Info Post
Ok, I'm making this post public so everyone can see it because it needs to be seen.
EDIT: Ok it needs a cut. This is long...
I got a call from a friend of mine tonight, we'll call him B. B is young, smart, rather naive and currently tying to start his own business. Earlier today he called me because he wanted to let me know about a "business opportunity." From the sound it he's fallen hard for a snake oil sellers pitch. I'm posting here to pass the word about these scammers so no one else gets caught up in them. I've reported this seller to the consumer fraud watch website and depending on their information in their response I may report this person to the FBI. From the looks of it this scheme is ~juuust~ barely this side of legal so reporting it may do absolutely bupkiss.
y
When B called me, he let me speak to the Scammer, who proceeded to try and lure me in. He tried to interest me in a "business opportunity". He tried to lure me in with promises that made me secretly want to laugh. It went something like this:
-Scammer uses buzzwords and talks about how I could be my own boss and own my own business. I snort and try not to laugh over the phone at him because I already own my own business. Not buying it.
-Scammer insists I can choose my own hours and work very little time. He's barking up the WRONG tree. I love to work. I like what I do. I go crazy when I'm stagnant. Screw working very little and being a lazy bastard. Give me rigging, give me challenges, give me stained glass to make. I wanna use my hands and my brain!
-Scammer says he knows I'm a college student and don't have time but since this would be a "team effort" the time I spend would be very little but the rewards great. I say nothing. Scammer tries to entice me by insisting it's a great job opportunity. To which I respond I already HAVE a great job opportunity- I'm getting my masters degree in visualization and working on my thesis and thus have not time for BS like this. Scammer sounds put out. He mentions B told him that I was applying to work at Dreamworks and he sounds less than pleased about this- he's apparently relying on the bad economy to lure suckers into this scheme and is less than thrilled that I already have job prospects (good prospects!) OTHER than his scam.
I HAD told B that I'd look into it seriously and the scammer ignored all my "not interested, I have an actual job I'm interested in, not your scam" comments so I let him win and gave him my email so he could send me information. The scammer then told me "Great, I'll send you an email along with your username and password." Wait, woah, hold your horses, WHAT?? Password?? "I thought you were sending me information, not signing me up for something, why are you sending me a password?" Apparently the information he's sending me is private. Its "just for us, not everyone else." Oh yeah, THAT'S NOT FISHY AT ALL. All good businesses don't want their practices and information given to the public. Of course not! Cue "scammer!" alarm bells going off in my head, as if they weren't already by this point.
Here is the email I received (in HTML no less, none could be displayed inline- more shrieking of the "scammer" alarm bells):
"Hi Heather Howard
Please click on the link below and enter in the password provided.
Your login information:
Link: http://dyfonline.com?ltd=1131555
Email: falconsong@falconsongstudios.com
Password: 4745
Regards,
Melvin Reed
melvinreed@ltdteam.com"
As I promised B I went to the site and watched the (password protected) video. [BTW I did not censor the password or the name of the person here. When he sent me the information he told me it was just for us BUT he never asked me not to disclose it and never told me I wasn't to disclose any of what we spoke about. Therefore, it's fair game to post.]
Now, everything about this REEKS of a scam:
- The "information" is not freely available, it's only available to the people they're trying to scam.
- The website gives NO INFORMATION AT ALL. It just alludes to making lots of money very easily with little hours put into work.
- There's no contact information at all, just a form. (What kind of business has NO CONTACT INFO?)
- The website does not give the who, what, when, where or why. (It's actually rather amazing that they somehow managed to not give you ANY details. That takes some skill.)
- When looking up the information in the domain name on a whosis lookup it says the person who registered it is "Domains by Proxy" which means whoever registered dfyonline.com used a proxy company as a registrar to avoid their name being published. A paranoid individual who doesn't want their name on the net might do this but a legitimate business? Never.
- The domain name for the site (dyfonline.com) is different than the domain name for the e-mail (@ltdteams.com) which is different from the "company name" on the site (Reeds Enterprises).
After seeing the site and the video I was convinced this was a scam and told B as much. He's insisting that if he tells me more about the company I'll have a better view of things and think it's not a scam. He told me it's a company like Amway. (Amway is questionable and while it's legal it's ethically very shady.) After speaking with him I went to find more information about this parent company. Here's my findings:
WHen I tried to find (google) information about the company via the name or the domain name I got NOTHING. No reviews, no people who had interacted with the company (positive or negative), nothing. So I tried looking up LTD (from the email @ltdteams.com) and it seems that the main company this snake oil seller works for is Quixar. When I told B that this was a giant scam and not to go near them with a ten foot pole he tried to explain that the company is "like Amway". When he said that you get money for selling things my response was "Oh, so an MLM scheme." to which he then said "you also get money for recruiting people which made me go "wait, isn't that a pyramid scheme. That's illegal."
