Grant Scams

FTC Takes Down GrantConnectOffer.com

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:30:00 +0000

This has been a pretty good month so far. Earlier in August the FTC filed action against the 'Grant Writers Institute', and yesterday announced a suit against grantconnectoffer.com and the company behind it, Vantex Group LLC:

At FTC’s Request, Court Halts Deceptive Claims for Free Government Grants

Web Sites Pitched “Easy to Use Program” and “$15 Billion of Free Money”

A U.S. district court has shut down several Web sites that scammers have been using to falsely claim that they can help consumers get free government grant money, the Federal Trade Commission announced today.

At the request of the FTC, the court issued an order closing the Web sites of several related companies that falsely promised consumers that their “Easy to Use Program,” Grant Connect, could help people “instantly find the grant that’s right for [them],” while using pictures of President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the American flag to give the false impression that they were connected to the government. The FTC also charged the companies with using bogus testimonials, failing to disclose the actual cost of their product, bundling multiple other products together for sale without adequate disclosures, and debiting consumers’ bank accounts on a recurring basis without permission.

On July 28, 2009, the court entered an order that temporarily halts these companies’ illegal activities. Subsequently, five of the 12 defendants in the case agreed to a preliminary injunction halting these practices until the matter is decided at trial. The court has set a preliminary injunction hearing for the remaining defendants for September 11, 2009. The FTC is seeking to permanently stop these practices and force the companies to return their ill-gotten gains so the funds can be used to reimburse consumers who were defrauded.

According to the FTC, the operators sell many products online, including Grant Connect, which they describe as “a unique, consumer-friendly US government grant program that delivers all of the tools for the consumer to search multiple databases, write grant proposals, and deliver polished plans...” While the companies claim that consumers will be charged only a few dollars at most, they instead bundle other products and services, such as identity theft protection services, credit offers, and purported health benefits plans with their offer, ultimately charging consumers as much as $70 per month.

Using an affiliated network of Web sites, including www.grantconnectoffer.com and others, they make claims such as: “Grant Connect - $15 Billion of Free Money Available;” “Over $10 Billion Issued in 2009 Already;” and “EASY TO USE PROGRAM: Instantly find the Grant that’s right for you!” They also claim that Grant Connect “makes the process FAST and EASY, so all you have to worry about is where to spend your money!” In addition, the Grant Connect site features “testimonials,” including photos of people who supposedly got grants from the company, including one that states, “It’s so easy! I got my first grant for $300,000. All I have to do is search and click.”

To further persuade consumers into purchasing their product, the Grant Connect site has used images of the President and Vice President in an effort to suggest an affiliation with the U.S. government. For a time, the site featured a photo of President Obama and Vice President Biden standing in front of an American flag, next to the Grant Connect logo and a caption that read, “CHANGE Is Here! $15 BILLION in FREE Government MONEY for you!”

Unfortunately for consumers, according to the FTC, Grant Connect provides little more than outdated, useless information and worthless grant writing “tools.” Few, if any, grants are available to consumers who sign up for the program, and those that are require applicants to meet strict eligibility requirements before they are even considered for the grant.

In addition, while the Web sites tell consumers they can get the Grant Connect service for a one-time fee of as little as 99 cents to $2.78, they do not adequately disclose that buyers will be automatically signed up for other products and services costing up to $70 a month. While the Web site contains some disclosure language in small, densely packed type, few consumers realize they will be charged monthly for services such as “SmartHealth Gold medical and lifestyle benefits” and “VComm International and Long Distance Calling Service” unless they cancel these memberships.

The FTC charged the Grant Connect defendants with violating federal law by: 1) making deceptive representations regarding Grant Connect, 2) failing to adequately disclose the material terms and conditions of their offers, and 3) violating the Electronic Funds Transfer Act by debiting consumers’ bank accounts on a recurring basis without their authorization.

The Commission vote authorizing the complaint was 4-0. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada on July 27, 2009. The complaint names Grant Connect, LLC; Global Gold, Inc.; Horizon Holdings, LLC; O’Connell Gray, LLC; Pink LP, Vantex Group, LLC; Vertek Group, LLC; Rachel A. Cook, manager of Vantex, and Vertek; James J. Gray, managing member of Grant Connect, Horizon Holdings, and O’Connell Gray; Steven R. Henriksen, president and owner of Global Gold; Juliette M. Kimoto, owner of Vertek and General Partner of Pink; and Randy D. O’Connell, managing member of Horizon Holdings and O’Connell Gray.

The five defendants who agreed to the preliminary injunction entered by the court on August 18, 2009, are: Grant Connect, LLC; Horizon Holdings, LLC; O’Connell Gray, LLC; James J. Gray; and Randy D. O’Connell.

The FTC appreciates the assistance of United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada, the Better Business Bureau of Northern Nevada, the Better Business Bureau of Southern Nevada, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, and Reno Police Department (Financial Crimes/Computer Crimes Department) in this matter.

Once again, the FTC showed its teeth! Kudos to all of those involved in bringing this one down.

Official FTC documents here.

Grant Scam Affiliate Marketers Showing Their True Face

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:15:00 +0000

In my previous post (A Clarification) I mentioned that some people may not like some of the things I write here, since it interferes with their shady 'business' and potentially affects how much money they make off of scamming honest, decent, hard-working Americans with their 'clever' grant offer ploys.

Well that became pretty clear after my post about grant scam facilitating affiliate network Convert2Media.com, after which some of its less intelligent errand boys came out of the woodwork, twittering @scamhunter in no uncertain terms.

Here is the first tweet I received, from user AdHustler, also known as Brandon Hoffman (here is his blog, and see him babble here):

That's right, this thug wannabe, who actually looks quite cuddly-friendly in the video linked above, is threatening me with acts of violence with the intent to inflict bodily harm if I 'don't mind my own business'. Charming.

The next message I received from a certain Nick Mattern does not threaten me with the more primitive forms of violence, but is just pure despicable filth that makes your blood boil:

This guy is a piece of work. Now the 'gaysex' theme, I can live with that, but apparently this poor soul (or should I say ignorant hick?) thinks that that's something so very awful that it's an insult.

The other things he mentions though, are sickening. Nicholas, who apparently has some kids of his own, is trying to associate me with filth like that as a retaliation for the piece I wrote about an affiliate network that runs deceptive grant offers, a 'business' he seemingly has a vested interest in.

As a parent and as someone that works for the state government Nick should know better than posting crap like that.

The last guy is probably the least intelligent one of the pack, since in his cute little tweet he essentially admits these grant programs are scams:

'[...] It's your own damn fault you purchased a grant program [...]'

Now he does not quite literally say 'grant programs are scams' but you be the judge of what he says.

And for the record, John Nigro, I did not purchase shit, but that's probably too hard for you to grasp. Well hey, now at least we got word straight from the source about these grant programs.

A Clarification

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:30:00 +0000

I realize that there is a certain group of people out there that do not appreciate my blog posts here, because they expose a side of affiliate marketing they would rather see kept in the dark.

In light of some of the comments I recently received I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not waging war against the affiliate marketing business in general. It can be a good, honest way to make a very decent living, if you choose it to be so.

One of the ugly sides of affiliate marketing is the grant (kit) offer business, and that is what this blog is about, period.

The only purpose of the marketers operating in the grant offer niche is to get people to sign up for steep recurring monthly fees for useless 'grant information', 99% of the time accompanied by 'bonus programs' that add another $20-40 to the insult. They don't care how it's done and whether this 'service' they promote is genuine or not, for these folks the end ($$$) always justifies the means.

If you operate in this niche you know exactly what you're doing, and you know very well that the very thing you so cleverly try to convince people to sign up for is useless. For me there are no excuses, it's black and white.

It is pretty clear-cut that the overall theme within this affiliate marketing niche has been one of deception. The goal of all of the campaigns I have seen so far has been to ~~target~~ abuse the desperation, hope and financial insecurity of our brothers and sisters in economic distress, making false and / or suggestive promises about financial relief and availability of government funds for personal use.

It is this particular subsection of affiliate marketing that is the target of my wrath. I don't care if you're a marketer or network - if you promote these deceptive grant offers you willfully disrupt the lives of innocent Americans (and more recently, Canadians), and I'm not having it.

In the mean time, thousands of people have fallen victim to these scams and millions of affiliate marketing dollars have changed hands as a result.

I fail to see how it can be wrong to question and address that, and I fail to see how anyone can just shrug it off as 'part of the business'.

Convert2Media.com Supports Grant Scams

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:30:00 +0000

Last week I dropped some posts about how the HydraNetwork, a California-based affiliate network with more than 100 million dollars in revenue in 2008, as well as MarketLeverage, a Florida-based affiliate network (revenue unknown, millions, probably) both actively manage the affiliate / advertising program for one or more grant scam merchants.

I approached both of these companies for a comment but that was basically a waste of time. So today I will present to you another affiliate network that supports grant scams. That network is called Convert2Media, and they are based in Florida, US-of-A. I have not contacted them in similar fashion to my approach with HydraNetwork and MarketLeverage, but I have no doubt they will be in touch if anything I wrote concerns them.

This weekend I was researching a grant scam affiliate site that actively advertises on Bing (Microsoft's search engine):

The search was for 'grant money'. As you can see there are a lot of grant scam affiliate ads on Bing these days, and even sites showing up in the search results, especially compared to Google which could indicate that Google is taking measurements against these. Bing / Microsoft Ad Center however looks like it is suffering from a severe lack of oversight. They apparently did not get the FTC message in March. But that's a topic for a next post.

The ad circled in red, with Headline 'Government Grants' leads to a domain called ForGrants.org:

Forgrants.org is your basic grant scam affiliate site with a lot of fluff and blah blah about how they did research, etc. I am not going to discuss in detail the lies and deception of this page here, but trust me it is all rubbish.

Clicking on the first one of their 'recommended' programs takes us to known grant scam merchant Grants360.com, operated by a company in the United Kingdom (or supposedly so...). Clicking on the second 'recommended program' takes us to again Grants360.com, this time within a iframe loading a page via domain Grants411.com. The third recommended link leads to another known grant scam merchant's site, GrantsMoney.com - operated by the same company in the UK.

