Grant Scam Crackdown - FTC in Action!

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!