Google Money Tree Hit By Texas Attorney General – Can You Really Be This Stupid?
Ok, on Friday, the Texas Attorney General filed charges against Jonathan Eborn of Google Money Tree. For those who don’t know, Google Money Tree was a very popular BizOpp offer running on quite a few networks. It was promoted by a lot of affiliates for a while, and people loved it for having such good conversions. Unfortunately, it was a total scam. Here’s a copy of the article on the Texas AG Page:
Infusion Media Inc.’s ‘GoogleMoneyTree’ uses high profile name to deceive out-of-work Internet users
AUSTIN – Attorney General Greg Abbott today charged two Utah-based defendants with operating a fraudulent work-at-home scheme. The state’s enforcement action names Infusion Media Inc. and Jonathan D. Eborn, whose “GoogleMoneyTree.com” promised six-figure earnings for conducting specialized Google and Yahoo Internet searches.
According to investigators, the defendants promised big payouts in order to convince Web users to spend $3.88 on shipping and handling for a “free kit” that supposedly would show them how to make money from home. Those who purchased the kit were later surprised to discover they were being charged $72 a month by the defendants.
Internet users encountered the defendants’ Google and Facebook advertisements, which linked to blogs that were created to promote their work-at-home offer. The blogs included “testimonials” that touted their products and led viewers to believe that previously unemployed users were earning high salaries conducting Internet searches. According to the blogs, interested parties need only acquire a “free kit,” which was available through GoogleMoneyTree’s “sign-up” page.
Individuals who requested the kit were required to provide substantial personal information, including their name, address, telephone number, email address, and credit card payment information, which was supposed to be used to pay the $3.88 “shipping and handling” fee. Customers believed they were only obligated to pay the “refundable” processing fee and were not aware there would be additional charges to their credit cards.
According to the state’s enforcement action, GoogleMoneyTree failed to clearly inform purchasers that they had been enrolled in monthly memberships and had only seven days to cancel their trial membership. Purchasers who failed to cancel within seven days were automatically charged $72 on their credit card statements each month. In addition to the unexpected credit card charges, customer complaints obtained by state investigators indicate that GoogleMoneyTree failed to actually send the “free kit” and refused to honor customer refunds.
The state is seeking an injunction, civil penalties of up to $20,000 per violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, as well as restitution for purchasers. Texans who believe they have been misled by similar business practices may file complaints with the Office of the Attorney General toll-free at (800) 252-8011 or file complaints online at www.texasattorneygeneral.gov.
Ok, so after finding out about this, Nickycakes originally took the side of the Merchant. After all, rebill offers have been around for YEARS. Columbia House anyone? They are NOT fraud by any means, if set up properly. Unfortunately, after doing a little reading and digging, this product was definitely out of the boundaries of what can be considered legitimate. You can read the entire official complaint in pdf form here, but here’s a little rundown of why this idiot deserves to be sued:
- Lack of clear terms of service – Alright, at some point there were actually terms of service on the second signup page. Apparently they were wayyyy at the bottom of the page, in 11 point font, in tan text on a white background. Every number that was a price was written out like “seventy two bucks” instead of $72 so that people wouldn’t notice. People simply had no idea it was a rebill, even if they bothered looking.
- No actual product – Ok, there was a product. It was a bunch of shitty worthless e-books and programs. They were given to you when you signed up for the offer as a download, and then the exact same crap was physically mailed to you on cd. After that, you would get rebilled but not get anything further. Even worse, if you didn’t log in immediately after buying the product, you couldn’t log in later. So people couldn’t even access the product.
- No Refunds – Oh, yeah, the landing page claimed that you could easily get a “no hassle refund” if you didn’t like the product. But if you decided to call them, they would only refund the initial shipping and handling charge of like $3 and not the $72 or so that they billed you after a week claiming that the refund policy did not apply to the membership fee. Keep in mind that the membership fee did not actually include anything other than the privilege of calling yourself a member.
Ok, so yes, this makes Mr. Eborn a complete retard, clearly. But, to make matters worse, the Texas AG is thinking of going after the affiliate networks and possibly affiliates on this as well. And to be honest, they probably have legal grounds to do so, but it’s still fucked up. The affiliates were duped just as much as the customers on this one.
Seriously, theres hundreds of bizopp offers out there, and Cakes can easily count the number of rebill offers he’s actually filled out for himself to see if they were a quality product: ZERO. It would seem like common sense to us that the merchant would do their job and, you know, not be a fcking fraud, right? WRONG.