All affiliate links on this page go through the Convert2Media affiliate network via subdomain affiliate.c2mclicks.com:

GET http://forgrants.org/grants360.php HTTP/1.1
GET http://affiliate.c2mclicks.com/rd/r.php?sid=46&pub=515155&c1=931 HTTP/1.1
GET http://clktrck.com/track/NjE6Mzox,13/?sub=515155 HTTP/1.1
GET http://www.grants360.com/f/?nats=NjE6Mzox,13,0,0,0&sub=515155 HTTP/1.1

GET http://forgrants.org/government-grants.php HTTP/1.1
GET http://www.govgrants411.com/grants360.php HTTP/1.1
GET http://affiliate.c2mclicks.com/rd/r.php?sid=46&pub=515155&c1= HTTP/1.1
GET http://clktrck.com/track/NjE6Mzox,13/?sub=515155 HTTP/1.1
GET http://www.grants360.com/f/?nats=NjE6Mzox,13,0,0,0&sub=515155 HTTP/1.1

GET http://forgrants.org/egrants.php HTTP/1.1
GET http://affiliate.c2mclicks.com/rd/r.php?sid=49&pub=515155&c1=931 HTTP/1.1
GET http://clktrck.com/track/NjE6Mzoy/?sub=515155 HTTP/1.1
GET http://www.grantsmoney.com/?nats=NjE6Mzoy,0,0,0,0&sub=515155 HTTP/1.1

This shows you two things:

1) The operators of grant scam affiliate site forgrants.org also run a grant scam affiliate site via domain govgrants411.com. See, it looks almost the same as forgrants.org:

2) Convert2Media actively runs these grant programs as part of their 'portfolio', contributing to the scamming of American and Canadian citizens who are looking for a financial break.

So let's get to Convert2Media.

Convert2media is an affiliate network that was started a little over a year ago by a group of experienced affiliate marketers. Not sure about who all is involved, but the main character behind Convert2Media appears to be president and CEO Ralph "Ruck" Ruckman.

Their 'about us' page touts an image that looks like a freeze-frame from the movie Reservoir Dogs. An image that exudes trust, honesty and professionalism:
Mr. Ruckman seems to have quite a reputation within some of the affiliate marketing community. From the interviews I've watched and listened to, from his blog and forum postings I have read, it appears that Ruck is what you would call a straight shooter.

Apparently, Mr. Ruckman has seen it all, from innocent content writing and SEO to blackhat affiliate marketing tactics, traffic hijacking, 'hacking' (his words), being banned from Google Blogger due to high-volume spam blogging, run-ins with the authorities etc. Some of the affiliate marketer thug wannabees look up to him - and it seems he wants to know about that, appreciating his notoriety.

It appears Ruck's adventures in affiliate marketing have served him and his company well. I found the folllowing video posted on the site of Affiliate Marketer / Blogger Ian Fernando. He visited the Convert2Media headquarters (?) in Florida, and impressed with all that blings ("a huge LCD TV in every room!") dubbed it Gangsterlicious. Mind you, Ian Fernando likes the gangsta theme, as evident from the fact that the team he forms with some other affiliate marketers carries the badass-wannabe name PPC Mafia [source]:

Now I am all for making money and living large, and if that's your thing more power to you.

But doing so by facilitating grant scam operations that target Americans in a time of financial crisis, making hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars through deceptive rebill offers that cheat your fellow countrymen out of the last few dollars they may have, that is repulsive and as far as I am concerned criminal.

And Convert2Media has in the last 10 months run many grant offers besides the ones they are running now. Here's a list compiled from announcements in their forum:

Grant Writing Express 5.59% 2.14 EPC
Grant Funding Express 4.79% $2.01 EPC
Grant Every Day Search 4.59% $1.97 EPC
Every Day Grants - $30.00
Economic Crisis Grants - $30.00
Grant Funding Express - $34.00
Obama Bailout Grant
Grant Solution Center
Grant Funding Place
Grant Every Day (Search Only) $39.00
Grant Research Guide $36.00
Government Funding Solutions $25.25
Earn Cash from Grants $38.00
Grant Connect - Government Grants $32.00
Grant Every Day $32.00

As you can see the conversion rates mentioned are pretty high, and the payout averages around $32 per sign-up. So out of every 100 visitors, 5 sign up and become a victim of these grant scam rebill offers, making the grant scam affiliate marketer $160+ per 100 visitors.

And as Mr. Ruckman describes in his blog post Government Grants - A lesson in Targeted Conversions, millions of dollars changed hands as a result of these grant offers:

"This is for all you government grant publishers. In case you dont know, government grants are an extremely lucrative niche. Ruck knows because he’s been involved with the market for almost two years now. He also knows about the multi million dollar payrolls to networks and affiliates from two of the largest grant advertisers online because he had the pleasure of drinking a beer with both of them at Ad-Tech NYC earlier this month."

(Yes, he is really referring to himself when he says 'Ruck knows...')

Further on in the post, he says:

"My friends there is an entire world of traffic out there you never even knew about and ALL of them are looking for something different. Let me show you who they are and how best to construct your landing pages so that when they read them, they get that tingly feeling in their pants to the point of where $1.95 for that grant cd feels like something they MUST have."

So basically Mr. Ruckman is teaching his flock of sheep the intricacies of getting people to sign up for something he surely knows is not kosher. In one interview I listened to he played the 'rebill offers have always been there' card and compared the grant scam offers to NetFlix trial offers.

Yeah right. Makes you sleep better at night, Ruck, to think that way?

Mr. Ruckman, who never fails to mention how his network is different from others in that his team personally coaches you if you are not a loser, also posted a grant campaign how-to in the Convert2Media forums, where he basically delivers the good and bad of grant offer promotion. If you read the whole thread you'll see how the discussion quickly evolves into a how to market grant offers on Craigslist by posting 'work from home' and 'make money online' ads.

Again, specifically targeting those looking for a job, those in financial distress willing to cling to any possible form of relief. In other words scum of the earth affiliate marketing tactics.

When you see Mr. Ruckman talk you'll notice he tries to be very careful when talking about certain topics such as blackhat Google tactics and things like FTC scrutiny. Apparently he's had 'several run-ins with the BBB and FTC' - I can only guess why. Funny thing is sometimes he appears to have this internal struggle where he wants to be the badass and say certain things but has to refrain from doing it because it may come back to haunt him.

The Click2Marketing team is present at Affiliate Summit East 2009. They arrived in style, true to their gangsta image, in an over the top Hummer limo. They're in booth 1808. Go visit them and ask them about removing all grant offers from their network. Make sure you use expletives, that's how they roll.

And Ruck, if you've managed to read all of this, since you prefer and appreciate in your face no-bullshit straight-talk:

Fuck you and your scampany, and I hope the Feds come raid your 'gangstalicious crib' soon and make an example out of your scam-facilitating money whore of a company that is co-responsible for ripping off financially troubled Americans to the tune of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.

Neverpayitback.com scam site goes into hiding

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:25:00 +0000

It appears it's getting hotter under the smelly feet of grant scam affiliate neverpayitback.com.

Over the weekend they reconfigured their site to no longer show their landing page with its fake 'sales pitch', complete with non-existent, stock-photo person 'Alan Friedman' (in case you missed it, here's what it looked like)

Instead the domain now does a 301 (moved permanently) redirect to the grant scam merchant JRS Media Solutions in the Philippines - hopping via their affiliate link, of course, still trying to cash in on what remains of their jail-worthy affiliate marketing campaign:

GET http://www.neverpayitback.com/ HTTP/1.1

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:16:49 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8i DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635
Location: http://www.lynxtrack.com/afclick.php?o=8628&b=2y1hfphh&p=38081&l=1&s=NPB
Content-Length: 482
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

I wonder, would the redirect have anything to do with my abuse complaint to Planet, which hosted the site? I guess we'll never know ...

Apparently they're still advertising on radio - a visitor from Tampa, FL commented that (s)he heard the ad there on The Bone.

In the mean time, HydraNetwork.com, the folks behind Lynxtrack, and the affiliate network that facilitates some of the JRS Media Solutions grant scam programs that have ripped off thousands of Americans, is networking at Affiliate Summit East 2009 in NYC, sipping champagne and dining on gourmet food.

Aaah, business is good, isn't it?

MarketLeverage Condones Grant Scams

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:27:00 +0000

In my previous post I wrote about how affiliate networks like HydraNetwork.com facilitate the grant scam business by actively managing the advertising program for grant scam merchants like JRS Media Solutions in the Philippines.

Another such affiliate network in the United States that does this is MarketLeverage.com, a Lake Mary, FL based company that manages the advertising and affiliate programs for grantsmoney.com, grants360.com and like their grant scam facilitating brethren at Hydra, a program for JRS Media Solutions, Federal Grant Connection.

In case you did not read my postings about grants360 and grantsmoney.com, these are grant scam sites operated by a company called 'Positive Thinking Management Ltd.' in the United Kingdom. They are particularly devious because, besides providing useless grant related information, they

use a 1-day trial period, after which they bill you $57.61 (recurring)
also sign you up for their 'work from home guide' for $38.21 (one-time)

So, in essence they will bill you close to $100 for useless crap.

And MarketLeverage is OK with that.

It happens to be the case that in recent weeks I have received several inquiries from the media for information about these two grant scam sites, so I decided to investigate a little more and see what MarketLeverage's input on this would be.

So just like I did with my HydraNetwork investigation, I contacted the MarketLeverage Team:

- - - -
Hi,

I run a blog called 'freegrantkitscams.com' which deals exclusively with government money grant scams.

I have been investigating and reporting on 'verifiedgrants.com' and its sister sites. This set of sites is built around a complete fake organization (see exposure article on my blog).

The grant programs they 'recommend' all appear to run through your affiliate network, for example via URL:

GET http://users.marketleverage.com/ad/28842/CD3963/&dp=0&l=0&p=0&subid1=81751&subid2=&subid3=&subid4=&subid5= HTTP/1.1

Which 301s to:

http://affiliate.votracking.com/rd/r.php?affid=221010&sid=44&c1=CD3963

So I have a couple of questions:

1. These guys cannot possibly be compliant to your affiliate policies. Their account should be shut down.
2. Why are you running a affiliate programs for Grant Scam Merchants in the first place? You know it's a scam, and you know the FTC is "not happy" with them.
3. Besides "Federal Grant Connection" and "GrantsMoney" programs, what other grant related programs do you run?

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Also note that I may or may not publish this e-mail and / or answers to this e-mail on my blog.

