February 23rd, 2009
The Fake Google-Grant Guys
I had so much fun with the Acai/Cleanse fake diet girls that I thought I’d compile a similar photo album of our favorite Google/Grant scam photo models. Because there were so many, I decided to put them into a few categories. It is a good visual of just how ridiculous these scams are, reusing the names and faces over and over in fake personal blogs.
Let’s start with the big guns…
The Hoeffer Family
Next, we’ll continue with the Collins Family, which we first saw alongside the Brian Hoeffer picture above.
The Collins Family
Our next set consists of photos found on various stock photo sites.
The Stock Photo Guys
This next set consists of names that had been used prior, but offered us a fresh face.
The Alternate Guys
We can’t forget the independent ones…
The Misc. Dual-Name Guys
A crowd favorite is…
The One-Name Guy
We can’t forget:
One More Audrey
or…
One Last Eiffel Tower Guy
As funny as it all is, these sites are ripping people off. I hope this gives you a good idea of how phony some of these sites are. The pictures and corresponding names above are current as of this writing. These sites change almost daily, so what you see on any given day could be different from what I found.
I am not posting these pictures as any endorsement for any product. In fact, I recommend NOT using any products pushed by the personas listed above. If you know the true identity of the people in these photos, please contact me.
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:01 am
Excellent!
This one was a good one:
It did say “My name is Mary Hoeffer. Married 3 years to Audrey”. Usual picture of a guy and a girl – so which one is which or did ‘Mary’ have a sex change operation?
http://www.marysmoneyblog.com/index.php?
Unfortunately they changed the photo and the text. The text now reads: “My name is Mary Hoeffer. Married 3 years to Kevin. ”
So thats another one for your second photo – “Mary and Kevin”.
Perhaps they have a script which automatically changes the pics and text on a regular basis? Will the Mary and Audrey couple return?
How did you find out those were stock photos by the way?
If you want more names for your collection just do a google search for:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22A+year+ago+I+was+an+account+manager+for+a+(drum+roll)+a+pipe+manufacturing+company.+%22&hl=en&filter=0
That finds 367 of these fake blogs all with the same story, same cheque, different names and photos!
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:16 am
Hey Not Kevin – thanks for the updated info. I’ve also found many additional fake blogs doing similar search strings. As you pointed out, there are hundreds more out there. I have tried to be as inclusive as possible, but it’s hard to keep up. As to how I found the stock photos? I use a website called tineye.com which is a sort of web image search. It doesn’t always turn up results, but the stock ones typically show up there. Thanks again for all of your input!
February 26th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Looks like Slate have picked up this story. You beat them to it though.
Maybe you should contact the journo and tell him that it’s not just grant scams but the whole emillionaire / Google Money Tree / System scam too.
See: http://www.thebigmoney.com/
February 26th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Hey Not Kevin – I saw that same article on msnbc today too. Glad to see they followed my lead.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:55 am
Yep, you got the scoop first waffles – nice work and good research there.
Some more news stories on this scam are starting to appear:
“Another site run by “Kevin Hoeffer” follows the same formula with an image of a cheque, bogus testimonials and a phony story about how Hoeffer lost his job but was now earning thousands of dollars a month “just submitting small texts and ads online on Google”.
Google runs an AdSense program allowing publishers to earn revenue by placing advertisements served by Google on their websites, but said these scam sites had nothing to do with the AdSense program.
A spokesman for Google said the search giant’s legal team was reviewing the scam sites and would “take appropriate action as necessary”.
From: http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/web/facebook-took-ads-for-getrichquick-scam/2009/02/26/1235237798521.html?page=2
http://blogs.smh.com.au/mashup/archives/021169.html
February 27th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Hey Not Kevin – excellent comment as usual. I’ve been told “you can’t stop them” but I don’t subscribe to that theory. Someone is letting the ads through. Could the problem instead be that Google and Facebook look away when an account of possibly millions of dollars signs up?
February 27th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
More funny photos and dodgy dealings from Kevin and the Gang.
http://www.ivetriedthat.com/2009/02/17/dont-listen-to-jeff-donahue-and-jeffsgrantsblogcom/
http://slightlymorethandirt.blogspot.com/2009/02/triplets-separated-at-birth-each.html
Hard economic times and job losses etc means rich pickings for these scammers who love profiting from preying on desperate people who are just wanting to earn some crust for themselves and their families.
Keep exposing these scams Waffles – we need good people like you now more than ever. The more bad publicity these dodgy scams get the more chance of people complaining: to the scammers web hosts, their cpa ad networks, to Google, to the news media, to consumer organisations and BBB; to Facebook etc – and the more people who do that the more chance of them being stopped.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Hey Not Kevin – great links, and thanks as always for the comment. This is the online Old West – we are forming our posse, but just need to find a sheriff to lead!
March 1st, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Being an affiliate marketer (not for this garbage), I am very familiar with these types of products and how lucrative they are for the people promoting them. The networks that I run traffic with will bug me daily encouraging me to promote these offers because of how ‘hot’ they are. I know of some guys that are doing upwards of 3000 grant/google cash leads, at $35 a commission. This is over $100,000 a DAY in commissions. The sad truth is that these offers are very simple to promote and its much easier to take advantage of people in a time of economic uncertainty by promising them free money than to provide anything of value. I personally won’t promote this stuff becasue of both ethical and legal reasons. It won’t be long until the FTC and Government steps in especially on the marketers using pictures of Obama and ’stimulus package’ wordings to peddle this stuff.
