stuck after their name always seem pretty clued up in my experience.
These pacific webworks peeps have got me… i stupidly got suckered in by the google toolkit for less than five bucks..now had 3 x 70 bucks installments taken out and had changed by bank card etc but just noticed on my statement today they have taken another £44. (approx $70)! i am getting really depressed about it, am already in debt and struggling i dont know what to do…any help in stoppin them? It started with Pacific Weblinks EAuction but the very recent reference on my bank statement as at 18 Sept has now changed to 0048927121 followed by 8669931421WEBBIZGO (being a new reference which i could not find on an internet search)…
Any help/advice on what i can do please help!
Silver
London, UK
@Silver
You must instigate charge-backs insisting to your bank that the company has fraudulently taken money from you. When you change a card, money can still be drawn against it because of the nature of contracts. As part of your T&C with the bank, it'll say that you are responsible for monies drawn against the account that have been contractually agreed
with a 3rd party (the shop/online store/conman etc). Have you tried cancelling the payments in the ways that should be stated on your statements/receipts? If you have tried, but have not had any terminations then this is definitely fraudulent business practice. You must get those charge-backs instigated and even then money will still be taken although you should eventually get it all back because the scammers invariably fold rather than argue with the card companies.
The ref# 8669931421WEBBIZGO is an accounting number by the look of it and is a re-arranged "Go Web Biz" that I spotted a while back but all tied up with Pacific Webworks etc. That number is a big one and shows how many times they've suckered people in! This is the investigation into "Go Web Biz", basically an older scam with new clothes. https://strangelyperfect.tv/4971/is-this-the-new-g…
This is a RipOff Report I found about the same lot: https://www.ripoffreport.com/Work-at-Home-Business…
The important thing to watch out for if you haven't been scammed is the plethora of varying, but similar names the scammers use.
The important thing for you is to get that charge-back in and get your money back.
If you don't know how to get charge-backs going, watch the Chris Malta video.
Good luck.
https://youtu.be/QHxSx47XDtA
Pacific Webworks are now advertising a free startup kit for making money working for Google through facebook (usually disguised as mystery shopping ad)and are specifically targetting the UK. I was scammed and within 2 weeks of signing up fraud against my contracted mobile phone also occurred! I do NOT think this is coincidental!!!! I have seen the rip off report and the number of complaints has been steadily rising. Somebody needs to put an end to this company trading and there should be heavy penalties and jailtime incurred.
@Sue
Yes. It looks like they are attacking us from new angles. I've had a hod-full of spams arriving recently on the email address I used to test their "privacy policy" for things like "competition winner", "free Dell Laptop if I answer a simple question or two" etc. I've even been promised a new kitchen!
As you say, this is all UK-type stuff. Other countries prioritise consumer paraphernalia in a different way so we in the UK are definitely being targeted. I wonder if it's Durham or Essex based?
How do you think they got your mobile number and account? You must have filled a box in?
Grand Dragon ringleader! That's a funny post. 🙂
That picture of “Dr.” John Porter looks very familiar – can't think where I have seen it before though.
I did a search for Ryan Riddle and got some sites about an American football player. Maybe it's a deliberately chosen (fake?) name which matches someone semi-famous so that when people search for it they find the 'famous' person?
However when I added the word scam to the search I found this: https://www.fresh866.com/qy/20060702210359AAJJKgw which suggests a connection with iworks.com of 249 East Tabernacle St. George, Utah 84770 – (435) 688-0634
Their homepage shows their 'partners' include:
Google Money Profit, livinglean, Grant Resource Center, networkagenda and fit factory, all of which have lots of unhappy customers complaining on complaintboard.com and ripoffreport!
Raven Media was also mentioned in a BBB warning about grant scams in March after almost 500 complaints against them:
https://www.workathometruth.com/blog/2009/03/08/bb…
Actually, Ryan Riddle is not a made up name. He is the GM for iworks, a related company who is the subject of many of these comments. I personally have had business dealings with him while he was manager of another business. I found him to be a smug, conniving person who ultimately was fired for his underhanded dealings at Newby Body Shop in St. George, UT. I see he has branched out to go after a broader group of people now. Too bad the previous company did not press charges against him sooner.
Thanks Jack.
Your addition is a good reason for leaving comments open on old posts, because you never know when new information will come to light.
The comment from 'rudum' sums it up nicely:
"They give you a cheap WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor and an over priced merchant account to charge credit cards. They supposedly offer coaching and training, but not from anyone who has ever run a successful online business. All of the coaches I worked with had never set up a website before working for the company."
https://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/50417965-79/co…
And there is nothing that Pacific Webworks software offering does which you cannot get for free or low cost elsewhere!
Ryan Riddle's connection to the Newby Body Shop (car repairs?) is interesting. Grant scams originating from iWorks have caused such problems for my legitimate grants company in Australia that I've been following the business movements of its principal Jeremy Johnson. This millionaire from St. George, Utah (no surprises) has set up a new venture in California called Elite Debit that offers merchant debit card processing services.
Its website, true to form, is full of teasers and high tech images, but no verifiable details, so I viewed the source, and found some of its (renamed)images appeared in only one other place – the directory of a yahoo build-it-yourself website featuring a Body Shop in St. George!
