You’ve perhaps heard about programs so amazing they virtually guarantee success if you will get out your credit card to pay a handsome price only to wonder – whatever happens when the “joint venture” is over?

Here’s one case study –

Stompernet Exposed

For some reason however, the internet is fill with get rich quick schemes and scams and all though many are not schemes or scams, they just don’t work. With that said, there is a whole segment of internet entrepreneurs that want to make as much money as they can as fast as they can.

As if you haven’t noticed, the get rich quick mentality is rampant on the net, and it’s getting worse everyday. There is a vicious cycle that just seems to perpetuate itself and I’m not sure which came first, the hucksters or the prospectors. In other words, the people selling get rich quick or the people searching for it. It seems as though there are opportunity seekers out there who are asking to be scammed.

What has perpetuated this kind of thinking is a lack of vision in the internet businessperson. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you are involved in, you have to take the time to do the necessary work to make your business successful. Sure, lots of people are able to make decent sums of money rather quickly on the net, but these kinds of businesses won’t last. In a few months, many of the people that are getting rich quick today, will be on to something else because they were only able to make money for a limited amount of time with their latest deal.

Wouldn’t you rather have a business that you can build on, that you can make grow and that will last for a long time and produce income for years for you and your family instead of having to rebuild your income every year? This is the most important point I am going to make in this article – You absolutely must take the time to build your business correctly on the net or you will never make a substantial amount of money for the log run.

The opportunities on the net are limitless and more and more people are shopping online every year however, you can’t just throw up a few pages of meaningless content and expect to get ranked at the search engines and start making gobs of money, even though there is lots to be made.

Anyone with a brick and mortar business will tell you that they usually don’t make any money for the first 2 to 5 years in their business. So how does this timetable translate for an internet business?

Some people think they are going to put up a web site or blog and start making money in a month or a few weeks. I’m sorry to tell you, that just isn’t going to happen. Depending on the kind of business you are focusing on expect to put in 6 months to 1 year of seriously hard work before you see any substantial results in your web venture.

Also, you need to become a student of your business and internet marketing in general to make sure your business succeeds. When I was working as a graphic artist, I spent a few thousand dollars a year going to seminars in the graphics industry, I subscribed to magazines and I was always hanging out in the local book store reading the latest books about photography, PhotoShop or graphic arts in general. This was all at my own personal expense because I wanted to be the best graphic artist I could be. You need to treat your net business the same.

There are people who want to be in business for themselves on the net but somewhere they get the idea that all the information they need to get started should be free. They are afraid to spend a dime to learn the correct way to build a web business or they want someone to do all the work for them by giving them unlimited free advice.

You will have a profitable net business only if you invest in it with your time, money for the necessary tools, work and education. There are thousands of get rich quick deals out there clogging up search engines waiting to take people’s money. Do yourself and the rest of us a favor, don’t add another one to the mix. Start a real business on the net, instead of just trying to get rich quick.

I was a victim to this so called “mystery shopping” this past week. Earlier this month I found an ad online about mystery shopping and a friend of mine used to do it in college so I thought it was legit. The man whom emailed me was named Jack McCallister and he had an acct. with gmail. He emailed me regularly telling me what I would have to do when I recieved the funds. I received the check of 3,000 dollars on June 24th, 2009 and deposited it into my bank acct. the next day. The check was from a business in Atlanta Georgia and is called Schlumberger Industries, which I googled and it is a legit industry, but nothing to do with mystery shopping which was odd. I waited for the funds to clear, which took a couple days and then I sent 2500$ to a Miles Mcfadden that lives in San Antonio Texas. Today the check came back to the bank and now I’m way overdrawn in my acct and I had to discuss this matter with the Bank Manager and she advised me to get all the information and fil e a police report to cover my tracks because the fraud dept of my bank would be contacting me. These people are ruthless and are making ALOT of money off of people like me. The police officer who filed my report informed me that this thing happens ALL the time and that it is so hard to trace these people because there aren’t enough detectives willing to break the case.

