Scam artists…Fear my gay wrath!

This is Part 2 of my "I'm so in a gay rage right now!" post. If you haven't read the original post where this story began, you probably should read it now or the rest of this won't make a whole lotta sense to ya.

Yes I had no idea how deep my sweet li'l mom had gotten herself into this scam. But as we kept talking, I quickly learned it was even worse than I had imagined. Turns out the site link she had given me was her second online store, her first is what you can see below.



Mind you, it's tons prettier and more professional looking than the first site she had directed me to but it's still nothing but page after page of banner ads that was marketed to my mom as an online storefront. At this point I was speechless. Not only was one group of scammers after my mom, but there's a second set as well. (Just tonight I learned that the prettier site above cost her $7000. Good thing I had just parked my car or I would have driven off the damn road in shock.) Depending on the website being designed, it's not unrealistic to pay about $100/hour for quality work. Looking at the two sites my mom paid for, I simply can't see anywhere close to her getting her money's worth. As a designer myself, seeing this happen makes me physically ill.

My gay rage had mutated into a gay wrath. These assholes are going to pay. I told my mom — now quite overcome with regret and embarrassment upon realizing that she'd been scammed — to calm down and that I was going to look into this other company and then get back to her. Turns out this other company had actually contacted her first and set up the site, and then the she was contact by a second company who convinced her that the first company was run by untrustworthy people and convinced her she'd do better with them, which is how she ended up with that ugly-ass site from the first part of the story. Well I used my interweb research skills to be dead-ended because the first company used a proxy registrar to set up their own company's domain, and tracing them would be very difficult. At this point it was suggested that in addition to contacting her bank and the credit agencies, that she also contact the attorney general for advice on how to get all of her money back. I called her back and she with a crushed spirit said hello. I had her write down her "tasks" and tried to give her a bit of a pep talk as I was rushing into a meeting. She said she'd do what she could and to call back over the weekend when we'd have more time to talk.

During the meeting my mind kept drifting to my mom's predicament. I honestly considered at one point the scenario of hopping on the next flight to where these company's were doing business from (conveniently in the same metropolis) and confronting them in person. Then I remembered that I'm one of the least intimidating people on the planet so I put that in my back pocket as a "plan b."

Over the weekend I did a little more sleuthing to see if anyone else had fallen for this same scam. I've never heard of it before so for all I know it's something that's just starting. I wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to target seniors because of their lack of actual knowledge of how things work on the internet. My theory is that these scammers would want to do as little work as possible so they'd probably cut corners and just use a template for all of their victims websites. While I couldn't find a similar site to my mom's ugly site, I did find one that was nearly identical to the pretty site. Take a look for yourself.



I don't know if I should be thrilled or worried that I could think like a scammer in my sleuthing. I'll sleep better if I reason that it was just a solid use of logic and psychology. Anyway, I called my mom back tonight to get an update on how she'd come on her tasks, and give her the newest information I had found. She kept beating herself up for letting herself be scammed. I told her she shouldn't blame herself, and that what's done is done and now we need to focus on fixing it. She 's ready to tell them to keep whatever money they've spent and just give the rest back. I told her that's not an option, she needs to have all $12,600 returned but it could be a lengthy battle for it to happen. If the attorney general is a dead end (as I suspect they might be) I told her we need to go to the media, local and then national, and get them involved on bringing attention to this new type of scam…like 60 Minutes or Dateline. Yes I know it's sensationalistic journalism at best, but hell, if it might help my mom get her retirement fund back, and prevent other's parents from getting conned, then it'll be worth it.

Tomorrow morning she's going to call the attorney general for advice. We'll figure out the next steps after that. Something tells me this ain't close to being over anytime soon. And I've still got "plan b" in my back pocket. Stay tuned…