The Email

The unsolicited email comes from Fredrick Brugh at fredrickbrugh949@hotmail.com.

Hello,

I am Edward Sutton, a job officer of G and M Stacey, Inc. Currently we are hiring additional personnel. If you are looking for a primary income or for an extra income it should be a great opportunity for you.

First, let me tell you more about our company. G and M Stacey, Inc. were established in 1964 by George and Mary Stacey in a Denmark as a family business. They were a second generation of jewelers and we still have a hand on approach with our business. Any jewelry needs at all when you want to give a remembrance gift that comes from your heart.

Currently we are expanding to North America. As most of businesses we are working on Buy and Sell principle. It means that we can buy something from a manufacturer and sell to customer without any production teams. Our experts examined the USA domestic market and it is obvious that a great taxation system creates a best price for such kind of jewelry like a diamonds, and factory-made gold items.

It means that the same thing for example a 2.5 ct. Round diamond VG/I/VS1 w/GIA certification costs ~USD16,300 in US and ~13,000 Euro (~USD19,200) in the Denmark. So all we need to do is just to buy a diamond or gold it the States and sell it in the Europe. Yes, we are a middleman.

But most of U.S. wholesale jewelry companies (such big as Szul), doesn’t offer an international shipping. We need someone to buy the merchandise and to ship it abroad.

To prevent the further questions – you will not cash any bogus checks or fraud transactions. Also you will not spend your own money for the merchandise. You will receive Company’s funds directly to your account and buy the merchandise only when the funds will be available.

Do not hesitate to contact me though email employment@gandmstacey.com for any further information.

Edward Sutton, G and M Stacey, Inc.

The Scam

There are two lines from above that should immediately set this one off as bad news.

1. But most of U.S. wholesale jewelry companies, doesn’t offer an international shipping. We need someone to buy the merchandise and to ship it abroad.
2. You will receive Company’s funds directly to your account and buy the merchandise only when the funds will be available.

If you were to agree to work for these guys, they would deposit money into a bank account of yours and have you purchase some big ticket items and ship them overseas. The only problem is the money is either non-existent or acquired through some illegal means and now you’re spending tens of thousands of dollars of it and sending your purchases abroad. There’s no way this can end well.

There are two possible scenarios for you now. Either the money that was sent to you bounces or disappears and now you’re tens of thousands of dollars in the hole with no possible way of recovering it or the authorities come knocking and hold you liable for accepting large sums of money and sending goods overseas to potential criminals.

In addition to having you launder money/goods, these guys now have your personal and banking information leaving your identity ripe for the picking. These are not the types of people you want to have access to your private information.

Bottom line: avoid any type of “job” that has to do with you accepting money or dealing with a company’s finances. Major corporations don’t hire people from home to handle their money. It just doesn’t happen.

Let’s make this Noah’s best Christmas ever by sending him Christmas cards!

Five year-old Noah Biorkman is in hospice and we need your help to make this the best Christmas ever by sending him Christmas cards! His family will be celebrating Christmas this weekend.

Noah was diagnosed with Stage IV Neuroblastoma in February 2007. He went into remission in August 2007. In September 2008, Noah relapsed with lesions in his right arm and right leg. After going through six different trials, the cancer continues to spread. Noah is an angel and we are blessed to have him in our lives.

Please help the fulfill the Biorkman family’s wish to make this the best Christmas ever for Noah. You can send your Christmas cards to:

Noah Biorkman
1141 Fountain View Circle
South Lyon, MI 48178

My card is already in the mail. Be sure to leave a comment below if you send a card out as well.

Confirmed by Snopes and Noah’s CarePages website.

What is the Surefire Money Maker System?

The Surefire Money Maker System lures you in with promises of free information. The majority of this information consists of vague references to earnings and how you can start making $200 a day by giving stuff away for free. Of course, to find out how to actually make money doing this you need to spend $37 first.

SPOILER ALERT!! The method on how to make money? The eBook teaches you to give away the intro to the Surefire Money Maker System for free and to sell the eBook on how to sell the eBook. Hooray recursion!

There are a few stock images and fake names selling this product including Rosie Peterson and Alex Cadens. They are selling from twaeresources.com, fastwebcash.com, realmoneyonlinenow.com, and 100plusaday.com. All the sales pages are exact carbon copies of each other which confirms the recursion method from above.

There’s only one thing surefire about making money online and that is there is nothing surefire about making money online.

Quite often, people even search through our archives first. They do their due diligence and then write a message like this one, from alert reader Joanna:

Hello. Great site.

I came across this web site homebizlast.com/ and could not find anything about it in your archives.

A person whom I only know on facebook (young daughter of real life friend) claims to have made 150 dollars in one day.

I will ask her about it, but she is very young – around 17. Have you come across this site before?

Here’s the problem, and there’s no way Joanna and the other diligent readers would know this. (By the way, Joanna, I love your accent!)

We HAVE covered homebizlast.com, just not in that particular disguise. Not with that exact name. The same scams go by different names and just recycle the same sales pages and tactics over and over.

Truth be told, I think there are like five scams on the Internet. But they wear hundreds, nay, thousands of different masks.

