Broke my cherry, scammed for the first time. What's your story?

Status
Not open for further replies.
bunni

bunni

New member
Mar 6, 2007
87
0
0
I buy and sell sites fairly routinely now, a couple a month or so, and I just got scammed for the first time. :repuke: Luckily it was a smaller site, I'm only out $500 - which is probably how it happened - don't take many precautions with the smaller sites.

An old admin of a forum, with ftp/forum admin/and godaddy access for the domain sold the forum on sitepoint - I had the usual Indian mafia tech support guys I use move the site to my vps and transferred the domain to my godaddy account myself.

Right away there's issues, my admin account is constantly being deleted, threats of lawsuits fly (lol for a $500 site you're going to hire a lawyer I'm so sure) - basically it was a bunch of 17 year olds drama. I finally work it out with the actual owner - he's going to let me run adsense to make some cash back, I gave him his admin status back... the domain is still in my godaddy account and all the files are still on my vps...

We'll see if he tries to move all the users to another domain or some bullshit. Ah well, so it goes.

So, what's your story? With so many buyers and sellers on this forum surely plenty of folks have been scammed, it happens to the best of us.
 


I was promoting this .exe program for a company called ZamCash for about 3 weeks before they started ignoring me. I earned about $3500 with them, but they never sent the check. I have myself to blame though, those fucking scammers had absolutely 0 contact information besides an email address.

If anyone has any info on these douchebags I'd love to chat with you.
 
It happens to the best of us.

I'm a big fan of people failing and getting scammed a few times. Not because I think it's a good thing that the scammers or failures have done, but because it builds up a thicker skin for you and teaches you more from those life lessons than anything you can read from a forum, book, hear from someone, or watch in a video or movie. Until you go through a trial and error process yourself, I personally believe that you just don't have the knowledge, experience or expertise that many people think you have or that even you or your ego projects.

Everyone needs to be scammed and fail at least twice in their business career in order to truly learn and value success. It's just the harsh reality of doing business, and you'll never truly appreciate your success until you've failed before or been scammed before.
 
http://www.zamcash.com/contact.php

Looks pretty shady to me.

I hired a coder a little while ago who said he'd finish the work I gave him before my 3 day deadline. He proceeded to disappear for a week, then went to Hawaii for 2 weeks (according to what he said). I finally found out he blocked me by having a friend find him online while I saw him offline. Told him to refund me or I'd file a Paypal claim. He said he was 90% complete and asked if he could still finish the project, but apparently forgot that I needed it done 3 weeks prior.

He said he felt really bad about it, but said that finishing the last 10% of the project for me wasn't justified. Go figure?

Boring story, I know. I have better ones, but I don't feel like typing them out.
 
Jon said:
Everyone needs to be scammed and fail at least twice in their business career in order to truly learn and value success. It's just the harsh reality of doing business, and you'll never truly appreciate your success until you've failed before or been scammed before.
Click to expand...

So true. Nothing smartens you up quicker than losing money.

http://www.zamcash.com/contact.php

Looks pretty shady to me.
Click to expand...

Looks like they took down their contact page. What a bunch of cocksuckers.
 
Without getting into a huge storytelling post, people here know that I have been scammed and that I've failed. Just a bit of advice that I've learned by doing myself... Don't ever be ashamed to admit defeat, failure, or that you've been scammed. Be vocal about it. Not to attract attention to yourself or to have people show pity or sorrow, but as a constant reminder to yourself that it can happen to anyone, no matter how much of a newbie or veteran you think of yourself as.

For me, it happened just a few months ago with a lead gen company that is HUGE. We're talking about one of the largest cash advance lead buyers in the country if not the world. I was running a campaign, my first in the cash advance niche, through an affiliate network, and everything was peachy. The campaign didn't run for very long (and this is where past experiences chimed in as a reminder) because the advertiser told the network to relay to me to "keep pushing more volume and higher please". As soon as I see that, a red flag goes up for me. Why? Because they haven't paid me yet, so why should I be sending more volume? I took the wise route, listened to my gut and actually slowed it down.