Here’s a suggestion to Eborn and any other morons out there who are running a crappy rebill offer: Call the FTC. Ask them to tell you, in writing, that your offer and what you’re selling is compliant. If it’s not, have them tell you what needs to be fixed so it IS compliant. It’s seriously a trivial thing to do, and it is their freaking job to help you.
But for real, if any affiliates get charged, Nickycakes hopes Jonathan is turned into the Huntsville Prison Sodomy Tree.
Keep it real.
Hi NickyCakes,
Do you think affiliates should stop promoting any sort of re-bill offers? Or you think they can promote them and they can not be held liable for it?
Just wondering your thoughts as experienced affiliate.
Thank You,
Ed
I think they are fine as long as you do your best to make sure they’re complying with the law. It seems the responsibility is falling more and more on the affiliate and network just as much as the merchant to make sure this is the case.
BUT, I am NOT A LAWYER. This is just my opinion, do not take my legal advice. I could be totally wrong.
and 7 years later the cavalry arrives. about fucking time.
oh and the affiliate networks SHOULD get sued, as they are as guilty.
or maybe you`re telling me their application process never required them to inspect how legitimate the offer was.
Or maybe they only took 35 seconds to look at the website before approving them in their network and implicating thousands of affiliates and also never got pass through the sign-up page as well.
No wonder the industry has such a crappy reputation in other advertising industries.
Wake the fuck up guys and stop promoting crap and polluting the web.
2 things…
1 – The FTC will never give you a clean bill of health, they will only say something like they do not wish to bring an enforcement action at this time.
2 – As an affiliate you should always be looking for something that can scale and is sustainable – Acai Berry Blogs, Grant Schemes, Free Ringtones that are not free, Credit Report America that is selling a link to annual credit report government site and nothing else – all scams, all will evenutally come to attention of FTC or an AG, all leave you the affiliate at potential risk for liability and back at square one.
It has not happened yet, but at some point the FTC is going to start holding the person who placed the advertisement responsible.
Affiliate beware! This is another reason the internet marketing industry needs a trade association. To ferret out the bad stuff and let members know what is legit, what is illegal and what is gray.
I was going to point this out, but diorex beat me to the punch. Nevertheless, there’s things advertisers can do to make sure they are just shady, outright scams
Unusual things like having wait times below 5-10 minutes, offering refunds, letting members cancel and try and follow the FTC guidelines on continuity offers. Crazy, I know.
Its good to finally see some justice taking place for online scammers. Its really starting to get out of hand and some regulations need to be put in place in order to maintain some sort of legitimate image.
As an affiliate, I wish the networks would police the merchants for legal compliance. I look to them for what offers to run, and since they have more money than me, and presumably better legal connections (including in house counsel), it would be great for them to only allow compliant offers and to protect themselves and their affilates.
Frankly I don’t know the laws, and I don’t think this is too much to ask of the network. I would much rather a network advertise this service than some stupid contest.
Nice post. Great recap of it all. Thanks for the info!
I agree with Cakes and Diorex both.
The douchebag who owns the products and makes it obvious that it’s a scam – he should be sued… but don’t point the finger and run away from the facts.
If someone told you they had a job for you to sell Real Rolex watches on the corner, you’re the idiot who should get in legal trouble as well.
A scam is a scam, and we all know that most of these rebills that Networks are running are complete garbage.
Everyone should be held accountable for this, including affiliates who promote them. It’s your job to know what you’re selling.
Anyone paying attention should use this opportunity to take the moral high ground and position themselves as the real deal. People are hungry for this stuff but scared to get burned. If you can offer them some assurance and deliver, you can bank. Jus sayin.
Gotta pull my Google offers asap great post sure a lot of newbies will be scared to promote any Google biz op offers.
I don’t think affiliates can be held responsible for the actions of merchants.
From a moral standpoint, any affiliate offering rebills where the terms are hidden in a tiny footer link is certainly on the shady side of things.
I mean C’mon You know damn well that the fat bitch isnt going to lose 20lbs eating berrie pills. Furthermore, you know she is not going to hunt for the tiny terms link so she can cancel within a ridiculously short 7 days.
I saw a skin cream rebill last week that popped the customer for 189.00 3 month supply if you didn’t return the original “free” bottle within 30 days. It took me 5 minutes to find that little jewel in the terms 11 paragraphs down.
Anyway, the only thing an affiliate might need to worry about is fake reviews, made up testimonials and just your basic lies that most landing pages are loaded with.
You know shady offers like this will just keep attracting more attention from the FTC and AG and when that happens, it makes the entire industry look bad.
i will bet that all of these rebill offers get a ton of complaints, daily.
