Trump and Selling a Scam

Trump Remorse immigration block twitter tweet

Watching the shit-show around the Trump campaign (and now adminstration) reminded me of every dodgy sales process I have ever been witness to.

The Scam Sales Process

When they first start talking to you they are your best friend. They are smiles and helpful and ultra-friendly. The thing they are selling you is amazing. It is great and will do everything you need. Nothing to worry about. Just say yes, and it will be smooth sailing, easy, and you will be so happy about it all.

You decide to give it a try, and you enter phase 2 of the process, the actual purchasing. This is where the truth starts to come out a bit more lucidly. In order to part with your money, you might find out that the quoted price didn’t include some tax or other. Or that they failed to mention some ongoing fee, or some extra cost for some peripheral service not part of the actual package/product etc. The salesman is still your best friend of course, but you can start to see the cracks in what they had been telling you. But they’ve done a good enough job, and you think you really want the product/service, so you continue because it will still be worth it. It does, after all, do everything. Solve everything. It will make you so happy. Your new best friend promised it would.

As soon as you purchase, you enter phase 3. The salesperson bids you farewell, and you never hear from that person again.

Now, you have to deal with customer relations officers, and they never seem to be quite so friendly or helpful as the salesman. When the product doesn’t perform as expected and you complain about it, they insist that it was never meant to do that thing the salesperson said it would. Or at least, that you think the sales person said. Did they say it? Or did you just think they did? Maybe it is your fault for assuming what they meant. You should have clarified.

Depending on what you have purchased, phase 3 can be quick: “This new peeler broke within a week of buying it”. Or it can be drawn out and painful. “This holiday package deal I purchased continues to reveal problems and new charges”.

A personal experience I had recently was that I was stupid enough to purchase a caribbean cruise packaged deal in the USA through Grand Celebration Cruises. After agreeing to purchase, but before our cruise, the slow drip stream of disappointments was amazing. We slowly found out about new charges which were very clearly omitted in the original sales pitch. The super friendly sales process had changed into a cold “What do you want now?” customer service system which clearly didn’t want to do anything to help ensure we actually enjoyed our vacation. Customising the package to our needs was painful.

Before going on the holiday, several hundred dollars in fees, taxes and other expenses were added to our costs for this ‘all inclusive, premium, VIP service’ package which we purchased. When we arrived, it only got worse. We ended up spending more than $600 USD in levies, room fees, taxes, service charges, and other unexpected costs which in every other travel experience I have had would all be included in the upfront fee.

We were already pushing our budget to the limit taking this holiday, so this constant stream of new expenses was a constant source of stress for us throughout the entire holiday. We really struggled to enjoy ourselves at all.

The point is, that the reality of the holiday was so very much worse than the sales pitch made it seem.

The Media and Politics

Watching the media covering Trump feels a lot like this process to me.

Sure, in the beginning there was a lot of mockery of Trump. No one took it seriously and most made fun of him. Shocked at what he said, the media just constantly covered him.

With all of that coverage though, I can easily imagine plenty of people falling for his words. He appealed to primal emotional states. I can imagine how he seemed like a friendly guy. He was there to help them out, personally. He was there to solve their problems. Trump told everyone that he knew what was wrong, and he would solve it.

And enough people bought it.

He won the election, and phase 2 began. He started to retract some of the things he had said. He talked about how “Drain the swamp” had “played well” and that he never really liked the phrase himself. Some of the things which people thought he was just saying for effect, he doubled down on, saying, no, he was really going to do those things.

We hasn’t president yet, but people were starting to see that they were conned. They hoped it wasn’t true, but the cracks were beginning to show.

Then, he was sworn in, and phase 3 began. No longer could his actions hide behind his words. There was no sweet talking away the actions which were now playing out.

The actions are real, and they have consequences. People are slowly waking up to the fact that they have been scammed by a conman. The bad deal is revealing itself, and people are having buyers remorse.Trump Remorse immigration block twitter tweet

It is only going to get worse.

