VerifiedGrants.com is a Verified Scam Affiliate

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.