I almost shilled for these guys. I probably would have if I hadn’t've been talked out of it by an older, wiser head who smelled trouble.
It will be interesting to see if the legal system does go after any affiliates. If affiliates generally start getting prosecuted for promoting dodgy offers, just imagine how it would change the game?
The Aff networks really do deserve to get hit.
I kept telling my Aff managers issues people on my blog were telling me about. They didn’t care in the slightest…
There doing the same thing people in the mortgage industry did with no regard to right or wrong.
Well said, pretty much. I throw the blame pretty squarely at the merchant for this one. There’s no excuse for not delivering on the actual terms that they give, no matter how well those terms are hidden in the first place.
As for calling the FTC, well, it’s an option for those of you in the States. A lot of what I’m promoting is international and there’s nothing to say that a “safe landing page” in the USA will translate to the same thing in other countries.
I’ll wait for the first affiliate to be prosecuted before I take much or any of this without a massive pinch of salt.
Nick
Very good post. thank you for bringing up this topic. I could not agree with you more. We need better standards and guidelines for the industry. WE the networks do need to do our best to make sure BOTH the advertisers and affiliates are compliant and protected.
We will be launching a compliance resource center in our platform for our advertising and affiliate publisher partners. The center will be updated with all the new policies and procedures plus other hosted compliance solutions.
every advertiser and affiliate that joins the MediaTrust/Advaliant platform is vetted as much as possible before they can become a partner.
Anyone who has ideas on how we can make this a better system and or insights into best practices that helps us create a better partner experience please let us know thru you AM or the comments in our blog.
here is a link to a post on the FTC where you can comment and or leave ideas on better compliance
http://blog.mediatrust.com/2009/04/ftc-new-guidelines-online-marketing/comment-page-1/#comment-4105
Good call out Cakes. The networks should absolutely be liable in my opinion. They need to perform better due dilligence on offers ensuring that they are legal and compliant.
By doing so they protect themselves and their publishers (and advertisers). I am not going to use this forum to shill for my network but we do not run this or any hidden auto-rebill offers whatsoever. Affiliates should feel comfortable that if a legit network is pushing an offer that they can run it without issues.
Certainly there are a lot of major networks pushing this stuff, along with very sketchy Acai berry promos but hopefully this will make at least some of them think twice going forward.
All these offers do are defraud consumers, make the cost of media higher for legit marketers / offers and give our industry a bad name.
BTW, Same case with Amit Mehta and Anik..these guys also did this trick on their PPC classrom 2.0 gig….scammers!
LMFAO
“But for real, if any affiliates get charged, Nickycakes hopes Jonathan is turned into the Huntsville Prison Sodomy Tree.”
@Ori Manor
Really? That was a scam as well? Hilarious.
Funny as fuck! “Huntsville Prison Sodomy Tree” – I wish I’d thought of that.
Any US based ‘business opportunity’ should be following the FTC route you say. But what about our friends in Cyprus etc; they’re just right out of it.
WTF? You guys don’t know what you’re promoting? Come oooooon. You can not say that this falls entirely on the networks and the advetiser alone?
Scammers like this and the other countless shitty/non-existent products (Acai, other biz ops) are only around because affiliates are willing to promote these offers OR they would rather play dumb to that fact that this is what they are promoting.
At the network level there is a prisoner’s dillema. If you don’t put the offer on the net pubs complain that EPC’s are higher with this other scammy/fraudulent offer. So what happens is that the shitty network that allowed (maybe even worked with this advertiser) this offer to get on the network and be promotable is rewarded for their efforts, so is the affiliate, and so is the merchant. Everyone is happy but the user, and the afiliates and networks that has taken the high road to only promote quality advertisers products and keep their Karma in check.
Bottom line is that if affiliate didn’t run these offers these scams wouldn’t have near the breadth they do.
Wow.. I am amazed by the tone of the comments here.
Are you guys Marketers or Sunday school teachers? Do you actually think the Acai-Fat-Poop-Away-Cleanse-Diet works? Let me tell you a little secret… The Free Credit Reports… they ain’t really free either.
The guy is either dumb or greedy… maybe both, but it’s not fraud.
This has political stunt written all over it.
I’m guessing it must be election year down there or something…
States Attorney General’s fall into one of two categories:
1) They’re planning on running for Governor.
2)They ran for Governor and failed.
As far as consumer protection goes, they serve almost no purpose. Seriously… call yours and you will see exactly what I mean.
