Is it just me? But doesn't it seem like scam artists never get caught? After all, if you and I break the law you better believe you'll be getting a visit from your local boys in blue. But work at home scam artist seem to be as untouchable as corporate executives. What the f? It just doesn't seem fair!
Well apparently the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken notice and said "Enough"! Recently they went after two guys who were scamming people with their government grants, mystery shopping, online surveys and data entry products. You may be familiar with these dudes and their sites: Eric G. Louie, doing business as Fastcashathome.com, Fastcashathome.homestead.com and Hometypers.com and Calvin G. Louie, doing business as Moneymakingsecret.homestead.com, Realcashprograms.com, and Dataentrypro.com.
We've been warning you guys about these type of scams for months in our scam section. We've covered many of these including rebate processing, mystery shopping, paid online surveys, cash gifting and many more. It's nice to see our advice being validated by a government body like the FTC.
Now keep in mind that some of these opportunities in themselves are legitimate. You can get paid for taking surveys, focus groups and to do mystery shopping. But you DON'T have to pay a fee to get the listing and you certainly aren't going to make thousands of dollars per week like these idiots will lead you believe. It's the reason why I'm always encouraging you to do many of them at once to make decent money. I know by themselves they don't make a lot of money but multiples of them can.
In any event, considering our recent financial crisis, I just wanted to let you know that scam artists are getting what they deserve. Too often it seems like we the average people are on the losing end of these battles but sometimes we do win. This is clearly an example of this. If you want more details about what happened to these scam artists and how they operated, you may want to click here to read the article for more details.
It was really enlightening. You wouldn't believe how much money these bastards were making. They were driving around in Lamborghinis and Ferraris that they purchased from the money made by misleading good folks like you. And here you are giving up your hard earned money for pipe dreams. It's a damn shame. What do you folks think?
Eddy, I used to get your email and haven’t for months. I don’t know what happened but would love to receive it again. You have lots of valuable info for us. Sandy Morgan
Hey Sandy,
It’s good to know that I’m missed. I haven’t been sending emails. But the new information keeps coming every week. You can see my newest articles right here every week.
Hi Eddy.
I almost fell for this one. I am so glad I researched it first. Here is the first and then the second email I received from them. I inquired to get more information because of it is sounds too good to be true, then it usually is. I hope this helps keep others from falling for this.
Hi Lori Bxxx,
Job opening: Quality Assurance Manager.
Post Type: part-time employment, 2-4 hrs daily, Mon-Fri;
Salary rate: $2,118 plus transparent system of great bonuses;
Region: U.S..
Movement: NO
ABOUT US:
We assist individual and business customers all round the world by helping them deliver merchandise and products, storing items, repackaging and trading on behalf of our customers.
POSITION OVERVIEW:
You will assist with mail and freight forwarding and quality assurance of goods delivered to our clients. Your hours will be flex and you can manage your schedule.
TO BE ELIGIBLE FOR THE POSITION:
-Must be of legal age;
-Must be a citizen of the United States;
-PC with a stable access to the Internet.
REWARDS:
-This is a good source of supplementary income;
-You will have an opportunity to combine this role with your full-time job or study;
-Exceptional opportunities for advancement and growth;
Medical/dental/vision benefits are provided. 401(K) plan.
Apply now by responding to our email. Our managers will contact you to provide you all required information on this opportunity.
Reference code: (GOV-32-600)
Second email:
Greetings from Fulfillment Express LLC!
First of all, we would like to convey our heartfelt thanks for replying to this job offer. I am John Mander, the HR Manager of Fulfillment Express LLC. This is to inform you that through this
email, I would like to tell you more about the company, so that you can get to know the details of the job and the responsibility it entails. Also, I would like to guide you through the application process, so that you can successfully complete it without any hassle.
About the Company
Fulfillment Express LLC is a well-known name in the field of transportation and shipping industry. Not only does it provide a hassle-free transportation, but also ensures that the process itself reflects quality and excellence in every aspect. In short, we guarantee a hassle-free shipping of the products purchased online.
Presently, we are acknowledges as one of the fast-growing companies of the United States which are making stupendous progress in the consumer market. To live up to the pulse of this growing demand, we need nothing but top-notch human resource. Hence we are in search of an enthusiastic and responsible individual who could be a self-starter in the true sense of the term. He will be entrusted with the responsibilities of a Quality Inspector with our company, who is supposed to look after the responsibilities across the USA.
Process of Application
The application process for the said job profile consists of three stages. You are requested to go through these carefully and reply to us, so that there’s no inconvenience in the long run. In case you have any confusion, please do get back to us as early as possible. We will surely reply within the shortest time possible. So, if you are now comfortable with this, let’s take a detailed look at three different stages of the application process.