Kind regards,

'Hunter O'Scams'
Blog Admin | FreeGrantKitScams.com
E-mail: freegrantkitscams@gmail.com
- - - -

As you see, in particular I asked them about verifiedgrants.com and related sites, a set of grant scam affiliate domains that are complete fakes, as described in my posts Verifiedgrants.com is a Verified Scam Affiliate and More Grant Scam Affiliate Deception - SecureGrants.com.

Here is the response I received from the MarketLeverage team (bold / highlights by me):

- - - -
Hello ‘Hunter’,

Thank you for contacting the MarketLeverage affiliate network with your concerns.

As you may be aware, the United States federal government, along with attorneys general from several states, recently took aggressive action against several government grant assistance programs in a unified effort to protect consumers from false or misleading government grant opportunities. These efforts targeted specific government grant assistance programs that have falsely implied that consumers could obtain government grants as a direct result of President Obama’s recent economic stimulus package. Additionally, a few specific grant offers also implied that their programs were either affiliated with or sponsored by the U.S. federal government.

For many months prior to the government’s actions to protect consumers, the MarketLeverage network developed its own standards and increased its own scrutiny regarding government grant assistance programs. Because MarketLeverage proactively monitored its own actions, not a single one of the grant assistance programs cited by the federal government was ever listed on, is currently listed on, or ever will be listed on the MarketLeverage affiliate network.

The MarketLeverage network strives to be at the forefront of affiliate marketing compliance. In the rare event an Advertiser or Publisher on the MarketLeverage network violates a federal law or regulation, or violates either the MarketLeverage Advertiser Terms and Conditions or the MarketLeverage Publisher Terms and Conditions (which are more restrictive than federal law), MarketLeverage wants to know about it so that it can take swift and appropriate action.

We reviewed the website which you brought to our attention, verifiedgrants.com, and the government grant assistance programs that are currently listed on the MarketLeverage network reveals none of the above-mentioned issues. While MarketLeverage doesn’t perform independent investigations into the business of each of its advertisers, it appears that the offers listed on verifiedgrants.com provide consumers with legitimate and beneficial services. If you have any specific information that would contradict our current conclusion regarding these programs and verifiedgrants.com, please bring this information to our attention.

If you plan on attending the Affiliate Summit conference next week in New York City, please feel free to introduce yourself and visit us at our booth. We appreciate your vigilance and your efforts, and, again, thank you for contacting the MarketLeverage network.

- - - -

First of all, it appears that like Hydra, MarketLeverage currently only runs grant related programs that are owned by foreign companies. Again it seems obvious why; these companies are outside of the direct reach of the FTC. The scam is exactly the same though, but MarketLeverage does not care.

They mention the team 'developed their own standards and increased its scrutiny regarding government grant assistance programs'.

Well let me make this really easy for you, MarketLeverage. Here is a quote from the FTC:

"[...] this is a scam as old as the hills. [...] Do not pay a dime to anyone for information about government grants"

Go ahead, scrutinize that.

The e-mail also mentions that MarketLeverage 'doesn't perform independent investigations into the business of its advertisers.' Does not just blow your mind? In other words, they apparently do not care what of for whom they run advertising campaigns, as long as the money keeps rolling in. Kinda makes you wonder what else they have in their portfolio.

Furthermore the e-mail states that if any publisher or advertiser violates their terms and conditions to please bring it to their attention. Well did not I just do that in my e-mail? I followed up and let them know that the verifiedgrants.com set of sites clearly and blatantly violates section 4.2(f) of their publisher terms and conditions:

4.2 Prohibited Content. The content of the Publisher Website(s) incorporating any Program(s) may not promote, advocate, facilitate or otherwise include any of the following ("Prohibited Content"):

(f) Material that impersonates any person or entity;

As exposed in my previous posts about verifiedgrants.com, securegrants.com and the other sites mentioned, they are complete frauds claiming to be a grant research company with a team of fake grant researchers, and all they intend to do is push you through their affiliate sales funnel.

If that is not impersonating and entity or person in its most blatant form, then I do not know what is.

So why would MarketLeverage's CEO and founder Michael Jenkins allow his company to represent these shady grant kit offers and allow its publishers to generate deceptive sites to push these offers?

Funny thing is if you read this interview with Michael, he seems like a pretty decent guy, and much of what he says seems to contradict MarketLeverage's take on these grant programs, except for the following quote, which may explain the whole thing:

"One of things I always say about affiliate marketing and performance marketing is “he who has the gold makes the rules.” This is really the case with what the CPA industry does.

The advertiser is the person with the gold. At the end of the day, they are the ones that get to make the rules. They get to define what it is that they want to pay for and mitigate their risk by doing so.

CPA is the advent of a brand new way of marketing. It’s extremely efficient for the person with the gold, so we believe that that’s the driving force behind this industry. That little saying has really influenced the way that we think about the business."

Wow he really said that. 'He who has the gold makes the rules'.

Well yes if you are a slave to money. And how much gold do you need? Not all gold is equal. Heard of Blood Diamonds? In similar fashion, let's coin the term 'Scammer's Gold'.

You should not want that kind of gold, and should not allow yourself to be ruled by anyone that holds the Scammer's Gold.

In the mean time, MarketLeverage publishes 'good things' in their news section, like how much time and money they donate to Ronald McDonald, etc. It's always nice when well-to-do companies do charitable things, but considering where some of that money may have come from, I ain't applauding it.

MarketLeverage will be attending Affiliate Summit East in NYC from August 9 to 11 where they also will be celebrating all that is gold with a lavish VIP yacht party. If you attend the ASE, please visit their booth and request they remove all their grant related offers from their portfolio.

See you there.

Hydra Network Facilitates Grant Scams

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:11:00 +0000

I have written a lot about grant scam affiliate marketers and their deceptive sites, and I showed you examples of grant scam affiliate marketers operating in ueber decepticon mode by creating complete fake organizations pushing useless pay per sign-up grant kit programs that end up costing the unsuspecting consumer a whole lot more than they bargained for.

As a refresher, here is what the Federal Trade Commission has to say about these grant programs:

In case you missed it, she said SCAM a lot of times, and her last statement was: 'Don't pay a dime to ANYONE for information about government grants'.

Shady affiliate marketers would not be able to promote grant kit offers without some affiliate network managing the affiliate program for the grant scam merchant.

In case you never heard of affiliate networks, they are essentially companies that are the intermediary between the advertiser (the grant scam merchant) and the publisher (the affiliate marketer / blogger / web site owner). The affiliate network takes care of conversion tracking, payouts, creatives (banners) and more, and obviously gets paid generously for this effort.

It is a good and legitimate business that unfortunately has its dark side - as should be evident from my postings on this blog.

By now it should not surprise you that there are several affiliate networks within the United States that do not shy away from ~~managing~~ cashing in on both domestic as well as foreign Grant Scam Merchants' campaigns whose sole aim is to extract money from the pockets of innocent Americans, many of which are simply looking for a financial break.

One such affiliate network is the Hydra Network. The Hydra Network was founded by apparent marketing wunderkind Zac Brandenberg, the current CEO of Hydra. His bio touts that

"Prior to founding Hydra, he founded patriotic products online retailer GreatUSAflags where he launched the official “Iraqi Most Wanted” playing cards. Grossing $10 million in just six weeks, it remains one of the largest e-commerce launches in history, and earned Brandenberg widespread media coverage and a reputation as an online marketing pioneer."

During my recent exploration of neverpayitback.com I noticed that the affiliate links from this grant scam affiliate site go through a place called lynxtrack.com. If you followed the Aweber story, you'll notice that they now changed their code and are no longer able to use Aweber since their account got cancelled:


<form method="post" action="http://www.lynxtrack.com/afclick.php?o=8628&b=2y1hfphh&p=38081&l=1&s=NPB">
<input type="hidden" name="meta_web_form_id" value="464423523">
<input type="hidden" name="meta_split_id" value="">
<input type="hidden" name="unit" value="npb">
<input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="http://www.lynxtrack.com/afclick.php?o=8628&b=2y1hfphh&p=38081&l=1&s=NPB" id="redirect_7b491cbcf5d57aa663f7837f3e30c800">

Lynxtrack.com is part of Hydra's affiliate tracking system.

Now that it has been established that Hydra indeed runs an affiliate program for Grant Seeker Secrets , which is operated by JRS Media Solutions in the Philippines, it makes you wonder what happened to "patriotic pioneer" Zac Brandenberg. It seems he is not so patriotic anymore, since the company he founded and presides over actively manages the affiliate program for a foreign-based grant scam merchant that rips off US Citizens.

Hydra's press section mentions the following:

"Topping $100 million in revenue in 2008, Hydra delivers over 25 million transactions per year for online direct response to Fortune 500 marketers, and just recently brought on its 1,000th advertiser according to Brandenberg."

And also that it was recently named

"the 2009 Internet/New Media Company of the year by the Technology Council of Southern California"

That's a lot of dough (little sour maybe?), and being named like that should mean something, well at least in the local business community I guess.

It seems that for Hydra grossing more than one hundred million dollars is not enough to ensure that the affiliate portfolio they manage only holds programs that are scam-free, decent, and honest. Or is it true that all those dollars make you blind and cause you to lose your sense of decency? And as for being named 'New Media Company of the Year', I take it the Technology Council of Southern California did not do their research very well.

This week I submitted the following e-mail to Hydra:

- - - - - - - - -

Hi,

I run a blog called 'freegrantkitscams.com' which deals exclusively with government money grant scams.

I am investigating 'neverpayitback.com' and its sister sites. This set of sites is advertised on radio as 'helping you get free money you will never have to pay back'. The sites' entry pages are simple forms with outrageous claims. The form originally was linked to an Aweber lead generator but I got Aweber to shut that down yesterday.

The affiliate links these guys use go through your network (lynxtrack.com), via this URL:

http://www.lynxtrack.com/afclick.php?o=8628&b=2y1hfphh&p=38081&l=1&s=NPB

So I have a couple of questions:

1. The cuddly folks behind 'neverpayitback.com' , 'nevergiveitback.com' (and others) cannot possibly be in compliance with your affiliate policies. Their account should be shut down.
2. Why are you running an affiliate program for Grant Scam Merchants in the first place? You know it's a scam, and you know the FTC is "not happy" with them.
3. Besides the 'Grant Seeker Secrets' (GSS) program for 'JRS Media Solutions' in the Philippines, what other grant (scam) related programs do you run?

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Also note that I may or may not publish this e-mail and / or answers to this e-mail on my blog.