Homebizlast.com is one of them. What is it? It’s Easy Google Profit dressed up to look like a legitimate news site. It tries to sound like a news story. It runs a script that makes the newspaper title and location local to you. (Mine is called the “Utah Online Edition” and the person making $5k per month lives in Salt Lake City. Where are these details located when you visit homebizlast.com? Speak up in the comments to play Where In The World Is This Scam Today?! It will be fun!)

We wrote about this fake news tactic here. That was back in May and it was selling Easy Google Profit even then.

So, thanks for the question, Jo. It turns out we have written extensively about the so-called Google scams. They’re all the same. Here’s a good place to start—the Master List of Google Scams.

Is AcaiForceMax a scam?

I don’t know and I have no intention of finding out. Instead, I want to take a look at their sales page and their fine print.

The sales pitch behind AcaiForceMax claims that the little Acai berries will help you lose weight, tone muscles, burn fat, and increase your energy levels. The page is littered with testimonials and pictures of these jacked dudes lifting weights and looking good while trying to maintain nonchalant and carefree poses.

If I was trying to lose weight, the sales pitch has me sold. I get to lose weight, build muscle, and have girls throw themselves at me from every possible angle the minute I step out in public. What more could you want?

However, I’m going to keep reading after I reach the bottom of the sales pitch. I’m going to go where few have gone before and I’m actually going to read the fine print. It starts off with…

* These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please consult your physician before beginning any program. If there is a change in your medical condition, please notify your counselor immediately.

Hmm, that’s kind of disappointing. But just because the FDA hasn’t evaluated their claims doesn’t mean it won’t work, right?

1 Results not typical for any and all claims.

Crap. So all that stuff you said above probably won’t happen? But the testimonials looked so promising!

** All celebrity images were found on and obtained from public websites and are believed to be in public domain.
***Picture does not contain the likeness of the customer that submitted the testimonial.

Not even the testimonials were real! Well at least I can trust Fitness magazine, CBS, ABC, and Wall Street Journal for looking into AcaiForceMax.

+ Fitness Magazine, CBS News, ABC, and Wall Street Journal are registered trademarks of their respective owners.
2 Media elements deployed are those of paid actors.

IS ANYTHING YOU SAY REAL? You say as seen on ABC, but only because you paid ABC to advertise! I’m skeptical as hell at this point, but hey, it’s a free trial. What could go wrong about free?

If you do not cancel your Trial Membership during the applicable fourteen (14) day period as set forth in Section 7 herein below, your Active Credit Card will be charged the monthly Membership fee of Eighty-Seven Dollars and Sixty-Two Cents ($87.62) (”Monthly Fee”)

I. Give. Up.

Now do you see why we urge you all to read the terms and conditions? In about 2 minutes I found out that AcaiForceMax doesn’t work, the testimonials do not feature real people, and the free trial will cost me $87.62 every 30 days.

And that’s why I now take the time to read the terms and conditions to which I am agreeing to. You should too.

If you hate spam like I do, there’s a good chance Sanford Wallace is responsible for your attitude.

The good news? He just lost a big legal fight with Facebook. A court has ordered him to pay Facebook $711 million for hacking members’ accounts and using them to send phony posts and messages. And the court referred the case to the US attorney’s office for possible criminal prosecution. (Read the story.)

YES! It’s Bozos like him that have given Internet and email marketing a bad rap. They are the back-alley underbelly of a legitimate business that just about anyone can do.

Will he ever pay the full penalty? Of course not. But today is still a good day for the Internet.

If a website was featured and backed by a major news organization, you could be damn sure they are going to be linking to the news article or video as proof. It would be great publicity and a surefire way to bring legitimacy and authority to their name. Any website can put up a picture of a CNN logo, but not any website can actually be featured at CNN. Odds are, if you come across a website claiming to be featured somewhere and they don’t link you to said feature, they’re lying to you.

Why You Can’t Believe Everything You See Online.

Perhaps you’ve seen I’ve Tried That’s newest spokesperson. He’s an old friend that goes by the name of President Obama and has been on a national campaign to bring awareness to our website.

No, you haven’t heard of him? Well then maybe you’ve been to the new I’ve Tried That arena in the south. It’s being hailed as the 9th wonder of the world (FYI the fact that we’ve been operating this long and still haven’t been sued is the 8th).

Not a sports fan eh. Well then surely you’ve had to have heard about I’ve Tried That’s space program. We’re sending Joe to Mars in search of life in April 2010.

And thus concludes my segment of why you can’t trust everything you read online.

My friend was, until recently, one of the millions of unemployed. He lost an excellent management job back in August and was thrown into the scary, mine-filled waters of the online job search.

He’s smart, so he was able to avoid most of the turds floating around in that lagoon.

One of them caught his attention, though. He signed up for a free resume critique at The Ladders. Theladders.com caters to executives and claims to help its members land career management jobs paying more than $100k per year.

It offers a free critique of your resume. You upload it and a resume expert goes through it and gives feedback on it. My friend uploaded his and got really good feedback about why it wasn’t landing him any interviews.