The first stage
The email contains an attachment with the name “Job Description.pdf”. We would request you to kindly go through it to get a fair idea about the job profile and the responsibilities. Here you will get to know the details about the position of a Quality Inspector and the duties that a potential candidate is supposed to carry out. In addition, you will know the details of working hours, working process, and job requirements. After getting all the details, if you feel that the positional requirements are suitable to you, you can go ahead to fill out the “Application form.pdf” attached with the email.
The second stage
Upon receiving the signed copy of the Application form, we are likely to take about 1 to 2 days to review the application. During this time frame, our HR team basically looks into the strong and weak areas of a candidate in order to judge if he/she is the perfect fit for the aforementioned job position. If you are selected by our team, we will reach out to you shortly with the Employment Agreement. You can treat the Employment Agreement as the official joining letter from Fulfillment Express LLC. The Employment Agreement comes with a set of
Terms and Conditions. If you are comfortable with what is furnished there, please sign it and send it back to us within 3 business days via email. However, if, for any emergency situation, you fail to send
us the signed copy of the agreement within the stipulated time frame, but would nonetheless like to work with us, please do intimate us with a valid explanation of reasons for you delay. I assure you that you case will be treated with a personal approach and I personally will take forward your candidature with us.
The third stage
The third stage of the application process begins after the signed copy of the Employment Agreement is received by us; however, we need to talk about this process here, in order to conclude the discussion of the three stage application process. The receipt of the signed Agreement copy unambiguously refers that the potential candidate is officially hired by Fulfillment Express LLC. After getting your appointment with us, you will be on a probationary period for a month.
During this tenure, a personal supervisor will be assigned to you to look after the duties and responsibilities of the newly appointed Quality Inspector during the probationary period. He will get in touch with you via phone or email and accordingly guide you through the process of work. He will also be in charge of giving you instructions and evaluating your performance.
However before we end, I would definitely like to mention that your candidature has been suggested by a reputed recruitment agency. So, I am pretty sure that you are going to be the most eligible candidate for the said job position. Finally, I am sure that a potential candidate like you will successfully walk through all of the steps involved in our employment process. Please download the Job
description and Application form, which you can find attached with the email. Please start with step one carefully, in order to unravel the
success and the opportunities that a new responsibility embarks on.
And finally, please do get in touch for any questions/confusions. We
are eagerly looking forward to working with you soon.
Best regards,
Fulfillment Express LLC
HR Manager
Thanks so much for sharing all the helpful information that you do. Maybe someday these scammers will get what is coming to them.
Thank you!
Lori B
You’re welcome Lori B! Thanks for sharing this. You might want to also share this on the actual package shipping scam page here. There are literally hundreds of reports of this scam and it tends to show up in Google which will help far more people avoid it. So feel free to post the scam details you listed above there as well. Thanks again!
I appreciate your post Eddy, this information is very useful for a newbie like me in this internet marketing world… But just a quick question, if you don’t mind.. What do you think about these online mlm ( multi level marketing ) on the internet?
MLMs are fine as long as they are run properly and actually pushing a useful product and that’s the focus of you make money. Too often many MLMS are just focused on making money via the referrals instead of their products. At the end of the day jobs and corporations are like MLMs. So they’re everywhere.
Anita….
I just had the same row with fromhomedataentry.com
I did 400 assignments..
Guess what…They are NOT paying me.
400 assignments worth $4000!!!!
They waste your time and your money!!
You’re right I signed up and paid 24.95 to fromhomedataentry.com and completed 59 assignments and when I emailed them to request payment first they told me 2-4 weeks and then it changed to 6-8 weeks. This was just a week ago I don’t know if I will get paid I will have to wait the 6-8 weeks. That is crazy! I think this is the same people using a different name and website.
It wouldn’t surprise me Anita. I would suggest you read my scam page from top to bottom including watching the videos, reading the comments and articles. You’ll avoid a lot of this nonsense if you put aside the time to do that:
http://www.workathomenoscams.com/scams
I totally agree that homework should always be done. But I wouldn’t necessarily only depend on the BBB. They are just one of many resources that should be checked but they’re definitely not the be and end all as others have claimed.
Read the following article and the comments and you’ll see what I mean:
http://www.workathomenoscams.com/2008/01/14/bbb-work-at-home/
I like having different points of view and why we think it’s important that part of the research that should be done is what we suggest in our scam video:
http://www.workathomenoscams.com/scams
This way you have multiple resources to provide you a full picture of a given opportunity. Because the fact of the matter is there are a lot of good opportunities out there that aren’t listed with the BBB. So folks would miss out on them if they just limited their search to BBB associations.
Eddy
That is why I do my homework, and try to stick with BBB certified work from home business opportunities!
I hear ya Ms Jaxxee!