Kind regards,

'Hunter O'Scams'
Blog Admin | FreeGrantKitScams.com
E-Mail: freegrantkitscams@gmail.com

- - - - - - - - -

Simple questions - a bit leading, yeah, but we're trying to get some results here! - that could have been countered with simple answers.

Not the case.

Instead I got the run around, pretty much saying that due to my anonymity (they wanted a phone call, I declined) as well as legal considerations, they could not respond in detail except for saying that Hydra 'eliminated all but one grant offer from our advertising network'.

Apparently the only grant offer they now run in their advertising network is the one (in its many variants, I presume) by JRS Media Solutions. It's easy to understand why that is; all US-based grant offers have probably flipped the switch due to increased FTC scrutiny and recent federal suits against some of these grant scam operators. The one grant offer Hydra currently runs is operated by a company that claims to be in the Philippines, more or less out of the Federal Trade Commission's direct reach.

I highly doubt that HydraNetwork's decision (if it was theirs to begin with) to stop representing all of the other 'grant offers' was for reasons of morality, the desire to run a clean business, or to look out for the financial well-being of Americans in economic despair. In proper corporate speak, it was probably in their best interest.

Hydra also did not elaborate on my questions regarding the neverpayitback.com site. I take that as a confirmation that according to Hydra the site complies to their publisher terms and conditions, which, we can conclude then, condones deceptive affiliate marketing practices. Fair enough, but at least have the balls to say 'yeah, kinda deceptive huh, but it's OK by our rules and we really don't care', instead of ignoring the question (if you thought sticking one head in the sand was difficult, try 9).

The question I am left with is WHY? Why would a successful company like the Hydra Network involve itself with shady grant scam merchants like JRS Media Solutions? Why would any respectable US company participate in schemes that prey on the financially weak?

I think I have the answer, but unless confirmed by Hydra it will remain just a 'hunch':

Money talks, mmm-hmm-hmm, money talks
Dirty cash I want you, dirty cash I need you, woh-oh
Money talks, money talks
Dirty cash I want you, dirty cash I need you, woh-oh

[From: Adventures of Stevy - Dirty Cash]

Up Next: Grant Scam Enabling Affiliate Network #2: MarketLeverage.com (it gets even better).

Another Grant Scam Outfit Sued by the FTC

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:40:00 +0000

The following press release was published on the FTC web site on July 23rd. This time the FTC as well as several state Attorney Generals file suit against the 'Grant Writers Institute.

FTC, Three States Charge Scammers with Falsely Promising “Guaranteed” $25,000 Government Grants as Part of the Economic Stimulus Package

Court Halts Operators’ Deceptive Pitches for Grant Writing Book and Services
At the request of the Federal Trade Commission and three state Attorneys General, a U.S. district court judge has stopped an operation from falsely claiming that it could help consumers secure a “$25,000 Grant” – guaranteed – from the U.S. government. The case is the latest in a Commission crackdown on scammers trying to capitalize on the economic downturn by targeting people facing financial hardship. The FTC is working with federal and state law enforcement agencies nationwide to bring such actions.

In a complaint filed this week, the FTC, jointly with the Attorneys General of Kansas, Minnesota, and North Carolina, charged that Grant Writers Institute, LLC and its related entities (together, GWI) falsely told consumers that they were eligible for grants as part of the recently announced economic stimulus package. The complaint alleged that the defendants’ false and deceptive claims violate federal law, state consumer protection laws, and the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule. The complaint seeks a court order permanently stopping the defendants’ illegal conduct and forcing them to return money to consumers injured by the scheme.

“Stamping out grant fraud and other types of schemes that take advantage of consumers in dire financial shape continues to be one of the Federal Trade Commission’s highest priorities,” said David Vladeck, Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection. “There is no such thing as a guaranteed grant. But to consumers in financial trouble, the chance for extra income – guaranteed or otherwise – can unfortunately be a huge draw.”

According to the FTC, since at least 2007, GWI has mass mailed postcards to consumers across the country falsely claiming that the consumers “are Guaranteed a $25,000 Grant from the U.S. Government.” Consumers who call the number are pitched a $59 book titled “Professional Grant Writer ‘The Definitive Guide to Grant Writing Success.’” The company’s telemarketers falsely claim that the book will explain how to get government grants – including the “guaranteed” $25,000 grant. GWI and its North Carolina-based telemarketers, also named as defendants in the complaint, then call consumers who have bought the book, trying to get them to pay hundreds of dollars or more for grant research, writing, or coaching services, falsely claiming a 70 percent success rate in securing grant funding. In reality, few, if any consumers ever receive any grant money.

The Commission contends that in addition to falsely claiming consumers were “guaranteed” to receive grants, GWI used the current government stimulus package to make its pitch. For example, when consumers called the number on the mass-mailed postcard, they heard a recording that said, “If you’ve been reading the papers you know that recently our government released $700 billion into the private sector. What you probably don’t know is that there is another $300 billion that must be given away this year to people just like you.” The recording continues, “And if you’re one of the lucky few who knows how to find and apply for these grants, you will receive a check for $25,000 or more, and we guarantee it . . . If you don’t get a check for $25,000 or more, you pay nothing.”

The Commission vote to issue the complaint – jointly with the Attorneys General of Kansas, Minnesota, and North Carolina regarding the alleged telemarketing violations – was 4-0. The complaint contains additional charges and remedies to address state-specific violations.
It was filed on July 20, 2009, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, and the court granted the Commission’s request for a temporary restraining order on July 22, 2009. The FTC thanks the state Attorneys General for their substantial contribution to investigating and filing this complaint.

The complaint announced today was filed against the following defendants: 1) Affiliate Strategies, Inc.; 2) Landmark Publishing Group, LLC (d/b/a G.F. Institute and Grant Funding Institute); 3) Grant Writers Institute, LLC; 4) Answer Customers, LLC; 5) Apex Holdings International, LLC; 6) Brett Blackman, individually and as an officer, manager, and/or member of Affiliate Strategies, Inc., Landmark Publishing Group, LLC, Grant Writers Institute, LLC, Answer Customers, LLC, and Apex Holdings International, LLC; 7) Jordan Sevy, individually and as a manager of Landmark Publishing Group, LLC; 8) James Rulison, individually and as president of Answer Customers, LLC, all located in Kansas.

In addition, the complaint names the following North Carolina entities as defendants: 1) Real Estate Buyers Financial Network LLC (d/b/a Grant Writers Research Network); 2) Martin Nossov, individually and as a manager and member of Real Estate Buyers Financial Network LLC; and 3) Alicia Nossov, individually and as a manager and member of Real Estate Buyers Financial Network LLC.

The Commission recently announced several other grant fraud cases as part of the “Operation Short Change” law enforcement sweep targeting economic stimulus frauds. More information about these cases can be found at: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/07/shortchange.shtm.

It seems the Federal Trade Commission is making good on its promises. Awesome! For PDF versions of the complaint as well as Temporary Restraining Order with Asset Freeze, visit the official case page on the FTC web site.

Obama Voters are Fools that Deserve to get the Shaft

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:36:00 +0000

Today someone left the following comment on this blog, in response to my post Selling the Grant Scam:

"I don't mind scamming the fools that voted for Obama. They deserve to get the shaft. Stupid people deserve whatever their stupid actions result in. Obama fooled them, so now they are just getting more of what they deserve."

...

WOW...

First of all, Mr. Scam Affiliate, you have no idea who you are setting up to be scammed. Or do you put a questionnaire on your cleverly designed, super SEOptimized, psychologically targeted landing pages that asks the visitor whether they voted for Obama? Didn't think so.

You should have said "I don't care who I set up to get scammed, as long as I get my dineros I'm a happy chap!" In other words, you are just an unscrupulous wannabe mobster.

Second of all, Mr. Scam Affiliate, these grant scams have nothing to do with President Obama, or who voted for him. If people voted for President Obama on the basis of his campaign promises, and the President turns around and changes what he promised, then yes, you could say "you voted for him so bo-hoo".

Third of all, Mr. Scam Affiliate, in your reasoning, "Obama fooled them", so it's OK for you to fool "them" too... I doubt you possess even 1ooth of his intellect and presence, so don't try to put yourself on equal footing with the President.

Justifying your pathetic doings as a scam affiliate by creating this mind-boggling link to presidential politics is so ridiculous, it leaves me near speechless.

Fourth of all, Mr. Scam Affiliate, who are you to decide what people you have never met 'deserve'? Do you hear voices in your head you while you angrily hammer on your keyboard, spewing out your next awesome landing page? Do angels appear at your bedside at night while you are getting the shaft, telling you to 'do unto others what is being done to you'? Are you the grim reapers' third cousin, knowingly presiding over the pain and suffering of some people over others?

Last but not least, Mr. Scam Affiliate, thanks for commenting on my blog and being honest about being dishonest. It keeps me motivated.

Neverpayitback.com Aweber update: account closed!

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:44:00 +0000

So, in my previous post I mentioned Aweber's unresponsiveness to my inquiry about the e-mail harvesting activities of neverpayitback.com and its sister sites, who used Aweber's services for this.

As I mentioned I had submitted a support case to them and after no response chatted with a 'live' support person who had told me the case had been forwarded to a manager, only to find the case 'closed' a few days later without a comment or response. I had reopened the case with the question as to why it was closed without any feedback, but had not received a response.

So today, two hours after posting the neverpayitback.com story as well as tweeting about it I get the following message:

My apologies for the delay in response, but when we get these kinds of complaints, we take some time to fully investigate the account in question.

After a complete investigation into this account, this is not something that we condone, nor are able to work with. The account has been closed effective immediately, as per our service agreement.

I would like to thank you for taking the time to look into this, and bring it to our attention. If you have any questions about this please feel free to let me know. Thank you.

[signature removed by me]

Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. In any case, they indeed closed the account the folks behind neverpayitback.com and its sister grant scam sites were using.

See what happens when you submit your name and e-mail from the front page now:

Awesome. Crippled, for now. Thanks Aweber for doing this, it will save a lot of people financial grief and prevent the unauthorized harvesting of e-mail addresses for (presumably) spam purposes.

New Twist to Grant Scams: Neverpayitback.com

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:05:00 +0000

The other day I was approached by someone who asked if I had ever heard of the web site neverpayitback.com. Well I had not but after some research I can tell you that neverpayitback.com is a scam. Stay away from it.

