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Someone sent me a link to tribunenewsfirst.com, which hosts a bunch of Easy Google Profit fake news blogs trying to convince you to input your credit card for only $1.97 and learn Mike Steadman’s secrets to making money at home working part time for Google. Wait, now it’s Ashley Steadman’s secrets. Wait! Now it’s Mike Steadman again, but with a different picture! And it’s always Your Town Tribune News First isn’t it?
Will the Real Mike Steadman Please Stand Up!
This set of sites has a great GeoIPTargeting feature that takes the information your computer sends EVERY time you go to a webpage (your IP address and your browser information) and translates it into a town name, typically a town near yours where your Internet host is located. It’s a marketing trick to make you feel like the site is more trustworthy because it’s close to you. Hell, if college dropout Mike Steadman from the next town over can make $10,500 working from home after losing his job at Burger King (can Burger King really afford to fire anyone?) then why the heck couldn’t I right?
These sites are fully of catchy headlines like:
“$10,000 a Month, isn’t that hard with Google” – Mike”
“College Drop-Out Shares The Secrets To Make Over $10,000/mo”
Is it really true? Can I start making $10,000 a month working from home posting links to Google right away? Of course not, they’re trying to take your hard earned money, money you likely can’t afford to lose on a scam like this.
Are These Easy Google Profit Fake Work At Home News Sites Scams?
We here at the Electron Plumber have been reporting on these fake work at home blog and fake earn money online news sites for a while now and they keep getting more professional and more devious every day. Why do we think these sites are scams in our opinion? Well, they don’t disclose the monthly charges you’ll be facing seven days after you give them your credit card.
Check out our article on The Easy Google Profit Scam for more details about how this whole thing works and what the FTC has to say on the matter.
Go to any of the Easy Google Profit sites or the new Twitter Profit House this one is pushing, sign up for all but giving them your credit card and look around the page. See anything to indicate you’re paying more than $1.97? Now look at the fine print that only appears in a popup window if you click the tiny Terms and Conditions link at the bottom. See it buried in there? They’ll whack your card $99 a month for the Twitter Money System and another $87.23 for the Easy Google Profit Fast Cash one, all without every disclosing that on the order page, which is VERY likely illegal according to FTC guidelines regarding negative option offers, that is ones with recurring monthly charges.
What do you get for $197 a month? Does it matter? These people are deliberately hiding their monthly charges and that you aren’t paying $1.97 but rather $197. I can’t imaging any info they are providing could be worth anywhere near that much if they have to trick you out of it.
I Was Taken By The Easy Google Profit Scam! What Do I Do?
- Don’t feel bad! Seems like thousands of people have been taken in by these sort of offers that trick you by not clearly disclosing you are signing up for monthly charges. You were tricked, it happens to the best of us.
- Call the number on the website IMMEDIATELY. Finding that number is up to you, they seem to keep changing. Have a witness listen when you call and/or record the conversation if possible. Unfortunately many people have complained that they can never get anyone to talk to when they call. You may want to skip this step and go right to #3.
- Call your credit card company and report the card stolen. They never clearly disclosed the charges you were signing up for and are going to start using your card for something you were not informed of. Treat it as if it was stolen.
- Monitor your credit accounts! Click here to sign up for Experian ID Protection monitoring. You just gave some shady characters your name, address, phone number, credit card and secret 3 digit card number. They tricked you once, you think they’ll stop at just the $82 they squeezed out of your card before you canceled? Experian is a large company, one of the Big Three credit reporting agencies. They clearly state that the ID Protection it’s truly free for a full 30 days, then only $9.95 a month if you don’t cancel in 30 days. I’d strongly suggest signing up for at least the free month to make sure no one tries to change your address or open a new card using the current cards details you gave away.
I Didn’t Get Taken, But What Can I Do To Help?
- Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends.
- Use the “Share This” links below to Digg or Twitter or Stumble or Reddit or Email or whatever service you use to share this so that other people might see it before they get scammed too!
- Email this story to your friends.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I wonder who those people in the pictures really are. Are they the perpetrators themselves? If so, it is rather foolhardy of them to post their pictures online for everyone to see–one of their victims might recognize them.
Today there is a Mary Steadman who lost her ‘boring’ job as an account rep. She is now making $15,000+ a month online at Google. This Steadman has a small child in the photo with her. Her hubby is Kevin – he was laid off due to the bad economy. They have also added Twitter Cash Kit to maximize the amount they make.
Be careful
Mike Steadman from Eudora, KS says for just $1 he will give me instructions on how to open up a Twitter account (as if that’s difficult) and then he’ll give a list of links to start posting and then I’ll soon be making over $300/day.
I’m not quite sure why Mike Steadman is so willing to give all this money away to strangers on the Internet for just $1, when it’s pretty obvious that if the program worked he could just use his own (or hundreds or thousands of his own) Twitter accounts to “post links”.
Oh well, there’s a sucker born every minute.
Who are these people on these fake Websites? Are they actors, models, and/or spokesperson for a company? They may be real people making lots of money online. However, these people are using professional language to claim they are being rich.
These are stock photos — aspiring models pose for a flat fee for a photographer, who hawks the image to companies too cheap to hire their own photographer. The images are intentionally generic, and can be sold repeatedly to different companies. (Jean Steadman here could just as well be promoting Clearasil as googling her way to a million.) I remember once seeing the exact same image of a happy, relieved-looking woman in ads for low-interest loans, and for laxatives. It didn’t last long, but it was amusing.
help ive just fallen for this!! if i cancel my card tomorrow will i still get charged loads off this fake company ???
It hard to say simon. Many other people have reported being charged the full “amount” that they don’t disclose to you almost immediately, others report calling to cancel and still getting charged. Reporting your card stolen immediately, disputing any charges, and keeping a close eye on your credit reports for identity theft seems to be the general opinion as the way to go here.
I’ve fallen for it too and after googling “Google Profit House,” I’ve became worried when reading blogs and posts. I immediately canceled my card, which I rarely use, and the $1 that was charged to my card was thankfully still pending. I was told by my bank that the transaction was made by some “health and beauty company,” which was strangely weird. I hope I won’t see further transactions made by the co. Should I still be worried hereafter?
Rose, like I said to Simon, it’s really hard to say. These companies and fake advertisement sites keep changing names really quickly. I suspect that it’s less likely that they’re going out of business and more likely that they’re trying to keep moving because they have something to hide.
That being said, it’s impossible to say if the site you signed up for is a real company that just has questionable business practices about disclosure of long term charges or if you just gave your card number and personal information to someone that is going to sell your personal information to the highest bidder on the black market.
Canceling the card is a good first step. Keep a close eye on your credit for fraud and identity theft using an id protection service like the one we list above in the article is another. If your really feeling angry, contact your local hard hitting eyewitness news station about doing a story on these companies, and or contact a fraud lawyer about the possibility of filing a lawsuit against them.
i fell for this too hoping to make a bit of extra money, i signed up for the ‘KIT’ at the cost of $1 but after a couple of days doing this i checked my bank and noticed that a company – xmhealth + beauty was in the process of taking money out of my account. i contacted my bank and canceled my card and they will be filing a fraud claim once the money has cleared out and i will get my money back. i’ve been lucky to be getting my money back, but its absoultly disgusting that someone can do this and disgrace GOOGLE’s name like this too. i will definatley read more carefully about anything that wants card details online in the future
i too sogned up please tell me more info
Oh, I’m sorry Andrea. There isn’t much more to tell that isn’t in the article above. We’ve love to hear your story though. Did you know you were signing up for those monthly charges or not?