January 20th, 2009
The Fake Diet Girls
This is another of those works in progress, which the scammers will no doubt continue to change. I thought it would be interesting, and a good visual, to take a look at the photos associated with the names for this ubiquitous diet scam. So without further adieu, I give you the Fake Diet Girls photo album:
January 21st, 2009 at 6:37 pm
“Maria” deleted my comment warning others that it was a scam. I think she invented the comments that remain on her site and she replies to her comments.
One big scam. I hope everyone finds this site before placing their order on one of these diet sites. You’ll be saving them a lot of money and false hopes.
JB
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:25 am
I tried leaving comments too, and they never show up. I wonder if “Maria” or “Nicholle” or “Jenny” or the rest are even aware that their photos are being used. I’ve heard about a similar scam pulling random pictures off of sites like Myspace and using them! These people are as low as humanity can get, going to any measure to part victims from their money. We just have to be diligent in keeping up and keeping people aware. Thanks for the comment.
January 26th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I agree to what you discovered. Please stay away from these scams. I was able to put the following comments into some of the sites
Click the two URLs below
http://annasdietingblog.com/mydiet.html
http://megansdietingblog.com/
Both give you the same stuff one with name Anna and another one with Megan. How can same person known by two names? This is a scam.
Here is another one.
Click the two URLs below
http://nichollesweightloss.com/story/
http://monicasdietblog.com/
Both give you the same stuff one with name Anna and another one with Megan. How can same person known by two names? This is a scam.
January 26th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Exactly. These sites draw from a small set of templates, and often they use the same photo for several sites. It’s all deception for the purpose of ripping people off.
January 27th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
OK, I kind of feel like crying now. I fell for the Jenny Conrad version, and was trusting it because it mentioned CNN and Oprah, neither of which I watch. It has given me diarrhea and upset stomach, and perhaps even this major acne breakout, but I have yet to experience anything remarkable. Thank you for this information – wish I’d come across it sooner.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Sorry to hear. These fake blogs like to put all of these official looking references, as if CNN had somehow endorsed them, which they didn’t. Good luck, and I hope you feel better soon.
January 28th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Sorry to hear. These fake blogs like to put all of these official looking references, as if CNN had somehow endorsed them, which they didn’t. Good luck, and I hope you feel better soon.
January 29th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Nadia / Emma Williams’ photo is actually available for purchase on iStock! I came across it when working on a graphic design project for school. I want to believe these blogs but I know they are a scam.
Has anyone “fallen” for these and had any success or is acai/cleansing diet total B.S.?
January 29th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Thank you for pointing that out. I had just discovered another model, the “Jenny Conrad” who is now also “Nicholle Stevenson” – also on iStock. Unfortunately many people have fallen for this scam, and I have yet to read a genuine review that says it works.
January 30th, 2009 at 8:18 am
It’s nice to have found this site before I bought into the whole deal. I suspected they had the same model with different names in those images but I am happy to have my suspicion verified. WOW… I hope no one gets sucked in.
January 30th, 2009 at 8:34 am
So glad you found my blog and dodged the bullet!
January 30th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
I just got mine and I want to cancel. Does anyone think I will get my money back. Im still in the trial period. Crap.
January 30th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
As I suggested to a couple other commenters, you might want to try calling your credit card company. You can try the Acai people, but I wouldn’t count on any results.
February 5th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Lets just say I tried the diet ordering and I used a “Fake Credit Card” The gift certificate card you can buy and the Acai berry company wouldn’t take it, I consider it to be a real card it has a Visa logo on it and I can pay bills with them (I did cause I couldn’t use it to buy the Acai)
February 6th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Wow, thank you so much for this informative website I almost fell for this rip off. I can’t believe how badly these people try to scam us.
February 6th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
So glad you found my site before you were conned! Thanks for the comment.
February 7th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
An Earlier Poster stated that she/he was getting upset stomach and diarrhea, that is the cleanser doing it’s thing! Thats how these things clean you out, they loosen(supposedly) up all that material inside your intestines and give you the runs and it flushes out.
The only claim I know is true about these is that they give you the runs and spotty flagalence. I saw one disclaimer that suggested only taking it on a weekend at home LOL
February 7th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Woah that’s just nasty!
February 8th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Scam sites simply prove how low some people can actually be, preying on people’s hopes. Good thing I’m a jaded old bastard who trusts no one, I can smell BS from a mile away.
My advice: If it sounds too good to be true, it’s a scam, period.
Too damn bad we can’t find and hang some of these clowns, others would think twice before attempting such cons.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Couldn’t have said it better myself, George.
February 14th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Just to give you a heads up bro – even though some of the names are fake – most of the pictures are of real people who have used certain products online to lose weight.