Apparently they have been touting their site using radio ads in certain parts of the country. From a forum:

"I was in my car and I live in South Texas so these guys are really getting after it for a scam. I heard the www.neverpayitback.com ad on the radio. Same song and dance as everyone else hears "$2500 from stimulus packages and private investors who want to help stimulate the economy & help our country" Ultra bogus site." [source]

There have also been reports from people in Florida, North Carolina and several other places, so these guys are serious about getting their scam message out.

If anyone has an audio clip for this radio ad, please contact me.

Apparently they have also been robo-calling folks, referring them to the same web site. The caller ID shows up as Federal Funds Administration with number 202-280-2428.

I have seen people in places like Yahoo Answers and other discussion boards ask whether 'this site where you can get free money, the one from the radio' is for real. So apparently the radio commercials do have some impact. This is also evident from the traffic pattern:

As you can see it is a new domain that had a surge in traffic recently. This, obviously, due to the advertising effect. Besides this domain, they also run nevergiveitback.com, also a scam. Here is the traffic pattern, again indicating a surge in traffic due to advertising:

Besides these two, the same outfit runs a couple of other domains that look exactly the same. They are: mygrantfunds.com, mygrantfunds.org and mygrantsource.com.

Let's take a look at the sites.

As you can clearly see, they're all the same. The home page touts 'Free Money' and shows us a certain 'Alan Friedman'. Needless to say, this is not Alan Friedman, but a successful stock photo model from Denmark.

Just like I described how the grant scam affiliate site verifiedgrants.com and its sister grant scam site securegrants.com use stock photo trickery to build a complete fake company, this set of sites employs similar tactics.

Meet 'Alan Friedman':

As you can see, Alan is a model. Go to iStockPhoto.com and search for 'Senior Businessman' and you'll see he will pop up as the most downloaded senior businessman on iStockphoto.

Anyway, back to our grant scam site. The site asks you to enter your first name and e-mail address. It also tells you that you will be asked to 'verify' your e-mail address:

The note that you will have to verify your e-mail address is not true. All this page does is capture your e-mail address and then forward you to one of several grant scam sites via a rotator script. We can only guess as to why these grant scam affiliates want to capture your e-mail address, but in any case it can not be a good reason. Spam anyone?

<form method="post" action="http://www.aweber.com/scripts/addlead.pl">
<input type="hidden" name="meta_web_form_id" value="464423523">
<input type="hidden" name="meta_split_id" value="">
<input type="hidden" name="unit" value="npb">
<input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="http://www.lynxtrack.com/afclick.php?o=8628&b=2y1hfphh&p=38081&l=1&s=NPB" id="redirect_7b491cbcf5d57aa663f7837f3e30c800">
<input type="hidden" name="meta_redirect_onlist" value="">
<input type="hidden" name="meta_adtracking" value="">
<input type="hidden" name="meta_required" value="from">
<input type="hidden" name="meta_forward_vars" value="0">

Looking at the source code above it is clear that this grant scam affiliate uses Aweber as part of their affiliate marketing toolkit. Aweber is a popular tool that allows one to quickly and easily set up newsletter signup forms as well as create and manage e-mail lists and automated e-mail marketing campaigns. Note the addlead.pl portion of the Aweber url.

Aweber's anti-spam policy specifically states that sneaky collection of e-mail addresses is not condoned and will lead to immediate termination of an account. I contacted Aweber support to report this site as violating their TOS. My support case sat stale for more than a week without an update from their site. When I contacted Aweber support via chat, they told me that the case was 'forwarded to a manager'. Again, nothing for about a week and then it appeared they closed the case. No comment, no feedback.

What I find interesting about all of this is that Aweber seems to be a successful, respectable company with a nice product. Knowing that they actually read the support case I submitted, I can only conclude that Aweber willfully allows a grant scam affiliate to collect e-mail addresses of victims before forwarding them to a grant scam merchants site. For what purposes? Who knows, and Aweber apparently does not care, even if it violates their anti-spam policy and / or TOS.

So after harvesting your e-mail address the people behind neverpayitback.com auto-forward you to one of the grant scam merchant sites. They are the ones you may have seen here before. In my case I get forwarded to the Grant Seeker Secrets site, a scam merchant listing the Philippines as their home base:

Oh Canada - Grantsmoney.com Now Targeting Canadian Consumers

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:17:00 +0000

I was notified by someone in Canada of the fact that grant scam merchant grantsmoney.com is now also targeting Canadian consumers, via URL www.grantsmoney.com/ca. I have no clue as to the political landscape in Canada, but the Canadian version of the site prominently displays what appears to be Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

So the grant scam merchants are now expanding their operations to other territories.

It should be restated that grant scam site grantsmoney.com is operated by an outfit located in the United Kingdom and has absolutely nothing to do with US or Canadian government grants:

Media Ltd
31 Castle Street,
High Wycombe,
HP136RU
United Kingdom

Also note that the USA & Canada versions of the page are exactly the same except for some of the graphics and wording. Here are three side by side screenshots.

I do not know what the Canadian version of the FTC is but maybe the two should join forces to shut this operation down.

More Grant Scam Affiliate Deception: SecureGrants.com

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:13:00 +0000

A couple of months ago I wrote about the ultimate grant scam affiliate marketing deception in the form of the site verifiedgrants.com. I showed you how the site is a complete fake attempting to gain your trust, and how they use stock images, presenting the people in the images as their team of 'grant researchers'.

It appears that after publishing my article, the 'grant researchers' have mysteriously disappeared from the site. But wait, the front page still touts the friendly looking 'Glenn Ross':

Would it surprise you if I told you that 'Glenn Ross' is another fake? Well I guess it wouldn't.

Here is the stock image:

Boy does he look friendly. I guess that's why they picked him for their deceptive site.

A little more research into verifiedgrants.com led me to squidoo.com. Squidoo is an article submission site much like EzineArticles.com, allowing folks to create nuggets of 'knowledge' with the option of linking to their own sites. As discussed in the EzineArticles example, Squidoo in very much the same way provides affiliate marketers with a method for 'link building', i.e. creating 'related content' on a well-known site from where they can link to their affiliate sites via keyword-rich links (good for SEO purposes, or presumably so).

Behold:

Recognize the friendly face? Obviously this 'Squidoo Lens' is fillled with blah blah and strategically sprinkled keyword-rich links to verifiedgrants.com. While checking the link targets, I noticed that they also link to another site, securegrants.com :

Notice how the site has the same look and feel of verifiedgrants.com as well as trustedgrantsources.com? Well there's more that's very similar, yet different. How? Well here goes; image 1 is from verifiedgrants.com, where the lady used to be listed as 'Linda Markinson' (but like I mentioned, the 'team' was removed from the site soon after I posted my article exposing the scam), and image 2 is from securegrants.com, where the lady goes by 'Gayle Blanchard':
Gayle, Linda - whatever. Securegrants.com is another verified deceptive scam affiliate site trying to gain your trust with fake blog posts and tucked away links to genuine sources of grant related information in the hope that you will take the bait and follow their 'recommended programs' affiliate links to grant scam merchants.

In a follow-up post I will show you how to submit an official complaint with the FTC via the online FTC complaint assist tool - using this batch of willfully deceptive sites as an example.

Grant Scam Crackdown - FTC in Action!

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:30:00 +0000

It has been a while since I posted something here, but there is some exciting news in Grant Scam land; the FTC is taking some serious legal action against some of the Grant Scampanies out there. On July 1st 2009 they announced Operation Shortchange, with a set of 15 actions filed against scam operations, among which we find two Grant Scam operations.

It appears that after their Economic Stimulus Scam Press Conference in March they have been working behind the scenes to prepare for all of this. The FTC is filing suit against just two grant scam operators, but it is a start and hopefully an indication of more to come. For one I hope that it at least scares the crap out of all the other Grant Scam frauds out there, so much so that they will cease their operations (which, hopefully will NOT be a get out of jail card).

Also, in a section 'Scam Watch' they now have a handful of videos with information for consumers. I am not sure when the particular video below was posted on the FTC site, but it is in relation to Grant Scams specifically, so I thought I'd post that as well. While the delivery is quite tame, the message is clear:

As for the legal action, I am pleased to tell you that as part of Operation Shortchange the FTC is taking on the people behind Easy Grant Access (aka Grants for You Now),

"Grants For You Now and its affiliates and principals operated Web sites such as
grantsforyounow.com, grantoneday.org, and easygrantaccess.com that deceived consumers by promising them free government grant money to use for personal expenses or to pay off debt. According to the FTC complaint, after obtaining consumers’ credit or debit account information to process a $1.99 fee for grant information, the defendants failed to adequately disclose that consumers would be enrolled in a membership program that cost as much as $94.89 a month. Some consumers also were charged a one-time fee of $19.12 for a third-party “Google Profit” program. All the defendants’ Web sites falsely offered a “100% No Hassle Money Back Guarantee.” This case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California."

as well as the cuddly folks behind the Cash Grant Institute:

Cash Grant Institute and its principals allegedly waged an automated robocall campaign promoting bogus claims that consumers were qualified for grant money from the government, private foundations, and wealthy individuals that they could use to overcome their financial problems. They made similar misleading claims about "free grant money" on their Web sites, cashgrantsearch.com and requestagrant.com. This case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

Now that's a good start of the second half of the year! In case you're interested, the official documents for the case against Easy Grant Access are here (PDF), and those for the action against the Cash Grant Institute are here and here (PDF).

As for the Easy Grant Access site, it used to look like this, but now it looks like this:

Excellent.

Kudos to the FTC!

VerifiedGrants.com is a Verified Scam Affiliate

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:30:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about grant scam affiliate marketers that knowingly and willfully try to deceive unsuspecting US consumers in an effort to make a sale. They do this by among other things putting up fake review sites and ratings, by issuing false warnings against grant scams (followed by a recommendation of the very same type of site they warn against), and by providing untrue information about the nature of government grants.

I showed some examples and specifically warned against the type of site owners that try to create a feeling of trust and pretend to be your friend.

Today I want to show you another example of blatantly deceitful grant scam affiliate marketing. The example you are about to see is affiliate marketing in its most devious form, with a site filled with lies, fake and non-existing grant experts, fluff content and quality outbound links (i.e. links to sites like grants.gov, to make things look more trustworthy). These guys do not just fake recommend a couple of grant scam programs, no, they built a whole fake company around their ~~sales pitch~~ scam effort.