But, along with the feedback came an offer. We will rewrite your resume and cover letter for a mere $700!

Wow. Time for a big pause. To be honest $700 is nothing if it helps you get a job that pays more than $100,000. But could ladders.com really deliver on its promises? A careful search through a skeptic’s eyes (mine) turned up this:
A client of a resume writer certified by the National Resume Writer’s Association (the NRWA, who knew?) submitted a resume to the ladders and got back a blistering critique. The accredited writer found that “After reading the critiques that bashed the resumes they created, I found that the information they provided was not only subjective, but it was often inaccurate and incorrect.” (Read the discussion.)

Got that? Inaccurate AND incorrect! That’s a double negative!

I also found that the Wall Street Journal offers a similar service—free critique and a fee-based rewrite—for less. And the NRWA can also refer job seekers to certified resume writers who would do the rewrite for even less.

Bottom line, friend rewrote the resume himself based on the feedback he received, got interviews, and is now once again employed. And he didn’t spend $700 to do it.

It actually started last week. I get a Red Plum delivered each week and usually just throw it out considering it as junk mail. In fact, I’ve tried for months to get it to stop coming, but have given up on that. Finally, I looked through it last week and noticed there were 5-6 coupons in there for things I usually buy and for the first time in my life, I clipped some coupons.

The initial thought of saving money was good, finding out about coupon doubling was amazing, but nothing compared to when I found out you could buy coupons in bulk online. Now, I’m addicted and I hate myself for not even considering coupons in the past. Think of all the wasted savings!

Either way I’m a week in and have used dozens of coupons already with a big pile of coupons just waiting to be used. Here are some of my savings thus far:

$27.20 off Paper Towels
$22.50 off Toothpaste
$17.00 off Misc. Food
$5.00 off Tissues
$3.00 off Cleaning supplies

That’s nearly $75 in savings! I can’t believe I didn’t do this before! If you shop anywhere and don’t take the time to find deals, you’re just throwing money away.

Websites I Use for Coupons

Here’s where I’ve been getting coupons from lately.

• CouponsThingsByDede.com – This is the site where I buy all of my coupons. They have the best prices and the fastest shipping. Spend some time and look through what Dede has to offer. A $3.50 order here saved me over $50 on groceries. I guarantee you’ll place an order here by the end of the day.
• HotCouponWorld.com – God the people here are amazing at saving money. The sheer amount of saving information from deals to coupons to cashback is awesome. Be sure to register an account there and find the forum for your grocery store to find information on how to save the most money.
• Ebay.com – When all else fails, I turn to eBay to find coupons. They cost a little more here, but it still amounts to substantial savings. Be sure to deal with reputable sellers only!

Now, I’m new to this and I’m sure some of you out there are way more experienced than I am. Be sure to leave a comment or two below with any advice (where to find coupons, websites to watch, etc.) you can offer and if you aren’t already using coupons or shopping around for deals, well then get to it already!

All of my kids except one have had it, but so far, Her Hotness and I have stayed clean. We’re hoping it stays that way. It’s draining our schools and churches here, with health officials surprised that it is hitting so hard, so early in the season. That means you have a lot of people sick, worried about getting sick, and ready to pay to avoid it.

And of course, that only means one thing: it’s a scammer’s market ready for the reaping!

Are we appalled? Yes. Are we surprised? We are not. Check out the story:

Federal officials have warned promoters of more than 140 products sold over the Internet about fraudulent claims that they can prevent, treat or diagnose swine flu.
Bogus products include devices and sprays that claim to sterilize the air or surfaces, and dietary supplements claiming to boost the immune system. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it even has found fake Tamiflu being sold online without a prescription.

Want to have a look at some of the scammy products? Just Google “swine flu” and look at the sponsored search results. Chances are good that you’ll spot the products making false claims. Check out Microsan, for instance, at stop-h1n1.com. See the fear-stoking headlines at the top? They’re designed to prod you into a quick purchase before your critical thinking skills kick in.

The problem is bad enough that the FDA created a Swine Flu consumer fraud detection team, which spotted about 10 new product a day being promoted. All of them were making untested, unproven claims, and some of the products were downright dangerous. Check out the useful warnings at the FDA:

On May 1, 2009, FDA and the FTC warned that consumers who purchase products which claim to protect against or treat the 2009 H1N1 virus, but are not approved by FDA for the treatment or prevention of influenza, are risking their health and the health of their families.

These fraudulent products come in all varieties and could include dietary supplements, medical foods, or products that claim to prevent or cure the 2009 H1N1 influenza.

FDA announced that it has initiated an aggressive strategy to identify, investigate, and take regulatory or criminal action against individuals and businesses that wrongfully promote purported 2009 H1N1 influenza products in an attempt to take advantage of the current flu public health emergency.

Full disclosure: we won’t be testing any of these products. Maybe we could get Steve to inject or ingest an unknown substance purchased online, but it won’t be me. The flu sucks, but so do the potential hazards of swallowing something made in Albania with misspelled English words on the label.

For real information on Swine Flu, look to the Centers for Disease Control. Wash your hands often and don’t make out with strangers on the bus or subway without a surgical mask.