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:
5 comments:
If it's a scam, why are they allowed on the radio? I just heard the ad today on radio in denver, co. It was on FM 93.3, 107.1, 99.5, or 105.9, don't remember which one, but its always on early in the mornings on the weekends. Lets get these assholes off the airwaves!!
I heard it on 102.9 (or 102.5?), "The Bone" in Tampa, FL. Sadly, I fell for it and have had 2 unauthorized transactions on my bank statement. The first one was for <$4, and after a heated phone call, got them to refund it. I just noticed the second one today for $30. It's Sunday, so I couldn't call them, (not w/in "regular business hours" and the web site has been disabled. Have filed a complaint with FTC and FL Attny Gen's office.
I just heard it today in Tampa, FL on radio 1150AM(96.1FM). Glad I googled it first before taking a blind leap.
It's a shame that they let people do this type of scam over the radio. But, if you don't know now you know they don't care as long as they get their paycheck! Life now is all about MONEY every aspect from education to government!
People just need to realize nothing is free. If it sounds to good to be true then it is. These hard times are making it even easier for people like this to prey on those who are in need of help. It's a sad and pathetic society we live in these day's.
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