The other day I was checking grant scam affiliate ads on the Microsoft Ad network by searching for 'grants' on Microsoft Live Search. This is the block of ads that showed up at the top of the results:

The second link leads here:

The site looks kind of 'official'. No screaming headlines. No flying dollar bills or piles of cash. No smiling Obama. No exclamation marks or pushy calls to action.

In fact the design looks almost corporate. It sports a sober blue and white Wordpress theme with an authoritative looking United States seal in its banner, and a friendly looking 'Glenn Ross' is smiling right at us, assuring us in quote that he's here to help. Then there's a quote from the Wall Street Journal, including impressive logo. The menu bars look structured and seem logical and on-topic.

But let's look a little closer.

The first red flags are right there on the home page:

"At VerifiedGrants our staff is dedicated to helping individuals, businesses and organizations locate, At Verified Grants our staff is dedicated to helping individuals, businesses and organizations receive funding from over 75,000 available sources. These include Federal Grants and Grants from Private Corporations and Foundations. Through our thorough research we are able to provide our visitors with the most up to date and reliable Grant Programs and Products as well as information that can help explain the grant process and the opportunities are currently available."

What respectable company would have garbage like that on their front page? And that's not all, there's stuff like that all over the site. Here's more from the front page:

"All United States Citizens are eligible to apply for government and private funding. These programs issue funding on a weekly basis most programs do not require qualifying information such as Credit Checks, Collateral, Co-Signers"

OK somebody made some typos what's the big deal, you may say. Well there's more.

The site verifiedgrants.com claims to be operating since 2005. From the footer:

© Copyright 2005-2009 VerifiedGrants.com. All Rights Reserved

However, the WHOIS record for this domain shows us that the domain was registered 03-16-2009.

Technical Contact:
VerifiedGrants.com
Verified Grants (verifiedgrants@yahoo.com)
+1.3109397339
Fax: +1.5555555555
13428 Maxella Ave
Marina del Rey, CA 90292
US

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
ns1.faceplant.net
ns2.faceplant.net

Creation date: 16 Mar 2009 17:22:57
Expiration date: 16 Mar 2010 17:22:57

Domaintools also does not show any sign of a domain history going back further than March 16th 2009, and they have been tracking domain history since 2000.

When you create a company, one of the first things you do these days is to register the domain name to protect your brand name and establish a web presence. You do not wait 4 years to register your domain name. I believe I can safely say that the footer copyright notice is yet another deceitful component of the site, designed to establish a feeling of trust.

The categories menu buttons each lead to one or more articles about a specific type of grant. Don't be fooled by this seemingly genuine content - it's all fluff. You will notice that under each article, there is a link to their 'recommended' programs. And there's the always present 'click here now' button in menu on the right. Needless to say, these links and the button lead to a page that recommends three grant programs - programs you may have seen mentioned here before.

These are the grant programs they came up with after '26 months of research'.

Grant Funding Express
Grant Seeker Secrets
Grant Now

Some research that must have been; the three 'recommended' programs are those we have seen a zillion times before. I bet they used their team of 'grant researchers' for that. Let's meet the team:

Linda and Randall sure look like experienced businessfolk. And the confidence just oozes off of the page. But what company creates portraits like that for their employees' bios? Eeehm - none as far as I have seen. Those images smell like stock images, where the 'isolation on white' [background] is very typical.

In case you do not know, a stock image is basically an image that is for sale to anyone that wants to pay for it. The stock agency takes a cut, and the photographer gets the rest. In the last couple of years, so-called Microstock sites have literally rearranged the stock photography landscape. Photographers from all over the world contribute to sites like iStockphoto.com and web designers, graphic designers and anyone else who is interested can obtain high quality stock images for a lot cheaper than used to be the case, typically starting at $1 or so, and use these images on web sites, in brochures, etc.

You can probably see where this is going. Meet 'Linda Markinson':

'Linda' is a model who most likely lives in Canada, which is where the photographer who shot this image lives.

And here's our friend 'Randall Stevens':

'Randall' is a model that most likely lives in Denmark, the home of microstock superstar Yuri Arcurs, who shot this image.

Not convinced? Well here is another member of the Grant Research team, the very lovely 'Shari Jackson':

... and here is the corresponding stock image of model 'Kiara', shot by yet another photographer:

I am stating the obvious here, but neither the models in the stock images nor the photographers of the images have anything to do with the grant scam scheme made up by the folks behind verifiedgrants.com. Anyone can buy these images from iStockphoto and use them in any way they like (and therein lies one of the 'risks' of modeling for stock shoots...)

I could not locate the fourth member of the team in the stock photo database; there's a zillion young blond businesswomen out there so she will be kind of hard to find. But I am sure that she's a fake 'Grant Researcher' too and most likely the friendly 'Glenn Ross' from the front page is a stock model as well.

Well there you have it - a complete fake team of 'Grant Researchers'. As should be clear, the people behind verifiedgrants.com are trying very hard to deceive you, in an effort to push you further into their grant scam affiliate sales funnel. You are worth about $30.

But the scam does not end there. The fake folks at verifiedgrants.com were kind enough to leave a trail. Searching Google for a certain 'Linda Markinson' yields a link to an articlefeeder.com article about government grants, supposedly written by this lady. Of course the article contains a link to a grant site, but it is not verifiedgrants.com but a site called 'trustedgrantsources.com':

Recognize anyone? Site design looks very similar too, so you probably won't hold it against me if I conclude that this site was made by the same sleazy affiliate marketers. The trail goes further: look at the site title at the top of the browser window: it mentions 'Grant Money Direct' ? I guess they forgot to take that bit out when duplicating some of the sites content. Sloppy, sloppy.

That site looks a little different. But check this out, this is a look at the source code for both grantmoneydirect.com and trustedgrantsources.com:

What you see here is that the Google Analytics code - a piece of code that helps web site owners track who visits the site, how they arrived there, etc - contains the same tracker ID, meaning the site is owned by the same person. Or tracked by the same person. Whatever. Very nice!

I have no doubt that there's more grant scam affiliate sites out there that are made by the same affiliate marketers. If I find them, I'll update this article.

Let's end with a more positive note. The Federal Trade Commission has been monitoring these types of sites with a watchful eye. Late last year the FTC issued a series of proposed changes to some of its rules regarding online advertising, specifically the type advertising that uses testimonials. Depending on how things play out, the FTC proposal may have a big impact on online affiliate marketing and as such has the community buzzing, which is good. I'll write more about that in a follow-up article.

An Open Letter to the US Affiliate Marketing Community

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 05:56:00 +0000

Is money more important for you than morals? Does the end always justify the means?

What if I ripped off your mother so I could buy a bigger house? Scammed your wife because I don't care if she needs the money for something urgent? Stole your kids' lunch because I was hungry?

If you shrugged at the above statements, then you're a lost soul. Go enjoy your money, and hopefully karma will bite you in the ass some day.

I do not believe, however, that many people would like either of the above one-liner scenarios. Even those that make money by referring unsuspecting US Consumers to grant scam sites, the oh-so-clever affiliate marketers out there that propagate the grant scam schemes for their own personal benefit.

Why do you do it?

af⋅fil⋅i⋅ate

to associate oneself; be intimately united in action or interest.

Do you associate yourself with ripping people off? Do you associate yourself with sneaky sign-ups buried in the fine print, sign-ups to monthly 'services' that are completely useless? Are you intimately united with the idea of selling snake oil to people at the end of their financial wits?

Or do you just don't care at all, as long as you make money?

I started this blog after seeing all these grant scam sites pop up left right up and under. The least bit of search showed (on sites like ripoffreport) that people are really being taken to the cleaners with these things. Many of the victims had no clue, no idea what they signed up for.

Many of the victims had hopes of some form of financial relief, fooled by false advertising and promises.

"Those people are stupid, I would never fall for these things!", you may say. Well then why willingly take part in the scam if you know it is one? Because you can? Because you like the easy money? Because it makes you feel superior?

And if you know it is a scam, why not use some of your type-A energy to inform people, to make life online and in the real world a little bit better for everyone?

Look at the state of our country. It is an economic mess the size of which we have not seen in a long time. People are struggling. People are losing their jobs, their homes. People are trying to get by on little money.

And you know very well that it is exactly these people that are the target of the scammers you affiliate yourself with for the sake of earning commission dollars.

Some of you jump through hoops of deceit to make people buy into your Spiel, setting up pages upon pages of fake 'research', 'recommendations' and 'ratings'. Some of you take it even further and 'warn' people about scams out there only to send them in the very same direction, using words such as 'consumer', 'trusted' and 'verified' in the domain names for your affiliate landing pages.

It saddens me to see so much effort being put into something that hurts others.

You don't know me, and I don't know you. But I am asking you to stop. Stop propagating this lie. Stop causing people financial distress. Stop messing with the financially weak.

It may be a brick in the road to economic recovery, it may be a small contribution to making our country a better place to live in, and who knows, it may also be something that makes you feel better than you felt in a long time.

Swift Results, FTC Style

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:03:00 +0000

A little over a month ago, the FTC Office of Public Affairs held a press conference to issue a warning against stimulus grant scams. During the press conference, they discussed how the economic stimulus package as initiated by the Obama administration led to an unprecedented increase in grant scam sites leading people to believe that they were eligible for a chunk of government-provided money, combined with an equal increase in online advertising leading to these sites.

During the press conference, the speaker mentioned that the FTC was reaching out to the industry and was working closely with several media / advertising companies. We were told that Facebook - whose PR team decided showing up and publicly patting itself on the back would be a good thing -, Google and several unnamed others, were working with the FTC to help investigate and where possible get rid of these grant scamvertisers.

Swift results were the announced expectation:

"We have seen a lot of ads on the Google for these stimulus scams and ask them to help. This morning, Google has committed to investigate these ads for the anti-this is policy and to identify these sites. As we are talking, we are following up on that offer and expect swift results."

[Quote from (terrible) FTC transcript]

I have certainly seen a recent decrease in Obama-related and stimulus related advertising on Google. In fact, as far as I can see most of this type ads have disappeared. But it should not matter whether a grant scam or affiliate site advertises itself with 'Obama Grants Free' , 'Stimulus Grants for You', 'Government Grants Now' or 'Free Government Grants'.

Whatever method they use in their advertising, the scam is the exact same, and the FTC should not stop pursuing these grant scam companies.

Earlier today, I added site #54 to the blacklist. This particular site was one I failed to list before but is one of the major players in the grant scam scheme, grossing an estimated 3.5 to 4 MILLION dollars in the first couple of months in 2009. It is not unlikely that most of the 900K visitor count traffic was driven to the site by greed-over-ethics type affiliates.