There is a lot of “noise” on the web. I’ve narrowed down the sites I visit too. Having a few good expert resources is all I need.
By the way, we don’t control the security words. They just come with the software we use to manage the site.
Just click on the picture and turn up your speakers and it reads out what the word is.
Take care.
Eddy
Yeah, Eddy. I’m getting too tired and too “senior” to be running all over this WWW; so when I find one or two people I trust, I usually stick with them. I spend too much time reading and looking around your site when I get here until I can only visit 1 or 2 or other places when I leave here!
Two, maybe three, HONEST experts are all I can handle seeing as there are only 24 hours in any day. Seriously!
PS: Give us some clearer looking “security words.” I have no idea what this last word is. I’ve tried 4 times. Well
No problem MsJaxxee!
Steve does some great work on his site!
Eddy
Hey, Eddy! Thanks for the link to Steve’s place. If two heads are better than one, surely, two legitimate scam-busting sites are, as well.
Hi Sherri,
I’m sorry to hear you fell for this company. I think the fact you were brave enough to air out your experience here will help others if they happen to do their research. In the future when it comes to data entry or typing, rebate processing, etc, etc don’t pay. It’s not worth it. We always advise against that in our ask section:
http://www.workathomenoscams.com/ask
When in doubt always, follow the steps in our scam video and it should help avoid any more situations like this in the future:
http://www.workathomenoscams.com/scam
In any event, you might want to contact your credit company and have the charges reversed and make it clear to your credit card company that you were scammed. They will note this in their files and with enough complaints this may cause this company to lose their merchant account or payment processing capabilities.
In any event, I was able to dig up the website contact info here:
http://www.whois-search.com/whois/www.dataprocessors.org
But your best bet is to contact your credit card company if you paid by credit card.
And do your part to spread their dirty laundry around by reporting your experiences on various sites that protect others:
http://www.workathomenoscams.com/2008/01/21/top-5-scam-fighting-sites/
You may also want to copy and paste your comment in our dedicated scam section so more people see it that haven’t read this particular article:
http://www.workathomenoscams.com/scams
Eddy
I was one of the unfortunate ones. I signed up to work at home on dataprocessors.org. The program cost me a one time fee of $24.95. I received one assignment per day which consisted of reviewing a website with the promise of $10 per assignment. I signed up on August 15th and was emailed stating that I would receive my first check on October 15th (60 days after joining). A couple of things on this to be aware of in the future, this website claimed to be a no scam website, the websites that I reviewed were legit websites (companies that I have heard of) and my assignments came like clockwork with every email stating I would receive my first check in 59 days, then the next email saying 58 days, like a countdown. I never received any payment and I had completed approx 43 reviews. When I emailed support@dataprocessors.org questioning why I hadn’t received my check, they stopped sending me assignments and did not reply to any of my emails. You really have to be careful. This is just like stealing so they should be punished. I would think they could trace these people back by their IP address?
I don’t want to raise a stink but. Life4hire is right, people will never learn. And in keeping with old sayings, There is a sucker born every minute. . well for every sucker there is someone looking to take’m for what they got.
If scammers were jailed, who would pay to keep them in jail?. . US! . . We lose either way.
The scam artists dirty laundry thing may be the best deal. . if we can open peoples eyes they will see how bad they are and avoid them. But busting them is well attacking our tax dollars plain and simple.
Hi Susie,
I totally agree with you. When I first started searching for work at home many moons ago I was so green. I assumed that it was like any other job where you just apply and hope for the best. But I soon learned that everyone was out to get my money and sell me false hope.
It’s a sad reality that many new work at home seekers will have to face as well. Hopefully they’ll avoid the part of losing their hard earned money.
And you’re absolutely right about the detrimental effects that scammers have had on the work at home seeker mind set. Everyone thinks that you can easily make money online without having any specialized skills and that is so far from the truth. I preach that all the time here. If you want to work at home you better have the skills that are in demand or willing to invest in getting those skills.
But people think they can force a square peg into a round hole, meaning job seekers become fixated on one type of industry that isn’t available in large numbers like data entry or typing. But the scammers have made folks believe that those jobs are in demand.
So it’s just sad situation overall. Hopefully when people read sites like this, they will actually take heed to the advice we provide. Some do and they succeed others don’t and many end up scammed or frustrated. The best things that we can do as a community is share information with each other and let the chips fall where they may.
In any event, thanks in advance for referring to our site for some questions you may have in the future.
The more folks we can help, the better!
Eddy
There are so many scams, it’s a shame when searching “work at home”, you have to sort out the garbage, I came across yours #1 using Google. It seems that a lot of people today have the attitude that making money on the internet is “easy money” and that “no skills, education or work experience needed”, of course that is what the scam artists have made them believe. I’ll use your website as a reference for answering a question for a Q & A website that I volunteer for. And the question that I’m editing is to remove the spam comment!!