I’m betting that a bunch of dumb hicks called the AG’s 800 numbers because he uses tax payer money to run commercials all the time during their soaps. The guy’s assistant says to him, “Hey boss, you want to get some quick headlines and look like a hero?” And hey presto charges are brought.
The charges aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.
1) They are suing for $20k!!! I will be amazed if the guy even gets served papers in any official capacity.
2) The company is based in Utah and not in Texas. The TX AG’s jurisdiction ends at the state border. Maybe if his server is based in TX there might be a case… but based on the AOL / VA / Jeremy Jaynes case, the US Supreme court thinks it’s so bogus that they wont even hear it.
3) If they seriously thought that “Jonathan D. Eborn” was committing fraud then they would not be suing him they would be arresting him… and it wouldn’t be their case. Interstate fraud of any size is a Felony and would also have to be handled at the Federal level… I’m pretty certain the FBI aren’t gonna pick this up.
4) WTF!!! The AG is trying to bring Copyright infringement charges!! When did he become Google? The only way he could do that is if the defendant had been counterfeiting Google… How the heck do you counterfeit a search engine? At best he’s hoping that Google will hear about this and sue the defendant so he can walk away.
5)It charge is badly written. At one point the AG even admits that the defendant did offer a disclaimer! He just didn’t like the fact the numerals weren’t used. That’s not illegal even in Tx.
What’s really stupid about this is that the people were charged unsuspectingly (or that what they told their wife)wont get any money.
The system kinda takes care of it’s self as far as this goes. Consumer calls credit card company and credit card company charge back the merchant bank. After enough chargebacks the merchant back raises the processing fees / fines so high that it’s not worth carrying on… or they just close the account. Problem solved and no tax payer money is spent.
Yea i agree. This should not be pinned on the networks or affiliates.
There are so many products out there that dont deliver. Just turn on the tv. The ‘Columbia House’ and ‘Free Credit Report’ were good examples.
But these companies do fine. Simply because they have complied with FTC criteria. Its not that hard. And it shouldnt effect profits too much. The truth is, consumers are dumb. They look to blame others for their stupidity. Even if there was a proper terms of service in bold print, they would have purchased anyway.
I lol’d at the guy that says the rest of the ad industry frowns upon affiliate marketers because of our crappy reputation. Hes got it part right. Truth is, the rest of the ‘traditional’ ad industry aren’t so blatant in their selling approaches. They’ve been burned before, and now they make sure the companies they work with comply with FTC regulations. But they still sell the same bs that no one needs.
Im sure those money tree guys will be fine. As well as the networks. I really think is just a PR stunt. Someone needs to look good. And from an advertisers point of view, i can understand that. Just comply and we’ll all be fine.
This is a good chance for banks/credit cards to start promoting/offering “Consumer purchace protection” for their credit cards. Im sure we can help them with that. cheers.
I read the ENTIRE petition at http://www.oag.state.tx.us/newspubs/releases/2009/042209infusionmedia_pop.pdf ….dude, they have really nailed that Google Cash guy on the head. He has violated the law of “deceptive practices” so many times.
The petition also says that they will ask Jonathan Eborn to pay $20,000 TIME THE NUMBER OF CUSTOMERS. Wow… It will be pretty hard for him to get acquitted in court and of course, all his money will be snatched up by the IRS and government, lol.
Responsibility goes to Merchant > Network > Affiliate .
I personally would not feel good promoting rebill biz offers. It’s very clear they are ALL a scam.
It’s sad really 50 damn CPA networks chuck full with scam offers. And people are saying it’s the affiliates fault?
I agree with the Networks policing their offers more. Coming from 2 very highly regulated industries the networks MUST get rid of the sh*t before we are told to promote it. I dont have time to hunt down every full disclosure on an offer. That is what my AM and their Networks are supposed to do. Thats why they get their cut and have compliance and shave leads to pay for them all. We have to pay our ads BEFORE we get paid. THEY can make sure this sh*t is legit BEFORE we even know it exists to promote.
NOW our job… dont lie… dont make up shit. Fake testimonials, saying your a news company when you not. Come on. You dont like that sh*t when its done to you. Dont rationalize the greed and pay-it-forward with greedy lies.
YOU CAN ALWAYS MAKE MONEY HONESTLY… IN FACT MORE BECAUSE YOU CAN SELL TO THE CUSTOMER MORE THAN 1X !!! unless you screw them over.
Think about it !!!!
p.s. even with all this sh*t I have been profitable since day 1
Oh..I was never aware that its a SCAM.. I am thinking that its good that they have found it. Is it not late if they found it just now?