A Cautionary Tale – Part II

In last week’s post, I shared my recent experience of my shocking discovery of an ongoing fraud conducted by a vendor that I used for several projects and recommended to my clients and business associates.

I shared the actions I immediately took as an example of how to properly handle such a situation, and what the CEO of the fraudulent company did as an example of how not to handle such a situation.

You can read some of the dozens of responses I got here, and add your own if you want.

Now here are a few updates to this sordid tale…

1. Within hours of my blog post, sweeping changes were made to this company’s website, with the fake name and bio of the con artist COO being removed from the “About Us” page. In addition, two other names and bios were removed from that page (both were listed with their first name and last initial only, so who knows if those were even real people to begin with).

2. The next day, I received a request from the CEO to schedule a call with me to discuss the situation. He chose a day and time to his liking for this call, but when that time came my phone didn’t ring. And he hasn’t contacted me since. (I know what you’re thinking, dear reader: “I’m SHOCKED to hear that he didn’t do something that he promised to do!”)

3. I’ve learned of several more victims of these scammers, totaling tens of thousands of dollars more in services not rendered.

My hope is that you learn from my cautionary tale and avoid being scammed yourself.

So I humbly offer you this advice…

We all want to believe vendor’s claims – especially when we are referred to them, or when they appear to do good work. But we need to do our due diligence.

In hindsight, here are some of the tell-tale signs that this particular company was a scam…

• The supposed multi-millionaire COO could not be found anywhere online (*his partner’s excuse was that this supposed internet marketing superstar chose to remain anonymous because he was the “behind-the-scenes genius” behind many top marketers’ very public successes)

• Much of their work was incomplete and sub-standard (I overlooked most of it, sometimes chalking it up to the work being done on a “rush” basis, and sometimes believing them that the blame lay with the client for not providing the vendor with requested information)

• The con artist’s partner constantly told me not to talk to any of his fictional references, his reasoning being that the con artist was their “behind-the-scenes secret weapon” and none of them wanted anyone else to know that this con artist was actually doing all of their very pubic work

• The company always found a reason why my payments to them were needed immediately (Why would a multi-millionaire always panic over payments of a few thousand dollars not being received immediately? I just figured he was an overly-detailed and overly-demanding multi-millionaire, instead of realizing that he was just a flim-flamming con artist.)

One of my private clients and a regular contributor to this blog, Felicia Slattery, wrote about this situation on her own personal blog as well, and provided a few of her own general warning signs that a con artist is attempting to rip you off. I highly recommend you read her full blog post for those general warning signs she gives.

When I first informed Felicia of the truth about these con artists, she had let me know that she had a strong feeling that their company was a scam and that she would never have done any business with them.

I then congratulated her on possessing excellent intuition, obviously far superior to mine.

I also wondered whether I could obtain such “women’s intuition” if I underwent a sex-change operation.

Alas, I’ve been told that doesn’t come with the procedure.

But “intuition” does come from experience. And that I now possess.

It’s often said that the best way to learn is from experience. I’ve always added that best of all is to learn from the experiences of others.

Therefore, I hope you’ve learned from my cautionary tale, and will avoid being a victim of scammers in all of your future business dealings.