A google ad on this site led me to a company that pays you money to take surveys. A google search of that company and the word ‘scam‘ next to it brought up pages of people who were burned. The dates of these testimonials go back to the begining of the month and probably even before that, yet the company is still stealing money. Investigating something like this is not impossible, as an account was paid out of to get the google ads posted, an account was paid into by schmucks who fell for the pitch. Right there you have two pieces of information. The web hosting company that houses the site, that bill has to be paid every month. When the site is updated by its owner, an IP address is used…is it a different IP whenever someone logs in to update the site or the same one? We can assume that many are set up outside of the country, yet if we’re freezing assets in the ‘war on terror’, couldn’t the same be done to a company like this?
I get the feeling that our government ‘could’ do something to make it more difficult for people to get ripped off, but to do so would require coordination and good police…are we all out of both right now? Is a criminal scumbag making money off of the internet just that much smarter than the federal government? Or – do the lobbyists for google and web hosts pay enough in campaign contributions to keep the feds off their case?
What would it take to start up an investigation team on my own? Would the government supply grant money if I were to get good at catching these people, or at least creating good leads and identifying patterns? If we had the evidence that an account was being used for criminal activity, would the Justice Department freeze assets and go after the owners of these accounts? If the account never leads to someone, couldn’t that money be funneled back into grants for people like me to hunt more of them down?
Seems low on the priority list, protecting some dumb asshole from being scammed when he believes some freaky company will give him 50 bucks for every survey he completes.
Its always some exorbitant amount, isn’t it? nobody ever offers 50 cents for a survey completion because the greedy dummies out there wouldn’t bite.
Sign of laziness. A CNA I work with bought a bottle of blue pills for 30 bucks to help her lose weight. Earlier in the day, she told me that she didn’t want to go to RN school becuase it took too long and she just wanted to get out and make $$. So she was going to spend $25,000 to get an LVN and still be a subordinate making less.
Doesn’t make sense…if you’re on a path towards something usefull for the rest of your life, why…well, she’s lazy.
I agree that the people who get scamed are dumb, but there’s still someone on the other end making dough hand over fist…that’s not right either. At least the drug dealer is providing a high, these scumbags provide nothing, and if caught probably serve less time than a drug dealer would.
By not cleaning this up, they’re just inviting more and more people to get into the game.
True. it is still illegal. They go through a lot more trouble for a lot less troublesome crime.
I’m torn on this issue. It takes some work to pull off a scam. These scammers are actually motivated and hard-working to some extent. Their prey on the other hand generally takes the form of a lazy homebody. In the grand scheme of things natural selection favors the scammer.
If all these guys lost was $50, then I’d say they learned a very valuable life lesson on the cheap.
Then again it sucks to be the sucker.
I get aggrivated that a particular scam will remain up for a long time. If they can bust so many child porn traders…
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In this case I would defund scam investigations by 100% and put all of that money into investigations regarding kiddy porn.
I’m perfectly OK with letting free market forces control who buys into some silly get-rick-quick scam. There are courts that can settle these matters anyway.
Money you got burned out of: $50
Additional costs to proceed with legal case:
———————-
Hire an investigator $500
Hire an attorney $1,500
I say take the lumps and wise up.