A street address used by Elite Debit also turned out to be the same as a body repair shop. I have lots more info about these people and their network of scam operations if anyone is interested.
Newby's body shop is associated with a local family(not Jeremy Johnson) owned car dealership, that when the family found out what Ryan Riddle was doing to their business, promptly fired him. They are a reputable family with a good name in town. This was back in 2001 I believe, and Ryan had no ownership, so I doubt he was involved in the website planning. What was the address and name of the body shop that showed up for elite debit? I lived in St. George for a few years and still have family in the area so I can shed light on questions you may have.
I remember a a car place popping up last year in my research into all of this. See:
https://strangelyperfect.tv/6263/scamvictimhelp-co… and others from around that time. The guy (called Vowell) and the car showroom(s) were all in St George!!
Now this seems like a mighty big co-incidence to me. St George has a population of about twice that of Bridgwater, of 70k+ according to Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._George,_Utah
So….
Newby's is a professionally run GM dealership/body shop and Executive Car sales was just another fly by night auto dealer which had a reputation as being a shady establishment around town. The only connection between the two is Ryan Riddle who was the body shop manager at Newby's is acquainted with Jason Vowell (they are facebook friends). In a relatively small town, these guys are similar in age and I'm sure are good friends. After his firing, I'm sure his friends were ready to sweep him into their internet underground.
@Jack
I forgot to check out FaceBook for them, so thanks for that! I've found that social networking seems to be a bit of an Achilles heel for these folks, as they can't resist the temptation to brag or even expand the scam a bit more – after all, what use is new money if you can't tell everyone you know about how much you've got?
Because of the tight-knittedness in the Utahn communities, what do you know about the Larsen name and any connections therein?
I'm not familiar with any Larsen's in the area.
Oh well…. they must all be in Salt Lake City then…
Butsfield Lane rears it's ugly head again:
eauctionlab.com
gives their address as:
Sensei Systems Ltd
10 Butsfield Lane Knitsley, Co.Durham Consett DH8 9EN United Kingdom
But is registered to:
Cameron McPherson
8683 Sandy Pkwy
84070
Utah
Sandy
US
This chap: http://grantripoff.com/update2.html
Seems that The Seller's Lounge and eauctionlab.com are the same outfit:
https://www.google.com/search?q=EAUCTIONLAB&ie…
@Not Kevin
Very funny indeed. It just shows how lightly they take any possible chance that they'll get caught – either that, or they don't believe they are doing anything wrong! I wonder how long before Cameron's (or whatever his real name is) MySpace is cancelled like Eborn did to his?
I particularly liked Cameron's idea of setting up a company with two names, but they're both himself! Neat. Cut out the middle man.
@Not Kevin
A new name for the scamster catalogue!!
I've recently had a hit from https://www.tinkeringmonkey.com/index.php/gaarg-ri… where it's detailed some dodgy dealings with another Grants cowboy. A comment give us the name of Ryan Riddle, yet another person with a heady mix of names, websites and companies! Check out the CallFerret for a wodge in this area.. .https://www.callferret.com/866-530-3502.html
As always, all roads eventually lead to Utah! there are a few possible sightings of the geezer as well.
Pacific WebWorks Benefits from Current Economic Environment:
https://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090721005014&newsLang=en
“We believe that the current economic challenges have contributed to this growth, as there are many more people that are recently unemployed or looking for a second income but do not have the resources to devote to an expensive product that may or may not be what they need. We provide that opportunity for those with limited capital to invest,” stated Ken Bell, CEO.”
Well….that’s one way of putting it!
I am sure their many ‘satisfied’ customers may have a different interpretation!
They're just dismal, aren't they?
In that link, which is a nice bit of business ad puff, they can't even say that they are doing well and things will probably get better without a huge disclaimer.
Instead of "prospects look good and we hope and expect this to continue", they say:
…sorry. I appear to have nodded off there.
So right from top bod Bell the shifting devious behaviour starts. It's as though they have to be like it at all times and cannot behave otherwise.
I mean, even top companies like BP etc don't bother with this claptrap. They'll say "difficult market conditions..blah blah…expect good performance next year because…etc"
I mean, we know they are opinions – it's obvious. All they have do is say 'probably'.
Clear? Now what's this?
<img src="https://strangelyperfect.tv/wp-content/uploads/spade1.jpg" alt="Calling a spade a spade" />
A. A spade.
Going back to Pacific Webworks – customers of whom may be surprised to know that their email address is for sale to anyone prepared to pay for it.
"These prospects are perfect for mailers offering business opportunities, travel discounts and benefits, various insurance benefits, office supplies, Internet-related products and services, self-improvement products, productivity software, magazine offers, credit card offers, and much more."
http://datacards.geonmedia.com/market;jsessionid=…
Spamorama!