The small pic of the girl in a pink shirt is named Brook Barth (off line name I believe is Brook Rockwell) and she does drink green tea as part of her diet. Her actual personal blog is at brookiebomb.com.The picture on the left is not of her. I have researched these girls too and from what I have seen they are real. Just someone is making up names of them.
There are some marketers who do lie and over state what a product can do (they are slowly being removed from the industry)
February 14th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Hey Collin and thanks for the comment. I agree that we are seeing true weight loss pictures for some of these people, such as the Anna Huff and Jenny Miller varieties. But did that weight loss result from the products that are being peddled? And are the photos being used with permission? I doubt that all of the people we’re seeing actually gave their permission for these photos to be used. I read angry comments by one man stating that a variety of the “Kevin Hoeffer” government blog was using his photo without permission. Some photos are of models and sometimes they use a cropped “before” picture of someone else. But back to your original point – I agree that many of the photos are not Photoshopped and of real weight loss… just not from the Acai/Cleanse scams.
February 14th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Well I know the ones from any of these sites like”AcaiBurn” & “Wu-Yi Source Green Tea” $ “Pure Colon Pro” are actual testimonials. I know the company that makes those products and by law they have to put actual real life people and they can’t make up crap. FTC Rules!
Now the other “Diet Blogs” are affiliate sites and the marketer is clearly lying – some people don’t care if they step on people to make money so good call calling them out. Ad it will be interesting to see what happens to the owners of these sites when the FTC catchers up to them.
Here is the real problem as I see it. People who need to lose weight (and that is including me) are obsessed about it and are willing to believe almost anything. That is just how our society works. But – even though they want to lose weight and want the aid of a supplement – they are not willing to pay for proven products.
Now – I have not used any of the Free Trial Offers myself but I have used EverCleanse which I got from after reading a review on dietcleansereviews.com – Now I am not going to post how much weight I lost (cause that’s no-ones business but mine) but the product did completely stop all my symptoms of IBS like it said I would and I did lose weight. I still have a ways to go to get to where I want to be – but I got a start.
The EverCleanse cost me around a hundred or so but I knew that upfront. There is no hidden subscriptions or anything.
So my question to you is – why do people who want to lose weight and want the aid of a supplement not willing to pay for it. To me that is just being lazy and cheap – but I guess that’s human nature.
February 16th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Hey Collin – great comment. I know that some of the final landing pages of these site do claim to have real testimonials, and I don’t really dispute that. Those heavily advertised fake blogs, along with their “free shipping” bait and switch are the problem. The only way for the consumer to really make an impact is to avoid all of them. The company approving these affiliates must bear some responsibility at some point.
I was once somewhat overweight and lost 60 pounds, so I know first-hand of the obsession with losing weight… and unfortunately the predatory marketing that preys on this weakness.
I know about EverCleanse. I’ve heard good and bad about it, but at least it’s not advertised deceptively from what I’ve seen. It doesn’t have a “free” bait and switch, and it doesn’t even claim to be natural. Some people say it doesn’t work, but at least they don’t feel ripped off when a mysterious charge appears on their credit card.
To your final question… that’s a great one. People pay a lot of money to gain weight over many years, so why should they not pay to lose it? I joined a gym, started eating healthy, etc… it cost me plenty but was well worth it in the long run.
Great comment.
February 19th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
that jenny conrad aka this name or that name also advertises for big beautiful women dating site too i seen a pic of her on that too
February 19th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Is she really? I haven’t seen that yet, but that’s too funny.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Crap. Just ordered the “free trial” of both… sent two emails trying to cancel and will be calling tomorrow in the morning to cancel. Crap
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Let us know how it all works out.
February 26th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Ha! There she is:
http://www.fatisbeautiful.com/
February 27th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Hey Lindsay – heh yeah that’s her! Taken right from iStockphoto.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:05 am
1. The “blogs” are deliberate frauds.
2. They are template productions provided to affiliates of the company at the heart of the automatic re-billing scam.
3. The templates include scripts (this is a recent development) which change the location of the blogger according to the ISP of the person visiting the blogger’s website.
4. A minor crack-down has already occurred in the ‘States but it’s too little and too late. Its principal result is to now force affiliates — who aren’t called Karen, or Jenny, or Angela but Herbert, Ivan and Tony Soprano — to include almost illegible 5pt disclaimer text.
5. Affiliates who got on the band wagon early have made enough in commission to pay for advertising on major websites, the biggest of which is Microsoft part-owned MSNBC.
6. Complaints continue to be made to MSNBC about allowing these frauds onto the site. So sometimes the “blogs” disappear. But then they reappear again. Clearly, MSNBC is desperate for cash.
7. The company involved has a variety of false-front ‘companies’ trading from different websites but the format is the same.