Here's the digging I did on Quixar:
http://otter.covblogs.com/archives/016874.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4375477/
http://www.corporatenarc.com/quixtar.php
Apparently Quixar is the Christian version of Amway. Or rather "Quixtar sounded a little like Amway--a company which drew the ire of the federal government several years back for making false promises to recruits? Well it turns out Quixtar isn't just like Amway -- it was Amway. Quixtar is just its new incarnation with many of the same players." ( source) It BARELY manages to avoid being a pyramid scheme and is just a hair this side of legal. It really is a scam- like all scams it sounds good and theoretically you CAN make money off of it, but that's like saying Pigs CAN fly (you just have to work hard enough at bending physical laws or have a very liberal view of the term "fly"). The people on the bottom of the pyramid make bupkiss; they spend oodles of money on seminars and motivational tapes. "According to Quixtar scam's own disclosure document the average monthly gross income for an "active" IBO is $115 (or $1,380 annually).
In the Amway scam business, only 41% meet these criteria as being "active." This also means that 59% of all distributors are NOT active.A with a business where over half of all the people aren't doing anything to increase their business?
Out of ALL distributors, only 0.82% qualifies as a Direct-level distributor. This means that 99.18% of all distributors do not qualify as a Direct-level distributor.A company where 99.18% are unsuccessful.
If you are earning 70$ per month you are in the top 11% of earners." (Source)
_________________________________________________________________________________________
For those artists here in my watchers I found some interesting posts by Classical months ago and kept meaning to post them.
Bad Advice 101 and
Five lessons from the Academy
________________________________________________________________________________________________
In the list of things I've meant to share and have not done so yet:
Michael Pollan gives a plants Eye View on Ted talks. I love Michael Pollan. He is smart and has a lot of good ideas.
"Because the vagina can take a lot of punishment."- David Rakoff speaks on The Daily Show with John Stewart I need to get Rakoffs book. The man is hilarious. I cried I laughed so hard from that quote.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Wish me luck!
EDIT: Ok it needs a cut. This is long...
I got a call from a friend of mine tonight, we'll call him B. B is young, smart, rather naive and currently tying to start his own business. Earlier today he called me because he wanted to let me know about a "business opportunity." From the sound it he's fallen hard for a snake oil sellers pitch. I'm posting here to pass the word about these scammers so no one else gets caught up in them. I've reported this seller to the consumer fraud watch website and depending on their information in their response I may report this person to the FBI. From the looks of it this scheme is ~juuust~ barely this side of legal so reporting it may do absolutely bupkiss.
y
When B called me, he let me speak to the Scammer, who proceeded to try and lure me in. He tried to interest me in a "business opportunity". He tried to lure me in with promises that made me secretly want to laugh. It went something like this:
-Scammer uses buzzwords and talks about how I could be my own boss and own my own business. I snort and try not to laugh over the phone at him because I already own my own business. Not buying it.
-Scammer insists I can choose my own hours and work very little time. He's barking up the WRONG tree. I love to work. I like what I do. I go crazy when I'm stagnant. Screw working very little and being a lazy bastard. Give me rigging, give me challenges, give me stained glass to make. I wanna use my hands and my brain!
-Scammer says he knows I'm a college student and don't have time but since this would be a "team effort" the time I spend would be very little but the rewards great. I say nothing. Scammer tries to entice me by insisting it's a great job opportunity. To which I respond I already HAVE a great job opportunity- I'm getting my masters degree in visualization and working on my thesis and thus have not time for BS like this. Scammer sounds put out. He mentions B told him that I was applying to work at Dreamworks and he sounds less than pleased about this- he's apparently relying on the bad economy to lure suckers into this scheme and is less than thrilled that I already have job prospects (good prospects!) OTHER than his scam.
I HAD told B that I'd look into it seriously and the scammer ignored all my "not interested, I have an actual job I'm interested in, not your scam" comments so I let him win and gave him my email so he could send me information. The scammer then told me "Great, I'll send you an email along with your username and password." Wait, woah, hold your horses, WHAT?? Password?? "I thought you were sending me information, not signing me up for something, why are you sending me a password?" Apparently the information he's sending me is private. Its "just for us, not everyone else." Oh yeah, THAT'S NOT FISHY AT ALL. All good businesses don't want their practices and information given to the public. Of course not! Cue "scammer!" alarm bells going off in my head, as if they weren't already by this point.