Here’s the sad story of Andrea. I wouldn’t say not to get involved in LEGITIMATE mystery shopping. Those assignments pay “play money” … they don’t offer huge bogus rewards for doing nothing as this scam does though!I found plenty of legitimate mystery shopping offers through Survey Scout for example. So there ARE legitimate programs out there, but they are nothing like these scams.

Here’s what happened to a person disclosing their identity only as “Andrea”.

I am a victim of a mystery shopping scam. I received a letter along with a check for $4,850.00. In the letter it stated that I was suspost to us part of the money to shop, part of it was for a sign on bonus and the rest was to be sent back to them in a money gram as part of the mystery shopping to rate the service of the money gram. At the time I received this scam I was unemployed with 4 children. So to me it was a answered prayer. I should have looked further into this but I was so excited to have found a job, I didnt put two and two together. To make along story short. I was arrested for Uttery of a Fraudulant Item and am now faceing up to 5 years in prision. So I have been reading everyones story and have yet to come accross anyone like myself that has actually beening charged with a crime. So, STAY AWAY FROM MYSTERY SHOPPING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I received a report from another VICTIM today!

I also received a checked from Canada, but the paper that came with it had a Delaware address on it. I spoke with a person named Paul Williams and told me to deposit the check of $1970.50 and wait till it clears. So I deposited it into my savings account in which I only had $1.30 in it and asked the teller when will the check clear and he told me the next day. I thought since I only had $1.30 in my account it was rather fast. I went to the bank and they verified the funds were clear so I did withdraw the $1600 the letter told me to send a moneygram to a Diana Blake in New York and I figured I was using the money from the cleared check until the day AFTER I had sent the money and the scammers disappeared with the money the check was returned to my bank UNPAID and marked as fraudulent. I went beserk, because I would have NEVER took out money if I thought it was fraud. I blamed the bank for allowing me to withdraw that much money when they knew I only had a little over a dollar in that account and under $12 in my other account. I then reported this fraud to the Post office invesstigation and to my local police who is now working with me to find the scammers and I will be contacting the Canadian Police and give them the info on these people

Sadly this scam continues to victimize people. While people should be smart enough to realize that in a time of recession (or any time for that matter) large amounts of money aren’t going to be sent to “TEST” a system as a mystery shopper… and that mystery shoppers don’t get paid huge amounts of money for doing tests, the lure of quick money is just too easy.

The fact that the banks a) make money available quickly (by law) but b) only come back on you days later gives criminals a window of opportunity to bilk you.

These criminals bilk those who are in the most desperate need for money without regard to how their crimes will ruin their credit or complicate their lives further.

Unfortunately, many of these criminals will never receive punishment commensurate with the damage done to even one of their victims.

Please protect yourself.

True mystery shopping jobs ARE available from through reliable sources like Survey Scout but they only pay reasonable rates and could in no way ever be confused with “get rich quick” deals like the mystery shopping scam listed above.

Over they years, I’ve come to consider most of them to be rip offs and jokes designed to sell information.

But they are so hot right now, a CPA advertising company just emailed me asking me to run their particular version.

I told them “no” and tried to explain.

It’s a warning though: These people are after your money big time with all the talk about this stimulus plan.

Keep your hands on your wallet, bro!

She was concerned. I apparently had a huge bill for some of my web domains she thought.

And that’s exactly what the letter intended you to think.

That your domains were up for renewal.

But no. These domains are NOT up for renewal.

This is a mail scam run by “Domain Renewal Group”.

They want you to pay TRIPLE for them to renew your domains when you simply need to keep your account up to date with the ACTUAL REGISTRAR.

I’m not sure why low lifes like this are allowed to operate.

There are many like them.

Simply keep your domain registrations UP TO DATE with your actual registrar and ignore all such notices from people like DOMAIN RENEWAL GROUP.

They’re not doing you ANY favors!

I’m reporting this to the Postal Inspectors.

I’m still getting comments on this problem that I wanted to bring to your attention. I didn’t put this in ALL CAPS… that’s the author who did that.

But this is the type of problem people are still running in to… BEWARE!