Click here to see what Trump did in his first week in office.

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100 Percent Winners Review

Reposted from Sports Arbitrage Guide Blog

After a little research in to the 100 percent winners setup, exactly what is going on here is pretty clear to me. The creators of this software are experienced internet marketers who have already had success with a previous program in the Forex world, and are simply building on that success and making more money by branching out in to the arbitrage trading world. Unfortunately, the people who have created the whole 100 percent winners brand, are, as I said, Marketers, not arbitrage traders.

The Marketing of 100 Percent Winners

So what we have, is one of the best marketing campaigns you will have ever seen. They have the amazing sales page which covers every base you might worry about. They have the testimonial videos, the beta testing results, the explanations, the money back guarantees etc. They even have multiple domains, each covering different aspects of the marketing launch, including 100percentwinnersscam.net where people who are worried it is a scam, might actually believe they are about to be told all about how much of a scam it is – but I can guarantee that when you subscribe to that page, you will be told a ‘frank’ version of how it is probably actually pretty good afterall, and you might even make money using it…

Meanwhile, of course, they have set up an affiliate program and I assume started recruiting professional affiliate marketers well before launch date, so that they could saturate Google with positive affiliate-biased reviews and spin of their software. When you search 100 percent winners, or any variation of that term, you only get pages made by the company, reviews about the company posted by the company or someone affiliated with them, and affiliate pages selling the article. One affiliate page made me laugh:

Hi,I am Jones James and I from Chicago.I swear to the God the following 100 Percent Winners reviews is my real experience with the product.I got really interested when I first heard of sports investing and decided to test 100PercentWinners software.I paid 100 Percent Winners 3 weeks ago. This is going to completely change my life.$3,740 in first week…$21,095 in 4 weeks…and the best part is it’s completely automated, so once you set things up it all runs on autopilot.I love 100 Percent Winners.For the first time ever i’m in control of my life now.

Who knows how long this legal loophole is going to last, but I know this:Some smart people are going to make an absolute killing with it while it lasts.

LOL. Yeah. ‘swear to god’ alright. And lie your arse off. “Completely Automated” – even the company doesn’t claim that on its sales page. “Legal Loophole” FFS. Seriously. Who makes this shit up?

Getting back to their sales pitch itself, they talk all sorts of nonsense about $320,000 profit since the middle of 2010. I call BS on that one. They then highlight some 17-40% arbs they have placed in the last 24h – 100% legit and audited, they say. Bull. Shit. says I. And then their video showing how to make $320 in 3 minutes. Aside from the fact that I have trouble believing that it is legitimate – lets assume they got lucky and found a palp on betcity (which they didn’t show the cancelled bet there btw), the technique they showed in placing the arb will cause major losses for anyone trying to learn how to arb trade. They placed the bets at Pinnacle before even looking to make sure the odds were real at BetCity!!! Absolute sure fire way to lose money. Ugh.

100 Percent Winners – The Software

OK, full disclosure here – I was going to purchase the software and see for myself, and then probably use their full refund option (which I believe will be legitimate), but after simply browsing their videos, and thanks to a screenshot posted on Arbforum by someone who has already subscribed, I don’t really think I need to see the software myself. It is obvious that the software is basically just a simple alert service, which does *essentially* the job designed to do, but without any real caution for the reality of arbitrage. ie: No filters for palps, and no real finesse to finding the real arbs.

100 percent winners software screenshotWhen I saw the price being charged for a subscription, my first thought was not of it being expensive (as no doubt some people who stumble across their page will worry about). No, my first though was “How can someone run a decent alert service for that amount?” You can’t. No development team could create and maintain decent arbitrage software and make it worth their while for such a small ongoing subscription fee. Most of the market leading alert services at the moment charge 100 percent winner’s initial fee of $150 or more, every month.