So what have the 'swift results' as expected by the FTC been like? Let's have a look.

Here are some of the ads from the first couple of pages of Google search results for 'grants':

As you can see, most of the ads shown above lead to sites that I consider to be part of the grant scam scheme, and most of the sites are on the grant scam site blacklist (those that aren't will be).

But of course, Google is not the only PPC advertising network. Let's have a look at Yahoo search sponsored listings (again, search term is 'grants'):

As you can see, Yahoo is still inundated with ads like this too. Many of the Yahoo scamvertisers are promoting sites that I had not seen before, and needless to say I will be adding those to the grant scam site blacklist.

I presume that one of the companies the FTC did not want to name in their press conference - I have no idea why - is Yahoo, and again we see the very poor results so far. And these are only the ads from pages 1 through 3.

Last but not least, this ad hoc grant scam PPC ad gallery would not be complete without ads as found on Microsoft Live Search:

Not much different from the other two advertising giants. Again, some new sites popped up that I had not seen before, so those ... yeah, you guessed it.

The ad galleries above show you the results of 'swift results' FTC style, about 5 weeks after they announced their action plan. I do not know whether the very poor results are the result of the industry not cooperating, a lack of authority, an understaffed FTC, or the fact that Jupiters eye is shrinking. Either way, I am not pleased with the results.

The FTC should speed up their 'swift results' action plan implementation and summon the industry for a debrief. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo should abandon their 'let's make some more money' mindset for this one and start actively monitoring for these kinds of ads; they should refuse to accept ads that link to grant scam sites. Period.

@Google @MS @Yahoo @FTC: If you need some leads, start here. Yeah, this post.

Affiliate Marketer Fail!

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:06:00 +0000

So today I added grant scam site number 50 to the grant scam site blacklist. The honors go to the affiliate marketer who came up with the awesome domain name specialgovernmentgrants.com. Congrats, and happy scamming! Here is a screenshot of the honoree's site:

Party pooper alert, though!

I found this site during my daily round on Google search ['grants']; it was advertised with a PPC ad in the right hand column next to the search results, cleverly enticing prospective victims with the lure of 'secrets':

Yeah, visited link all right, of course I clicked on it, I wanna know secrets! But look where the click takes me, the home page of the hosting provider that hosts the grant scam affiliate site:

Now there's an affiliate marketer fail for you! Well, learning the hard way ain't always bad. Congrats again on making #50, and keep trying! I promise I'll keep clicking on your ads to see if you figured the whole PPC marketing thingy out.

Need a grant scam spokesperson? Call Rovion!

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 09:49:00 +0000

I was looking at some of the sites by Philippines-based JRS Media Solutions, which appears to be one of the major foreign grant scam companies, and was wondering who these people are that you see in the pop up videos that start when the page loads. I mean people like these ladies:

They're obviously Americans - or are really good actors with a flawless accent - but where would a foreign company like JRS Media Solutions, a company that targets US Consumers' credit card accounts through deceptive websites, find US residents that would not mind playing a role in their scammy schemes? Contact some shady agent in L.A. that specializes in low-end, desperate actors and actresses that would do anything for a role, any role?

Well no. If you need a spokesperson type video for your web site, there of course is a company for that. And a quite successful one, it seems.

That company is named Rovion, and they have successfully provided their services to well-known brand names such as 1-800 Flowers, A&E, Cisco, VH1, and many other major corporations.

The video service they sell is Rovion inPerson^(TM) which, according to Rovion,

"creates actionable connections between visitors and web sites by enabling pages to "come alive" with compelling video messages, leading to increased response rates, brand recognition, customer retention, and revenues."

My guess is that the 'actionable connection' in this case would be the scammer-victim connection, and the 'increased revenues' would be more US$ in hidden fees hitting unsuspecting US Consumers' credit card accounts.

Judging by the accounts showcased on Rovion's website, business is good, with major accounts in the portfolio. It makes you wonder why on earth they would do business with shady foreign companies like JRS Media Solutions, whose business model relies solely on deceptive negative option services marketed to US consumers.

As for JRS Media Solutions themselves, they appear to use the inPerson^(TM) services for many of their sites; they were kind enough to improperly configure their videos directory for one of their landing servers, allowing a peek into the directories:

Following the links into the directories reveals the videos in .swf format, promoting other things besides grants such as Acai weight-loss tea, forex trading, work at home schemes, and real estate programs. If you browse through the directories, you will see that the same actresses are used for different programs. Such as the eeehm ... lovely Heather, who almost convinced me to get me some Acai (apparently pronounced aca-yee) berry weight loss tea AND sign up for a work at home program:

Sorry Heather, not gonna happen this time. Well at least I understand the 'actionable connection' bit now.

An Affiliate Checks me Out

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:31:00 +0000

I met a new friend on BlogCatalog ... I listed this blog there after starting it and noticed this the other day:

What this shows is my BlogCatalog profile, which includes a 'recent viewers' section. There's only one recent viewer (thanks, I guess ...), and that individual appears to be 'FreeGrantKit'.

Mistake, mister. Your site has been added to the grant scam site blacklist.

This affiliate appears to be promoting grant kit programs with a decently designed blog-type site which he calls 'Free Government Grants':

That smells fishy already. And in this nick of the woods there are no points for design. Lets take a closer look at the site:

What we have here is a blog-style affiliate site. Nothing wrong with that in its essence, but since I am dealing with grant money and grant kit scams here, I can not ignore the type of affiliate programs this individual is willingly embracing in the name of earning commission dollars. In effect this site is nothing better than, say, freegrantinfo.us or legitimategrants.com.

The screenshot above shows part of the list of programs that are 'recommended'; they're the ones you may have seen mentioned before here: grantnow.com, Grant Seeker Secrets, etc. He lists some others but the affiliate links all lead to the aforementioned grant scampanies.

The site does not look like a typical affiliate landing page, which usually is a one page sales pitch. No, this site is full of blog-style fluff 'articles', which all try to funnel the visitor into the grant kit signup pipeline.

While I was adding this site to the blacklist, I noticed that the person running this site is in Bosnia.

Registrant ID:GODA-057090241
Registrant Name:Erva Hums
Registrant Organization:SITE INFO INC.
Registrant Street1:Mejd 133.
Registrant City:Nicaze
Registrant State/Province:Bosnia
Registrant Postal Code:72000
Registrant Country:BA
Registrant Phone:+387.38761801841
Registrant Email: nivrearth@yahoo.com

Once again, we see a foreign individual trying to cash in on US Consumers through deceptive affiliate marketing.

I give Mr. Hums AKA 'FreeGrantKit' an F, for malicious effort.

The Scummiest Scam Affiliates

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:33:00 +0000

Today I would like to present to you the absolute worst type of scam-participating affiliate marketers: the ones that pretend to be your friend. These are people that tell you they are looking out for you to make sure you do not get ripped off or scammed, yet the programs they recommend are just the same as all the others.

These bottom-feeding affiliate marketers craft a 'sales pitch' around the idea that all of the grant programs out there are scams, except of course for the ones they 'reviewed' and deemed worthy of your minimal, no-risk investment. To the uninformed, the sites, blogs and PPC campaign landing pages they create may seem the genuine thing. Well they are not.

If it's your first time here, one of my first posts here is called Selling the Grant Scam, and it talks about how affiliate marketers willingly and knowingly participate in the grant money scam practices of scampanies in the US and abroad. Also, in the article A Closer Look at the Affiliate Connection I discussed the affiliate thing in more detail.

As a rule of thumb, any site that tries to sell you a grant kit is part of the scam. When they say they 'researched' all of the programs and picked the best three, don't believe a word of it. The people behind such affiliate sites really don't care what happens to you and your credit card after the sale; they are only in it for the commission money - YOUR MONEY.

It is affiliate marketing at its ugliest. The grant money scams by themselves are willfully deceptive and the affiliate marketers that play the trust card just kick it up a notch. They lie to your face about who they are, what they do, who they represent and most importantly about the fact that whatever it is that they are promoting is really a scam.

And I bet they sleep just fine at night, dreaming about raking in thousands upon thousands of dollars which they, through their carefully crafted sites and PPC campaigns, masterfully pried from the hands of the US Consumer.

Here is an example of the hoops that a low-life affiliate marketer will jump through:

Scam alert my a@#, unless he's talking about his own site

The above image is the home page of affiliate to scam site freegrantscams.com. The domain name implies that this site details grant scams to warn US consumers about them. The introductory paragraphs explain there's many scams out there and that one should be careful, but not to worry since they did research. Then they go on to recommend grant sites that are know scam sites.

As seen before, these affiliate marketers typically generate traffic to their sites by using PPC marketing campaigns using platforms such as Google Adwords. Look what happens when you type in 'grant scams' in Google:

PPC Ads triggered by 'grant scams' keyword search

The top two results are ads by affiliate marketers banking on people searching for the 'grant scams' keyword combo, and as use this as one of the target phrases in their PPC campaign.

(Oh and by the way, guess who clicks on those ads every time he sees them, in the name of 'grant scam research' ?)

Another method I discussed before is affiliate scam site promotion via EzineArticles. Here is one I just found when searching for 'grant scams':

Here is what the author, who apparently only has written about grants on EzineArticles, states in part of his 'article':

"Before you apply for a government grant, keep in mind that applications are free, especially government grants. In addition, remember the old saying "If it seems to be too good to be true - it most probably is!" Do not fall victim to government grants scams. Nothing of worth falls from the sky and governments, federal or state, do not award grants this way.

Keep away from Government Grant Scams! See what the specialists and others have to say regarding Government Grants, and apply with no fear of being scammed at[..]"

And then he links to his affiliate site 1stgrant.com, the usual type:

This site then points to several 'top programs' which are all the usual grant scam sites.

These are just some examples of how the lowliest of affiliate marketers earn their money, but there is plenty more; I'll keep posting about it whenever I see something that catches my eye.

Is it even possible to ... ?!

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 04:21:00 +0000

So I was busy adding another couple of sites to the blacklist. I was going by Google Adwords ads advertising grant scam affiliate sites, appearing next to the Google search results when searching for grant-related information.

Next in my list was a site advertising near the top spot of the column, the-grant-review.com. Before even looking at the site I knew this was going to be another affiliate site claiming to have reviewed dozens of grant programs, picking the best ones for you:

Oh the creativity just oozes off the page, not?