I RECEIVED ON ON FEB 17/2009

AND IT WAS FOR 3,800 AND I WENT TO DEPOSIT INTO MY ACCOUNT AND THEN I GOOGLED IT AND FOUND OUT THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY IN CANADA AND MUST REALLY HATE AMERICANS B/C THIS IS REALLY EVIL TO DO TO SOMEONE. I CALLED MY BANK AND I STOPPED THE DEPOSIT BUT I HAD ALREADY SPENT THE AVAILABLE 100.00 TO ME IN THE ACCOUNT AND IT CAUSED MAJOR OVERDRAFT FEES; BUT I ONLY OWE THE BANK LIKE 300.00 FOR THIS MISTAKE. I DNT FEEL LIKE THIS IS RITE FOR ME TO B PUNISHED THROUGH MY BANK B/ I NEITHER THEY KNEW THAT THE CASHIERS CHECK WAS A SET UP TO DESTROY PEOPLE LIKE YALL AND MYSELF. IN THESE HARD ECONOMIC TIMES THAT IS A VERY DISRESPECTFUL; EVIL AND COLD-HEARTED THING TO DO. U DEFINITELY DESERVE EVERYTHING THAT EVER HAPPENS TO YA AND TO BURN IN HELL WITH KEROSENE AND GASOLINE THONGS ON FOREVA!!!! NOW I HAVE TO TRY TO WORK THINGS OUT FOR SOMETHING THAT WAS SO FRADULENT WORDS CANNOT EXPRESSZ HOW PISSED OFF I HAVE BEEN FOR THE LAST 2 DAYS. EVEN THOUGH I DID NOT GET ARRESTED OR ANY CHARGES BUT THIS MONEY WAS ALMOST DEPOSITED INTO MY CHECKING ACCOUNT THAT I PAY ALL MY BILLS OUT OF. I SPOKE WITH SEVERAL BANK REPS AND EVEN WENT DOWN TO THE BANK WITH DOCUMENTATION OF THESE CANADIAN BITCHES PAPERWORK OF FRADULENT PART-TIME JOB BULL-SHIT. IM REALLY MAD AT THIS TIME. AND WHOM EVA IS DOING THIS IS SMARTER THAN THE AVERAGE GENIUS. USING CELL PHONES FAKE ASS PAPER WORK AND NUSIANCE TO DESTROY AMERICANS. I WOULD CERTAINLY BEAT AND KNOCK THE DIGESTIVE TRACK OUT OF WHO EVA THESE PEOPLE ARE.

The scam is called Twitter Phishing and it happens when people think they’re signing in to Twitter but they’re signing in to a phishing site that then uses Twitter to send direct message spam to all one’s contacts.

I suspected this was going on when I started getting these bogus messages from people who – you could tell by their Twitter feed – were just ordinary folks microblogging about their latest trip to them movies instead of the normal “YOU TOO CAN GET RICH AND FAMOUS INSTANTLY” Twitter spam.

So what do you do if all your friends are sending you hate mail because of the Twitter spam? Here’s the official answer:

Some folks may have clicked the link and given their Twitter password to the phishing site. In those cases it would be possible for the phisher to send out direct messages on your behalf which could trick your followers. In those cases, we proactively reset the passwords of the accounts.

So, if you find yourself unable to login to your account with your username and password, please use the reset password link to regain access. This will send an email to the address associated with your account and you’ll be able to create a new password.

If you don’t receive the reset password email, please check your junk or spam email folder as it may be accidentally delivered there. If you are still having trouble logging in, please contact our support team and we’ll help you out.

This particular idiot sent me an instant message posing as a friend of mine whose identity had been stolen.

I got a message… “Did you see from my status message that I’ve been stranded in London and someone’s stolen my wallet?”

Since he’s from the USA this might be a real catastrophe.

Unfortunately this person stole the identity of a Ph.D. in history who’s in his late 50’s.

When he IM’s he doesn’t say things like “like totally dude”.

I was going to make it really fun by telling this person that their identities old friend said “hello” and see what they said when I mentioned someone who’d been dead a decade.

But they signed off too soon. They realized they’d been had.

But watch out for this one and “Your picture has been posted at”… it’s for planting a virus.