Here is the email I received (in HTML no less, none could be displayed inline- more shrieking of the "scammer" alarm bells):
"Hi Heather Howard
Please click on the link below and enter in the password provided.
Your login information:
Link: http://dyfonline.com?ltd=1131555
Email: falconsong@falconsongstudios.com
Password: 4745
Regards,
Melvin Reed
melvinreed@ltdteam.com"
As I promised B I went to the site and watched the (password protected) video. [BTW I did not censor the password or the name of the person here. When he sent me the information he told me it was just for us BUT he never asked me not to disclose it and never told me I wasn't to disclose any of what we spoke about. Therefore, it's fair game to post.]
Now, everything about this REEKS of a scam:
- The "information" is not freely available, it's only available to the people they're trying to scam.
- The website gives NO INFORMATION AT ALL. It just alludes to making lots of money very easily with little hours put into work.
- There's no contact information at all, just a form. (What kind of business has NO CONTACT INFO?)
- The website does not give the who, what, when, where or why. (It's actually rather amazing that they somehow managed to not give you ANY details. That takes some skill.)
- When looking up the information in the domain name on a whosis lookup it says the person who registered it is "Domains by Proxy" which means whoever registered dfyonline.com used a proxy company as a registrar to avoid their name being published. A paranoid individual who doesn't want their name on the net might do this but a legitimate business? Never.
- The domain name for the site (dyfonline.com) is different than the domain name for the e-mail (@ltdteams.com) which is different from the "company name" on the site (Reeds Enterprises).
After seeing the site and the video I was convinced this was a scam and told B as much. He's insisting that if he tells me more about the company I'll have a better view of things and think it's not a scam. He told me it's a company like Amway. (Amway is questionable and while it's legal it's ethically very shady.) After speaking with him I went to find more information about this parent company. Here's my findings:
WHen I tried to find (google) information about the company via the name or the domain name I got NOTHING. No reviews, no people who had interacted with the company (positive or negative), nothing. So I tried looking up LTD (from the email @ltdteams.com) and it seems that the main company this snake oil seller works for is Quixar. When I told B that this was a giant scam and not to go near them with a ten foot pole he tried to explain that the company is "like Amway". When he said that you get money for selling things my response was "Oh, so an MLM scheme." to which he then said "you also get money for recruiting people which made me go "wait, isn't that a pyramid scheme. That's illegal."
Here's the digging I did on Quixar:
http://otter.covblogs.com/archives/016874.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4375477/
http://www.corporatenarc.com/quixtar.php
Apparently Quixar is the Christian version of Amway. Or rather "Quixtar sounded a little like Amway--a company which drew the ire of the federal government several years back for making false promises to recruits? Well it turns out Quixtar isn't just like Amway -- it was Amway. Quixtar is just its new incarnation with many of the same players." ( source) It BARELY manages to avoid being a pyramid scheme and is just a hair this side of legal. It really is a scam- like all scams it sounds good and theoretically you CAN make money off of it, but that's like saying Pigs CAN fly (you just have to work hard enough at bending physical laws or have a very liberal view of the term "fly"). The people on the bottom of the pyramid make bupkiss; they spend oodles of money on seminars and motivational tapes. "According to Quixtar scam's own disclosure document the average monthly gross income for an "active" IBO is $115 (or $1,380 annually).
In the Amway scam business, only 41% meet these criteria as being "active." This also means that 59% of all distributors are NOT active.A with a business where over half of all the people aren't doing anything to increase their business?
Out of ALL distributors, only 0.82% qualifies as a Direct-level distributor. This means that 99.18% of all distributors do not qualify as a Direct-level distributor.A company where 99.18% are unsuccessful.
If you are earning 70$ per month you are in the top 11% of earners." (Source)
_________________________________________________________________________________________
For those artists here in my watchers I found some interesting posts by Classical months ago and kept meaning to post them.
Bad Advice 101 and
Five lessons from the Academy
________________________________________________________________________________________________
In the list of things I've meant to share and have not done so yet:
Michael Pollan gives a plants Eye View on Ted talks. I love Michael Pollan. He is smart and has a lot of good ideas.
"Because the vagina can take a lot of punishment."- David Rakoff speaks on The Daily Show with John Stewart I need to get Rakoffs book. The man is hilarious. I cried I laughed so hard from that quote.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Wish me luck!