Profit Studio Learning: profitstudiolearning.com "Your Personal Google ATM!" – is yet another Pacific Web Works outfit. Unsuprisingly a search on the name reveals a multitude of complaints:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=profit…
https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=profit…
Spamorama indeed! I’ve highlighted this GEON website before. For Pacific WW, it’s a 5000 name minimum order… I’ve BEEN one of those names ha ha! In fact, I still am! The follow through links at the page bottom are worth a peruse as it shows the various “niches” that they like to divide themselves into. Also, take note of how they describe the actual mailing list – there are some subtle differences and wordings that reveal more than at first glance….This is Pacific’s:
It’s basically the “gopher” mentality of double-glazing salesmen that I’ve alluded to previously. A “gopher” was someone on a council estate with a new front door! It meant that they’d bought their house (under the right to buy scheme), and if they’d “go for” that, they’d “go for” anything!
This is exactly the same – someone buys into Pacific WW/Google Treasure Bollox etc, and then they are hammered for every promotion going. They’re “gophers”, and behind that little joke lies the whole nest of grasping deceit that this “industry” lives by.
Spamorama indeed. What happened to industries that turned a profit by just making things that are useful and beneficial to people’s lives? Not everything has to be Goldmann Sachs inspired does it?
Cowburgers! Well spotted. As you point out, that 10 Butsfield Lane KnitÂsÂley Co.Durham ConÂsett DH8 9EN address is heaving with Ltd companies, most in the porn industry it seems.
Quite appropriate given the street name! 10 Butsfield Lane is the home of:
421 ENTERTAINMENT LIMITED, Gigastar Ltd, Massive Online Limited, Clickpro Media Ltd, Digital Traffic Ltd , Kobai Group Ltd, Deep Cyberthought Ltd, Stone Quarry Ltd, SONNETT LIMITED – and that's just from the first 3 pages of Google results:
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=fir…
Haven't looked into the others but that last one SONNETT LTD has been around a while (since: 20-04-2004) but seems to change either director and/or secretary on an annual basis: https://www.ukdata.com/creditreports/viewCompanyD… shows a "change of directors or secretaries or in their particulars" in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009!
Ha Ha. I wasn't going to comment on the street address, but I'm glad someone has!
It could be that this is one of the key addresses or culprits(?) in the region, when I was thinking aloud, as in "the Mind of Mr J G Reeder", about the various methods to set things up in County Durham. see https://strangelyperfect.tv/4308/google-revolution-different-name-same-scam/#comment-1669
Because of the concentration of businesses, most being 2-3 months old, tops, there has to be someone in the area to look after stuff.
Also, have you seen that Jesse Willms has now pulled his picture/profile completely from Facebook? Ha Ha. See https://strangelyperfect.tv/4308/google-revolution-different-name-same-scam/#comment-1677
In light of what you've said, he had a bit of an Arnhem moment there (one photo too far), and will now keep his one page sites sat where they are until the smoke clears?
Just found this which may amuse you:
Pacific WebWorks’ Add Fraud Protection for Customers – 11/30/2007
https://www.spamlaws.com/spamlaws_news10.html
Thanks. What more can I say after reading that? Gad!
Interesting. Their stock price has shot up recently – check out the chart!
https://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=PWEB.OB#chart1…
They even have "ripoff" and "scam" complaints on their Yahoo stock info message board! :
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_…
Which is where I found this thread:
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_(A_to_Z)… where someone posted a link to this Squidoo lens: https://www.squidoo.com/pacificwebworks – it's a good read with a happy ending. 🙂
The author also mentions another company called Sellers Lounge and asks "Another Company doing the same thing: The Seller's Lounge
I wonder if this company is related to Pacific Webworks…" and gives the address from their terms as:
The Sellers Lounge
Attn: General Counsel
831 E. 340 S.
Suite 200
American Fork, UT 84003
Well, well, well – it's the same address as Steve Comer!
You can read more about Sellers Lounge here:
https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/sellers…
Google Revolution also had an address with Attn: General Counsel – you have to wonder about a company when they give their correspondence address with instructions to mark it for the attention of their lawyers!
Going back to Pacific Webworks…
BBB shows that the Utah Division of Consumer Protection told them to clean up their act in 2007: https://www.bbb.org/utah/business-reviews/computer…
2 years later and it appears they have not yet mended their wiley ways…
As the author of abovementioned Squidoo lens put it: "Holy cowburgers! Wake up Utah! You cannot have companies like this doing business in your state!!!!!"
Holy Cowburgers! You're gonna like this!
I followed the squidoo link to thesellerslounge.net. Yada-yada-yada. Check the address at the bottom of the T&Cs
It's that General Counsel again!
My current opinion is that the General Counsel isn't a legal body. I think it's a politico-religious thing where they all sit round in a circle and discuss stuff, like the Amish or something. Probably wearing pointy black hats and smoking clay pipes. (ah yes, that's good Reesy – I've got a mental picture now…). Okay. Keep that thought!
In this particular case, they're probably trying to think up some more daft website and company names to disguise the heavy duty porn and scams. There are already a heavenly host of such things. The "best" IMHO, was called "Deep Cyberthought Ltd" which seems to be running superpornmegasite.com
Now seeing as how it's Consett, I'll finish by saying:
(what we really need is a decent Steve Comer picture….somehow, a visualisation of these crook charmers makes it so much better