Now if we look at the screenshot provided here, you can see so many obvious palps it isn’t funny. The first ‘arb’ there, for 90%!!!!!! has Stan James and Stan James. Yeah sure. A bookmaker will absolutely accept bets that guarantee itself a loss of 190% of whatever you bet. And as for the rest of them, simple experience tells me, and any other arber looking at that image, that none of those arbs are real.

Is 100 Percent Winners A Scam?

I wouldn’t call it a scam. You’re not about to lose your life savings by buying 100% winners, but you might lose $170 if you don’t ask for a refund… and then you can only blame yourself. No, I think these guys are just clever marketers who like bending the truth ‘a little bit’…. And besides – they aren’t even really making any money off the arbitrage sales. Their profit comes from the $490 Pro Tipping service they try to flog to you after you find arbitrage isn’t making you any money. (see the 100 percent winners affiliate page to see where their profits come from, and why so many people are trying to flog this software so hard).

I don’t think 100 percent winners is really worth anything. I mean, you spend money on arbitrage software to help make finding arbs easier, or at least hand enough to you each month to pay for itself + some profit. And every alert service I have ever paid for has been able to do that. I doubt 100 Percent Winners could. Maybe it could – but between all of the errors, palps, and false positives that fill it’s display, how would you ever find a real arb?

So if you actually want to do arbitrage trading, I recommend shopping around for a better service (and trialing a few of the free options out first). Buying 100 Percent Winners to do arbitrage trading is sort of like buying a rolex in Bali for $10. It seems like a bargain at the time, but in one week time when it stops working, you realise that it wasn’t even worth the $10.

Join the Discussion

Join our discussion on 100 Percent Winners in our forum. Ask questions if you want, or just tell everyone what your experience of their service was like.

 

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The Truth about OzRipOff, CSI Arbitrage and Shane Greenup

Update

As of sometime towards the end of 2011, thanks to the tireless work of Ricky and the amazing Super Investigator powers of Ken Gamble, the OzRipOff site has been taken offline. So the situation outlined in this post is no longer relevant. The scammers have been …well, kicked in the shins. Now to close the deal and put them in prison. If you go to the bottom of this post you will see a link to the ACA story on Pickering in a comment I posted. The polic have promised to invstigate since the story, but nothing more has been heard.

As usual, the scammers come in, do the damge, and then walk away (overseas) and live up the life of luxury with their millions in stolen cash. It’s a real shame.

Original Post Follows:

Googling “Shane Greenup” these days sadly places a scam website, OzRipOff.com way too high in the results. Ever since September last year I have been targetted by a couple of scammers who run Sports Arbitrage Investment and Software scams as part of their defamation campaign against all critics and competitors. As the owner of Sports Arbitrage Guide, the most trusted and relied upon information resource in the Sports Arbitrage world, I am obviously both a competitor (Compare all alert services before buying!*), and a critic (Don’t get ripped off by arbitrage scams) of these scammers. Therefore, the scammers (in this specific instance, the individuals behind CSI Arbitrage) use their fraudulent and illegal website OzRipOff.com to defame me and others.

*It is worth noting that CSI Arbitrage was in this comprehensive list up until a few weeks ago when it was proven conclusively to me that they were indeed a scam, lying about their activities, and behind OzRipOff.com – therefore responsible for the baseless assault on my integrity and reputation.

OzRipOff.com

Since the original defamatory post was a made, a second post about me and Sports Arbitrage Guide has also been posted. The first article, titled simply, “Shane Greenup Wanker” was replaced on the front page of OzRipOff with the much more aggressively titled “Shane Greenup, the sexual deviate’s sportsarbitrageguide scam”.

In the first article, the author simply insults me and attempts to be intimidating. All of the comments are without doubt posted by the same person, with one exception, the first post by “honest”, which I posted in an attempt to inform ignorant readers of the article of the context in which the post was made. The DAY after making this post, my email account, paypal and moneybookers account were hacked, and a significant amount of money was stolen from me.