When I was looking at the pages, I noticed some text that seemed familiar. In the 'about' page they state:

Created in 2008, The Grant Review is considered by some to be one of the best sources for grant related information. The Grant Review continues to grow and expand its range of useful and insightful content to help its readers understand more about applying and receiving government grants.

Looking at the site and knowing what the site stands for, the ridiculousness of that highlighted statement is hard to describe. Anyway, I knew I had seen that line before, but was not sure where. So I did a simple Google search ["is considered by some to be one of the best sources for grant related information"]:

So there appear to be four sites that use the exact same wording in their 'about us' page. Interesting. Well two out of the four were no longer active as grant scam sites, but a site called government-grants-review.net is:

Looking at this site, I had another scamja vu. This line looked like I had seen it before, more than once, but guess had never paid attention to:

[...] Is it Even Possible to get Free Money from Government Grants [...]

So again, a similar Google search for that specific piece of text. Check it out:

That's a lot of results. Affiliate pages, mostly. See how easy it is to get a piece of web copy up and running and start driving unsuspecting consumers towards the relentless claws of the grant scam beasts? The templates are apparently already available - most likely provided to the affiliates by the main grant scampanies.

The fact that some of those affiliates do not even bother to change the text and just set up a template-based site only adds to the insult in my opinion. It is a display of greed for quick cash with total disregard to the US consumers that fall for this scam. On the bright(er) side, because of stupid affiliate marketers like this finding these sites is a lot easier :)

Many of the results were spam comment postings unrelated blogs and sites, but there still is a considerable amount of grant scam affiliate sites that can be identified. Here is a list of all of the grant scam related domain names I extracted from the search results shown above :

grants-reviewed.org
top-grant-sites-reviewed.com
technodesk.net
secretfederalgrants.com [are you f#*&!_@ kidding me?]
treasurygrants.org
goverment-grants-review.net
mygrantreviews.com
governmentgrants4all.org
governmentgrantexposed.com
top5governmentgrants.com
grantfundingreviews.org
topgovernmentgrant2009.com
availablefreegrants.org
governmentgrantadviser.com
governmentgrantreview.org
govgrantreview.org

Needless to say, all of the above sites that are still active, i.e. running affiliate-to-scampany referral content, will be added to the grant scam site blacklist. If they are already listed as links above you can click the link to see the detail entry in the blacklist.

More Foreigners Cashing in on US Consumers

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 06:33:00 +0000

While working on the grant scam site blacklist, I encountered yet another company across the pond trying to sell their "Grant kit" or "Grant CD" to consumers in the United States. In previous posts we already met the following other foreign grant scam entities and individuals (follow links for blacklist entries):

grants360.com - operated by a scampany called 'Media Ltd' in the United Kingdom
govgrantsreport.com & grantsreport.net - affiliate-to-scamhole sites operated by a guy in Greece
Grant Seeker Secrets and many other sites run by a scampany called JRS Media Solutions, located in the Philippines
Earncashfromgrants.com & Govgrantsdirect.com, operated by a scampany in Cyprus

The latest addition to this list of foreign operations is Efamily Network Ltd, located in the United Kingdom. It's a bit of a journey, but I found out about them when looking at another grant scam site, usfinancialresources.com:

The domain usfinancialresources.com is privately registered, but from the contact us page it shows that they are located in Nevada

Customer Service by phone: 1-866-549-6225
By email: support@usfinancialresources.com
By US Mail: 871 Coronado Center Dr., Suite 200, Henderson, NV 89052

The US Financial Resources page links to a page at securepaysystems.com (url: https://www.securepaysystems.com/offers/usfr.html), which obviously aroused my curiosity. A Google search for [inurl:securepaystems.com grant] shows some interesting links on page one of the results:

The first link leads to this page (url: https://www.securepaysystems.com/offers/polaroid.html?c=SRD&r=):

If you look at the terms and conditions of this page, it shows you the regular stuff but it also appears that this specific 'offer' is via grantfundingsource.com and 'membership site' grantfundingsource.net. Here is the homepage of grantfundingsource.com:

The footer of this page clearly shows (highlighted) the following address:

eFamily Network Ltd,
11 Kite, Close,
Hartford,
Huntingdon PE29 1UY,
United Kingdom

Interesting. Let's do some Googling [11 Kite Close, Hartford, Huntingdon PE29 1UY, United Kingdom grant] :

Wow. The eFamily family of sites has a lot of grant related material it seems. And this is only page one of the Google search results.

A similar search for just the address shows that from the same location - a modest looking duplex in a friendly neighborhood - a company by the name of 'EventCo online Ltd' runs a bunch of porn sites.

Let me remind you, this is a company in the UK creating US Grant related sites specifically targeting US Consumers with the intent to defraud them.

But wait, there's more.

A whois lookup of grantfundingsource.com shows an IP of 209.90.75.101 - for those not in the know that would be the IP address assigned to the server running the site. A web server can run multiple web sites that all resolve to the same IP address, a very common scenario in hosting environments. With an IP to domain lookup tool like this one, you can easily find all domain names that use the same IP address.

I should note that the only thing you can be certain about is that all of the web sites whose domain names appear in the list are using the same IP address; it does not necessarily mean they all belong to the same individual or company. However, it is fairly easy in this case to verify that all the offending domain names belong to the same ~~company~~ scampany.

I filtered out domain names that have nothing to do with grants. Here is what's left:

Why would a company in the United Kingdom have all of these US Grant related domain names? Because it is easier to fool people if you have all of these. Many people will think that a different domain name with a different looking web site means a different company. They may even get conned multiple times like this. Efamily Media Ltd can also rotate their content using the different domain names so as to camouflage their actions - and it seems that that is exactly what they are doing.

Most of the domain names listed are 'dormant' - they redirect to some innocent looking portal. The ones that do work, though, are typical grant scam sites:

myfundingguide.com

myfundingconsultant.com

grantfundingmadeeasy.com

freemoney.grantfundingsource.com

usgrantsuccess.com

morefundingsources.com

And they may have a bunch more, who knows.

Update 03-29-09: Yep, found another one:

grantconsultant.com

Some of these sites appear to differ in terms of monthly fees and specific conditions, others appear to be near-exact copies of the same thing. Somehow they are all interconnected, I could not put my finger on it yet.

So there you have it, another foreign scampany trying to cash in scamming US Consumers.

How to make 3 Million Dollars (in a month)

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:09:00 +0000

I was adding some sites to the grant scam site blacklist tonight. Still a lot of work to do but one of the posts kind of surprised me.

Looks like we're talking about millions of dollars now. That's millions of dollars as in millions of dollars scammed from US consumers by one ~~company~~ scampany.

That company would be Grant Funding Search, LLC

The numbers are at the end of that post; the calculation may be using some very rough estimates, but even if it's off by a million we're still talking about US$ 2,000,000:

If those numbers are right, the following calculation can be made:

600.000 visitors, with a guesstimate 5% 'conversion' (victims) each at a combined $100 in fees, makes 30.000 sign-ups at $100 = US$ 3 million.

How's that for a scam?

The company is located (or so they say) in Las Vegas - with the rest of the street-legal mafiosi.

How EzineArticles adds Credibility to Grant Scams

freegrantkitscams@gmail.com (Blog Admin) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:00:00 +0000

EzineArticles is a site that was set up as a vehicle to create and distribute syndicated content as well as give site owners the opportunity to write articles about subjects lining up with the content of their site / blog. It is one of the ways site owners use to build 'quality' links to their sites, which may improve their search engine rankings (more 'quality links can contribute to a better position in the search engine results).

On their home page, EzineArticles boast:

"155,894 Expert Authors Sharing Their Best EzineArticles"

On their 'About us' page, they explain that EzineArticles is a(n):

- Innovative platform that allows experts to share knowledge, expertise, wisdom and receive traffic back to their website in return.
- Source of expert content in the form of short, informative and educational or entertaining articles.

In short, a good way to promote your site.

With a zillion articles in the database, there no doubt are plenty of useful nuggets of information available that will leave a reader hungry for more information leading to a click-through to the author's site.

But there's another angle. Affiliate marketers are using EzineArticles for the same reasons; generate 'quality' links and provide targeted info to prospective customers. And there's a lot of affiliate articles out there, the site is inundated with it.

Grant scam affiliates are no exception. I first noticed an EzineArticle about these scam grant kits when doing a search on MSN. Page one of the results showed me this link:

Following the link, we land at this page

The article was written by a certain 'Austin Warty', who lets us know that:

"Austin is an serial entrepreneur that enjoys helping other small business owners obtain the financing they need to start and expand their businesses.

During his research, he often uncovers many other great offers, which he enjoys sharing with the online community."

In his enlightening article, he tells the reader how everyone can apply for and get grants worth thousands of dollars:

"When you request a free grant kit, what you get is a CD in the mail that allows you to quickly browse the government grant database to find the offers that you qualify for. With over 3,000 grant programs sponsored by the government, private institutions, and non-profit organizations, you'll find free grant money that you can access today.

Request your free grant kit and get immediate access to over 3,000 grant opportunities that are available to you right now. Get thousands of dollars in free grant money."

Now ain't that an 'expert' piece of advice and 'wisdom' ? May have been so if the author was an expert in the field, and if what he wrote was accurate. Obviously neither apply, illustrated by the fact that at the end of his pitch he links to his affiliate landing page www.govfunds.info , which shows us:

Cute looking lady, major news network logos, free FREE FREE, thousands and billions! If we follow the advice to click, we are forwarded to the actual grant scam site called grants360.com:

This site is another typical grant scam site, with a low shipping fee monthly service fees after a ONE DAY trial period, and of course the 'bonus' enrollment in another service:

So, Grants360.com - and oh they are located in the United Kingdom - is another typical grant scam site (added to the grant scam blacklist).

This is just one example of how an EzineArticles 'expert' shares his 'wisdom' by creating an article that funnels US consumers into a scam for ~~fun and~~ profit. And this particular affiliate marketer created no less than 240 articles, most of which guide the reader to grant scam sites via his affiliate portal govfunds.info.

A EzineArticles search for 'free grant' alone yields a list of 224 articles. And check this out, the most viewed articles in the business category:

In conclusion, be aware that an EzineArticles writeup pushing a certain product or service and leading you to a certain website does not make the product, service or website more trustworthy. Such articles were written for one purpose and one purpose only, which is to create the illusion of expertise and well-meant advice in order to cash in on your gullibility.