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The latest crackdown involved the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission (news - web sites) and the states of Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, and other authorities.Among the cases:
* Alyon Technologies allegedly used a modem dialing service to disconnect consumers from their own Internet service provider and link them to the scammers' network. By capturing their phone number, the company billed them $4.99 a minute for videotext, or Web video and information services, that they typically didn't receive or authorize.
* A spam e-mail offer touted work-at-home envelope stuffing. The pitch from Easy Money promised consumers they would earn $1 for each envelope they stuffed, and as much as $1,500 a week. Actually, for a $50 fee, they got instructions to market a deceptive credit-repair manual, the FTC says.
* College Funding Center allegedly told college-bound students and their parents that it would obtain all their college funding for $895.
Instead, the Web-based operation supplied them scholarship information they could have gotten free.
* Another Web work-at-home scheme, Instant Internet Empires, promised buyers they could make $115,000 a year with their product. But for $47.77, they simply got the right to reproduce the company's advertising Web site and try to resell it to others, the FTC says.
* Click for Mail claimed consumers who coughed up $49.95 were guaranteed a ''100% unsecured'' Visa or MasterCard credit card with a credit limit up to $5,000.
Actually, consumers got access to a Web page with hyperlinks to sites of credit card issuers -- a list freely available to Web surfers, the FTC says.
Some of these are pretty scary. Just because something is available free is it a crime to charge people for it?
And what about Instant Internet Empires? Almost sounds like an affiliate program.
That's not what I read in your examples. What I read is that all of them promised A, but delivered B (if anything at all). Whether that B is freely available elsewhere or not is irrelevant. What counts is that the paying customers didn't get A as they expected.
However, it IS illegal to charge a fee for the FAFSA. That's the government's free application for student (college) aid. It's possible that the phoney college scholarship search may have charged for FAFSA forms as well.
-berli
They wanted only money orders so the orders came in, then the guys sent the customers a letter back saying that stock had run out and they were pleased to offer a refund.
In the letter was a cheque for the full amount and the account even had funds in the only problem was that the on the cheque in big red letters was the company name - which was something like - Pedophile Sex Video Association!
Needless to say not many people wanted to cash their cheques!
FTC and SEC stuff is typically civil, not criminal. They just takes your money.
But for $29,500.00, I know how to get it back...really..guaranteed...what have you got to lose.. ;)