The second article simply attempts to undermine my integrity, honesty and reputation. It fails for several reasons, primarily missing the point of Sports Arbitrage Guide being a “Free Guide” and also missing the fact that SAG covers every single arbitrage alert service in the market – thus making it impossible for their lies to be even close to reality – there is no way that I personally own every single arbitrage alert software in the market. Not to mention, that the whole thing is a lie anyway – I don’t run any alert service, I “Affiliate” with every alert service which runs an affiliate program, and happily claim whatever small commission I can from the sales off my website, but I am otherwise not associated with these companies at all. But anyone can see that for themselves just by looking – and you can also see the numerous ones which do NOT run affiliate programs, which are also reviewed in my comprehensive* listing of alert service providers. (*Comprehesnive excluding all known SCAM products and services not yet made known to me)

OzRipOff.com is Run by CSI Arbitrage

I knew CSI Arbitrage was behind this assault on my reputation, but what I did not know until recently, was that the entire website (OzRipOff.com) was operated by the same people who run CSI. The proof came when I compared the ip addresses of the emails I received from Antoinette Mead, the director of Cohen Strachan Investment, and the ip address of the emails I received from “John Taylor” of OzRipOff.com – They were identical. 59.167.219.109

Further evidence came when Richard Partington posted on OzRipOff about CSI Arbitrage (http://www.ozripoff.com/report-view/826-cohen-screwyouoveryour-investment), and overnight his report of a real rip-off, was quickly turned around into defamatory attack on his character (equally backed up with the same number and style of ‘user comments’ as can be seen on my own articles – further evidence that the SAME PERSON is performing all of these posts and comments.). Anyone can test this fact out for themselves – go to OzRipOff.com right now, and post a report about CSI Arbitrage being a scam, and I guarantee it will be removed – unlike every other article about any other company, which requires you to spend $6000 to have an ‘investigator’ investigate you and clear your name…

Furthermore, only in the last week, CSI actually went and reposted the same lies about me on OzRipOff.com into their own blog (csiarbitrage.com.au/blogview/directors-reponse-re-richard-partington-322). They repeat the lie about the alert services being mine, and incorrectly assume that Richard Partington is somehow under my control or direction. I met Richard Partington for the first time when I went to his CTTT hearing against CSI Arbitrage in Gosford – he was already well under way in his legal proceedings against them, and had already spent a long time investigating them before I even met them. I went to the hearing simply out of duty to my visitors and readers – I felt obliged to find out what was going on. Sadly, I was the only other person who turned up on the day – not even Antoinette Mead (Toni Mead) showed up, but instead partook in the hearing via telephone…  The judge did incorrectly assume I was a friend of Richards at the time (since I was there, and no one else was – it is a reasonable assumption), and introduced me to Antoinette Mead as such when the call connected – but the reality was that i was just trying to find the truth – as I always have. Since then, I have found the truth – and as all of this evidence is already demonstrating, it is not in CSI’s favour. So ironically, CSI’s accusation that Richard is working under my directions has the cart before the horse.

And finally, to segue nicely into the next topic, what sort of respectable company publicly names a mere moderator of a public forum, and identifies their geographical location and real name as a way of dealing with the fall out of a disgruntled customer? ArbForum.co.uk is NOT my website. There are 5 moderators there, and 1 administrator – and for some reason, they single me out personally in this way and attempt to make it sound like *I* am responsible for Richard’s ‘rants’. This is NOT respectable company behaviour, under any circumstances. It also completely misses the fact that I have probably deleted more of Richards posts than anyone in an attempt to keep him under control (he’s angry – and I don’t blame him).

Cohen Strachan Investment Lies

CSI Lying Shill in ArbForum – TopOdds

TopOdds spent two years trying to infiltrate ArbForum. He cried scam at every arbitrage scam that was found – and brought plenty of new ones to everyone’s attention. He also spent a lot of time belittling the monthly subscription services (in exactly the same way that they were belittled in the OzRipOff and CSI articles), saying that they were useless and a waste of money. Lastly, he spent a lot of time talking about how “he wouldn’t sell everything he knew for anything less than $50,000!” In short, he spent his whole time on arbforum trying to sound like an experience professional arber, and tried to make $100 a month for an alert service sound too expensive, but $17,600 for some training and software cheap.