Hi Joann,
It sounds like you have some spyware or virus on your machine. If you visit the following site:
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
you can run a free scan of your machine. I’m sure it will find malicious stuff on your machine. Once you’ve cleaned your machine, you may want to download some free virus software from AVG:
free.avg.com/download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition
Too often people have virus programs that are pretty much useless if the virus definitions aren’t updated regularly. If your subscription runs out and you haven’t paid for a new subscription then it means you don’t have the latest viruses which leaves you vulnerable and why your computer may be slow.
All sites places cookies on your sites. Most expire on their on within a few days or a month. So I don’t think it’s cookies that are slowing down your machine.
In terms of finding other legitimate non-traditional work at home opportunities we recommend quite a few on our articles page:
http://www.workathomenoscams.com/articles
so head there for more. Eventually what you’ll want to do to expand your income is get involved in referring others to legitimate work at home opportunities you’re involved in. You’ll make way more doing that then just your own efforts. This is referred to as affiliate marketing:
http://www.workathomenoscams.com/aff
So you may want to look into that.
Hope this helps.
Eddy
How would someone handle all of the cookies that come from just doing these sites and not have their computer slow down really bad. I have been doing one of them for awhile, and would be very interested in doing others if it is going to produce some money for me. Inbox is the survey company that I am doing now but it takes quite awhile to earn any money(I haven’t earned any yet and I’ve been with them for several months).
Thanks for your response.
Hey Steve,
No need for thanks. Glad to share good resources with our users and that’s why you were listed in my top 5 scam fighting article:
http://www.workathomenoscams.com/2008/01/21/top-5-scam-fighting-sites/ If you think we’re doing a good job and want to mention us in your blog I thank you in advance.
I hear you about the punishment. That was a great analogy! That is so true because we wouldn’t be able to get away with that type of crap. So I can totally relate with your disgust with the punishment.
Thanks again for your candid input. You really do drive your points home. lol
Eddy
Thanks for the mention Eddy. I’ll be sure to drop your name in a post the next chance I get. I’ve been subscribed to updates for a while now (I think since you posted the top 5 scam fighting websites) and I love the site. It’s good to see there are other sites out there dedicated to helping people save money.
As for the scammers, it’s good they were finally stopped, but they should have definitely had to refund anyone who wanted one, no questions asked. If I stole a purse from a lady on the street and was stopped by a cop a block later, I wouldn’t get to keep the purse as long as I promised not to rob again.
Again, good this is finally getting exposure, I just really hate the sentence, or lack thereof.
Hey Steve,
I wasn’t aware you visited my little blog. lol
Great to have you here. The link was working before. But I’ve updated it to link directly to the ftc version. Thanks for the heads up.
In terms of the judgment against these scammers, I guess we have to look at it as a start. It’s not perfect but at least they suffered some type of punishment. Every little bit helps even if it just exposes more scum like this. It’s better than nothing.
But there is always more work to do.
Thanks again for stopping by.
Eddy
P.S. Steve runs a great scam fighting website http://www.ivetriedthat.com which I love and read religiously. I encourage our readers to do the same. Steve is a no nonsense type of guy that pulls no punches. We have different styles but the goals are the same and he sincerely wants to help folks avoid scams. So be sure to check it out.
The link to the article isn’t working, but if this is the same story I heard earlier this month, the scammers got off easy. They were allowed to keep most of the money and cars as long as they didn’t get back into selling ‘work at home’ programs.
Justice? Hardly.
But it is good to see someone is starting to crack down on these scammers.
Hey Eunice!
Well as long as we all do our part and spread the scam artists dirty laundry around more of them will be caught.
Eddy
Let’s hope that more of them will be caught, because there are still many of them out there, without mentioning any specific names that deserve just what these guys got.
Indeed Callie.
You’re quite welcome.
Wow!
Gotta applaud the FTC for a job well done. Hopefully, many more scam artists will end up where these two Louie dudes are now … caught and more than likely on their way to the slammer!
Very enlightening article indeed Eddy. Thanks for keeping us informed.
I agree. However I don’t necessarily want to put the blame on the victims. I think in desperation we all do things that we wouldn’t necessarily do under different circumstances. But I do agree about education. I feel strongly about education in all facets of life especially when it comes to scams. If more people would air our their experiences it would make it a lot harder for these scam artist to thrive.
But that’s assuming everyone knows to do their research first. But I think we’re getting closer to that.
Either way it’s good to see that the bad guys pay for their crimes too.
Eddy
I say they deserved to have the be put behind bars. That’s what they should get from scamming others. If we can educate people on how to avoid scams online, these guys will not have a chance to scam people. But the thing is, people will never learn. There’s no shortcut in making money online.