8. As far as can be established, the only time the company has ever responded to any complaint made in any Internet forum is the following eloquent defence it provided to a US forum:
Poor AMERICANS!!! you keep on complaining!!!because you are not aware of the terms and conditions!!! who the hell will offer $5.95 for an acai with out any terms and condition!! it is clearly stated at the lower part of the website that we are givng you 15 days trial period to try our product or to cancel with in the days trial period so that your only going to pay for the shipping fees..but if you did not called with in the 15 days trial period you will going to pay for the original price of the advertised product!!and where going to deliver you automatically a 30 days supply of the product!!and the reason you cannot contact us is that where are receiving a thousand calls in 1 day!!!to cancel their account!!!!this is our customer service schedule mon-fri am9:00-6:00pm EASTERN TIME!!!follow some instructions Poor AMERICANS!!!!!! you just want to buy some cheap products!! POOR PEOPLE!!!!
9. From the above it may be deduced that the outfit is not blessed with much in the way of communication skills and that English is probably a fourth or fifth language.
10. The big losers (not of weight, but of money) are those who fall for the criminal scam — because the blogs are criminal; they exist to secure a monetary advantage through deception — and Sambazon, the originators of the acai berry supplement and a company which re-invests in the area of production.
11. Acai is also devalued because of the fraudsters because there is evidence to suggest NOT that it is a magic formula for instant weight loss, rather that it can have an impact on the metabolic rate of some users to the extent that the body “burns” calories at a faster rate and then “burns” stored fat.
12. However, it’s emphatically NOT a fat burner, because everyone’s metabolic rate is different. There’s no guarantee that what works for one person will work for another. There’s no guarantee that even if Acai does work, the results are guaranteed to be consistent in every case. The product is not a “miracle” and has never been promoted as such — well, it has, but only by the scammers / the company involved, which doesn’t actually produce the genuine Sambazon article anyway and has only been put together to rip-off the original product.
13. Finally. . . congratulations to this blogger for providing so much public service information. The sooner that all the affiliates and the owners of the company concerned are on a genuine weight-loss regime behind bars, the better for consumers everywhere.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Richard – Excellent comment, and many great points. I have also read that Acai is perhaps no more “magic” than other fruits. I’d love to see some of these affiliates get locked up and fed nothing but Acai berries with a colon cleanse dessert, and given nothing to read but low-quality e-books about government grants and making cash with Google!
March 26th, 2009 at 6:25 am
I’m just amazed that anyone believes in photos these days – on the web or in print! With the abilities of computers today to “erase” wrinkles or fat or whatever, teeth whitening, etc. who knows what “enhancements” the photos have been through.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I’ve run across an affiliate forum where there are tons of affiliates who have used this method of getting leads/commissions. It’s wickedfire.com (though probably other forums like it elsewhere as well).
Note…I’m not saying all the affiliates on that forum are scammers or fraudsters or use this method…but it’s clear that a number of them do/have. Of course, affiliates don’t trust their peers anymore than anyone else so they rarely show their websites to anyone but you can be sure that many of the blogs/”models” mentioned above belong to some of the members there.
For those that don’t know the system it works like this…
companies have a product service they want to promote. They join a networks, or many networks, who then have individual affiliate marketers who join. The ad network works as a middle man and is the one who pays the affiliates after taking a cut of the commissions.
After some research I’ve learned that most of these acai type “offers” pay the end affiliate as much as $35 (sometimes more) for every single “lead” (meaning the people that fall for the fake blogs). So for every person that falls into it and pays the shipping the affiliate gets paid about $35.
The ad company in the middle makes a cut as well so the main advertising company who offers the product is paying even more for each lead.
The advertiser makes their money back because of the sneaky auto billing they hide in their terms because they know most people are too lazy to actually read and the ones that do read still have a hard time actually following the terms to cancel because the companies make it hard…sometimes shipping the product late into the “15 days” so the customer doesn’t even get it to “trial” the product until almost the end of the 15 day trial.
How can you trial something in 1 or 2 days left in your trial period? You can’t and they know it but they are counting on you not even reading the terms in the first place so they get at least one auto bill on you and then by not answering the phone or having non-stop busy signals makes actually canceling almost impossible.
Who is to blame? Or who should be fined/jailed for this scam? I’d say all of them that lie or screw the end customer with sneaky methods.
Each level of the process is responsible at some point:
1. The company/advertiser: having a crappy product with very very sketchy terms and even sketchier methods to help make customers break those terms by not making canceling easy or attempting to make it impossible.
2. The ad networks/middle men: They know full well what is going on, give their affiliates tips on how to sell the crap and then take a cut of the commissions. And they are the ones that should be “policing” their affiliates so any fraud is partially their liability.