And then he posted this thread on arbforum. Sadly, my own replies there show my ignorance at the time, but that was the way it went down. It is clear now that TopOdds was indeed a Shill from the beginning. When confronted with such accusations, he rants:

im not a customer,i dont own it,i dont work for them,i didnt build the app,im not paul perry!(as far as i know hes a leading sydney racing identy/trianer – so shouldnt be hard to find!)

Sorry it that kills the dream of some here but facts are facts -end of story!

Topodds is opinionated,not a fence sitter,not policly correct,right wing but not a lier!

Yet comparing his IP used to make the posts on ArbForum, with the IP used to log in to trial the Carbon A software 2 years ago, and I found (surprise!) that Topodds was in FACT posting on arbforum from CSI’s office. (btw, note the trades on that screenshot – none of them are arbs?!??!?!)

No respectable company would spend 2 YEARS setting up such a deep shill. Systematically trying to undermine every competitor in the marketplace, legitimate or not, while lying the whole time about who he was, what his experience is, and what his intentions were.

Ironically, it was only because of TopOdds posted the review of CSI that all of this happened. I was happy to ignore CSI altogether – actively fighting scams and scammers didn’t seem worth my time, i had done my part by warning people REPEATEDLY on SAG about scams already – but then TopOdds made his post, and Richard Partington came on the scene making lots of noise – and TopOdds started to defend CSI a little bit too hard. If it wasn’t for TopOdds’ great work defending CSI, I may have never got suspicious. And if it wasn’t for CSI making this personal – by making defamatory comments about me online, and trying to harm my reputation, I don’t think i would have bothered going to all this trouble of reporting their illegal activities to the police, the ACCC, ASIC, Politicians and media outlets, not to mention this much more public posting, which ultimately will reveal their true criminal nature once and for all – hopefully stopping the need for people to bother emailing Richard or myself any more, unsure whether CSI is a scam or not…

So congratulations CSI – Antoinette Mead, Larry pickering, and Wayne Evans – you actually did this all to yourselves.

CSI Steals Their Alert Service Feed

As stated in my original article in 2007, CSI Arbitrage’s Carbon A steals it’s arbitrage alert feed from SportsPunter. I thought that SportsPunter had fixed the problem from their end, but a statutory declaration from an ex employee of CSI states that the attempt to stop CSI from stealing and reselling their feed for the biggest mark-up ever didn’t completely work, and CSI continued to use Sports Punter’s feed. I am not certain that they still use SportsPunters arb feed now, but it was clear that CSI never intended on making their own odds collection and analysis service – they just made someone else’s work look like it belonged to them.

Larry Pickering is CSI Arbitrage

You can also see in that stat dec, that Luke states that he worked for Larry Pickering. Antoinette (toni) Mead is just the fall person. She’s the one who will end up in prison when the authorities finally catch up with all of these criminals. Today Tonight have previously run a story on Larry, reporting his inability to afford maintenance on his children, but maintaining his luxury penthouses and his own helicopter. This is what life is like when you have no ‘legal’ income. The search results which tell the story of Larry’s long history with horse racing software and now arbitrage investment schemes speaks for itself.

And while OzRipOff.com continues to post articles calling me a scammer and worse, they have not once provided any form of evidence or argument in support of their claims. Meanwhile, as clearly shown in this article, I have plenty of evidence proving their lies, their corruption, and their fraud.

Take Action

If you have been ripped off by CSI Arbitrage, or any of the previous arbitrage or horse racing scams, then keep an eye out – a group of pissed off people are snowballing into a very large angry mob, who want justice. Take the time to subscribe to this thread on ArbForum, and follow all of the directions posted by Richard – he has done tremendous work finding every avenue possible to make these con men (and woman) accountable for their crimes.

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