Great job you are doing to expose these pages.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Hey Barry, and thanks for the excellent and informative post. Great contribution.
March 5th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Yes, good post Barry. I also do affiliate marketing and have been disappointed to see these offers pop up on the cpa networks. Like you I would never promote these offers on ethical and moral grounds. I don’t know how these people can sleep at night knowing that they have been involved in scamming innocent people. It’s often people who have lost their jobs or who are retired who fall for these scams, people who can least afford to lose money. Stuff like this (as well as all the acai, grants etc etc is promoted via the cpa networks) damages the credibility of affiliate marketing and of the networks that accept the campaigns.
Pepperjam even announced it on their blog as though they are proud of it!
http://www.pepperjamnetwork.com/blog/2009/02/25/emillionaire-institute-launches-cpa-program-on-pepperjam-network/
Maybe the people being conned by these scams should be directed towards the ad networks promoting this garbage, as emillionaire et al make themselves almost impossible to contact.
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/163463/page/9
March 10th, 2009 at 5:41 am
thanks for the info. I came across a similar site ‘bethsmoney.com’ advertising the same things.
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:25 am
Has anyone checked out http://marysbailoutblog.com/ I actually found this site on careerbuilder.com. I was searching for jobs, and this was off to the side on their website. Has a whole story and pics on how muc money she makes. I almost, almost signed up for the “free” kits, but then decided to check snopes 1st to see if it was real.
March 25th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I have been doing more and more research into these ad’s I have been seeing over the past few months! I can’t believe how over 99.9% of these are carbon copy scams of one another! The people putting this stuff out must take the general public for morons! I am happy the first time I saw the ‘learn how I make $5000 a month or more’ ads I thought bulls!#@ you make that. I think there needs to be more out there on these guys and how they operate. Keep up the good work and try to get your stuff published on a larger scale.
March 26th, 2009 at 6:34 am
ValPal – That is exactly what the scammers want to happen… for their ads to appear on legit sites, and hope you’ll think that somehow makes them legit too. The site on which is appeared most likely has no idea if that blog is bogus or real.
March 27th, 2009 at 2:42 am
You missed one name… Jessica’s Money Blog, she’s so famous that the FTC put out a warning. Here’s the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkbu7t5vghA
March 29th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Kevin/Nick Peters is also Scott Hunter @ Scottsmoneyblog.com . I knew it sounded to good to be true.
Thanks!
March 31st, 2009 at 9:12 am
The picture of Dave Collins on your page also appears on http://www.roberts.com/blog as Robert Paulson of Everett, WA, with a very believeable get rich quick story, using Google Home Business Kit,Google Marketing Kit and government grants, as ROBERTS ROAD TO RICHES.
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
this was funny. I realized it the second i saw it. im glad you have this website.
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:07 am
Andrew Hudson (family at Disneyland) also has the name Josh Parker
April 8th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
According to a comment made at this blog the guy in the second picture is actually “Jeff Rogers of Youth With A Mission Woodcrest, an international relief and Evangelical Christian organization [who] has had his photos stolen without permission and they are used by these scamsters.”
From: http://strangelyperfect.tv/3099/google-treasure-chest-its-a-scam-and-a-half/
He is looking for a good lawyer…
April 26th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Thank you for informing me about this fake sites. Saved me £1.
April 27th, 2009 at 9:13 am
If you really want a good laugh go to
http://www.libertycn.com You will see a page all about Peter Hoeffer and his google kit. However, the funny part is a recording comes on, as if from Peter, but the narrator (Scammer) forgets he is
Peter, and says he is Kevin!
It is so ridiculous. Iam glad there are people like you to expose these thieving scammers. Thanks.
May 6th, 2009 at 7:08 am
Went on this one this morning. Sarah claims to live here in my very City (Manchester, NH) and there’s a picture of her with supposedly her mom. How low can one go??? There are no listings in our phone book for any Kingstons. She claims her husband is a self employed contractor — so why no ad for his business?? She claims to be making all kinds of money and states the amounts “one week I worked a few hours and made such and such…”, “one week I even pulled in over $2000″ etc etc. Yet midway in the blog, there’s a comment about receiving a large check “and I’ve been working only two weeks and have already made such and such…” Discrepancies all over the place!!!!
May 19th, 2009 at 5:38 am
I think it’s interesting how, on the check, the “Pay To” name is blacked out, but the “blogger” then proceeds to tell you his or her full name. “My name is Mary Steadman, but I don’t want you to know that, so I’ve blacked out my name on the check.”
I guess it makes it easier than if they have to Photoshop the alias onto the check, and then have a different picture for each alias. This way, they have one picture for all the various names they use.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:15 am
How do I stop this from poping up on my screen eben when I have protection it keeps coming up? I hate this huys annoying interuption every day I siogn on he comes back!
May 26th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Your Dave Collins is now Robert Paulson at http://www.roberts.com/?ID=awbugd-cROB-g300-d9e. Glad I didn’t sign up for anything. Thanks guys!
May 26th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I just found another one. He’s Steve Paulson at this location: http://davidscashpath.com/privicy.html
July 1st, 2009 at 9:41 am
Thanks for the heads’up. Can we all descend on the FTC and get these ads offline?
July 31st, 2009 at 10:04 am
THANKS and GREAT JOB! I just sent ROBERT an angry reply for his scamming new page. You have him listed as Dave Collins Here. Check it out!
http://www.roberts.com/comment-page-10#comment-1803