3. The affiliates who are behind the fake blogs/fake testimonials or use any fraudulent methods to promote. They get paid for every lead and sometimes that seems to drive them to lie and commit fraud. There are many affiliates who promote products legally and responsibly but then again they have to choose which products they want to promote and they know full well how the system works and that the customers end up getting screwed. But there are many affiliates making tens of thousands of dollars a DAY (yes, a DAY!) so it’s easy to see how they can be tempted to the darkside and use the fake blogs and fraud people…after all, in the end, even if they do get “busted” the most likely turnout is they get fined and it would probably be much less than what they made.
4. The dumb ass public: yes, all these “victim” customers who fall for this crap have a responsibility and are to blame as well. Seriously, were you never taught to READ CONTRACTS?! Sure, companies make that really painful with tons of annoying “legal speak” but even just skimming these acai terms you should have been able to see the rebill info. If it weren’t for all the silly lazy consumers who don’t take the time to research and learn there wouldn’t be so many people making money off them and maybe there would be less of this crap. Should you/they have to pay for the charges from their acai trials? That’s a hard one…if the acai companies made it possible to cancel in their trial periods then I think they should be charged. But if the companies made it almost impossible to cancel then, no, they shouldn’t be charged for the sneaky scam.
When it comes to dieting products, sadly it’s because of the same laziness that people get fat in the first place that they end up falling for bogus products and sneaky products. The answer is never magic pills or super special exercise equipment. It all comes down to basic math…burn more calories than you consume every day and you WILL lose weight. I actually did one of the low carb diets a few years ago along with actually exercising and I lost quite a bit of weight and pretty fast as well. Surprisingly, cutting out most of the carbs/sugars I actually had more energy, slept better and felt better while losing all the weight too. Moral of the story…stop being so damn lazy!
Just to help some other people avoid other scams:
First of all, read the damn terms! Be skeptical regardless what the ad/blog/website/newspaper/tv commercial says and spend a little time actually researching the claims an the product. You’d be surprised how much of it all is a sham in one way or another.
couple other current commercials that are flat out scams:
cash4gold – stay far away from it and warn your older family members and such. A huge ripoff/scam.
extenZe – You probably see these commercials just as often…tons of people must be falling for it if they can afford to advertise as often as they do. Same kind of rebill scam as the acai offers. But they were going even further and making people show proof from a doctor that it wasn’t helping and such supposedly. Making people too embarrassed to get the required documentation to cancel and such.
…and pretty much any other product/service you see advertised anywhere. Meaning DO SOME RESEARCH BEFORE YOU BUY! Or don’t and continue to get scammed.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:17 am
Hello. The blonde girl at the very top is from a plus size model website – they simply took the jpg off the site for the before, then photoshopped the after picture. I cant remember the name of site where this original photo can be found darn it, but I wonder if the model has any legal recourse for her image being used like this.
April 4th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
waffles
just run across your postings. Question, are there any legitimate web sites that a person can go to to make a few extra bucks to supplement ss. I just had to leave my job due to health reasons and would like to supplement my limited income. I know aboutn the scamming that goes on and I gotta be tight with money. Any help would be appreciated, including how to maybe set up a web site as I have read about. I dont want to con anybody as i dont like being conned. Thanks
April 10th, 2009 at 8:47 am
I Cant Belive It
I Fell For It
I Purchased It And Today Was Awaiting for the Arrival.
I Saw This Page. Almost Cried. And Called The Company
They Closed 23 Minutes Earlyer. Now I Have To Wait Until Monday.
I Bombarded Them With Emails. Hopefully They Will Cancel My Order Fully.
Pray for me People
April 24th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Thanks for saying that there are some legit affiliate marketers out there. I happen to be one of them. I do not make fake blogs to promote products to get leads. I primarily write reviews of the products. Also, believe it or not there are some networks that have a policy of no “flogs” (fake blogs) so I can’t believe how low some affiliate marketer’s would go to, in order to try and make a sale. Thanks for posting this, I got a laugh out of it. Also someone mentioned the blonde girl being a plus sized model, that is true. I have seen her on ads for BBW dating sites. Someone obviously is targeting plus-sized women and then photoshopping their bodies. There is even a website that will do it for you so you can get motivated to lose weight.
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:11 am
god! i fell for it! my father is extremely paranoid about cybercrime so i just checked the source and googled “hellen miller diet” and LUCKILY found this website. phew. anyway, as i was reading the comments on this website, i felt so stupid for falling for such crap. i guess the reason people want to believe in this so much is because after trying so many different diets and routines, when you get a solution so simple, your rationality takes a back seat and all you can think of is the “flab that simply melts away” so be a little easy on us mortals
August 4th, 2009 at 9:16 am
I just ordered my free trial from http://www.acaiberry exclusive.com and effectivecleanse.com … I will call first thing tomorrow morning to cancel my subscription … HAS ANYONE HAVE ANY LUCK WITH THESE CANCELLATIONS … they do not post any email on the page, just a UK number … I wish I had read this page sooner !!!