To make a long story short, we got paid about $9k total. The affiliate network was actually awesome about it and they gave us their cut too, to kind of help subsidize the costs of the campaign. In the end, we actually lost some money, but not THAT much, but the bottom line was that the advertiser fucked us, and maybe it was also our fault that we didn't read the terms in the contract that they had with the network. The network should have shown it to us, but we never asked for it, and how often do you ever request that kinda stuff anyhow ya know? Whatever. We were supposed to be paid $44,000 for the 2-3 days of lead gen that we did, and instead they didn't pay it and the best part of it all was the convo I had with the advertiser on the phone (I called and asked if they could cover the cost of the campaign just so we and the affiliate network could break even at least since they had the leads and were selling them anyway). On the phone, the advertiser tried to get me to go direct to them instead of dealing with the affiliate network. Now that is something in Yiddish that we call "chutzpah". Which means LACK OF RESPECT, HAVING A LOT OF NERVE or FUCKED UP. The absolute nerve of this fucking company to not pay us, to demand more volume, to not cover us or the network to just break even, and to make money on it and then tell me I should dick over the network and go directly to someone who owes me $44k?! Fuck that. I told them to go fuck themselves and parted ways.

Just goes to show you, if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone, and it will. So you guys all need to always be on the lookout for someone that may take advantage of you or a situation. It sucks, but it happens, and it will just make you stronger and more wary of the tell signs that big and small businesses project when trying to do business with you.
 
bunni said:
So, what's your story? With so many buyers and sellers on this forum surely plenty of folks have been scammed, it happens to the best of us.
Click to expand...

I sell highly emotional once or twice in a lifetime big ticket items in the real world (read:not internet marketing) with most sales being between $4,000 and $12,000 and topping out at around $20,000.

About half of my clients can afford the price without thinking twice, but the other half of my clients are often splurging and spending way more on this then they can really afford. Sometimes they are trying to impress people, sometimes they are trying to make their dreams come true, sometimes they get pushed by peer pressure and sometimes they just get caught up in the emotion of the event and they take on major debt to drop $50-250k for an 18-hour day.

Twice in 5 years I have provided services and not received payment, though fortunately, not delivered any product.

Ultimately, in one case I knew the client couldn't afford what I was selling so I didn't bother screwing them over, suing them and sticking them with a bill that they could never repay, as their initial retainer payment covered my costs. The second time I had a bad feeling about the client from the start but was feeling greedy and took them on anyway... then they disappeared.
 
Back when I was 16 or 17, I purchased a casino site from lilhost.com

Haha - what a joke. I'm not sure if they were ever caught but they would promise you a website and basically never pay you your earnings.

They also had a 10x your money back within one year if you didn't reach your purchase price. LOLz
 
Jon said:
maybe it was also our fault that we didn't read the terms in the contract that they had with the network. The network should have shown it to us, but we never asked for it, and how often do you ever request that kinda stuff anyhow ya know?
Click to expand...

can u elborate on this a bit more, it got me really interested especially the calibur that u delt with. what should a more amateur IMer look for in terms of terms of contract? especially what terms did the company u delt with have that screwed you guys over so bad??

hope its not prying too much, just sparked my interest in this alot.
also is this company stil running?
 
Been screwed at least twice: once involving a web dev company a few years ago, and the other involving a Russian mafia ring that the FBI eventually busted. In all, about $70k. Not pretty, but I learned a lot. ;)
 
Laura said:
Been screwed at least twice: once involving a web dev company a few years ago, and the other involving a Russian mafia ring that the FBI eventually busted. In all, about $70k. Not pretty, but I learned a lot. ;)
Click to expand...
Most of us aren't trafficking Russian babies into the united states to be raised as spare human parts so we don't have those problems ;)
 
lerchmo said:
Most of us aren't trafficking Russian babies into the united states to be raised as spare human parts so we don't have those problems ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, well take my advice and don't get into the Russian body part business. :p
 
Nothing that bad.. yet.

Got conned on eBay end of last year - bought some stuff, never arrived. Seems he ripped off a few guys at same time, seemed so genuine as well - cunt. Had 3 options - small claims court, through ebay or just let it go... (only £200... but I don't want the fucker to get away with it!)

Tried to report to police, they said go through ebay.. 6 months later ebay reject it as account was since suspended. They also say they can't tell me whether or not they've reported it to the Police. Now I need to stop being lazy and make time to put in a claim with the courts (can do it online here). Not much money, but I'm not gonna let the little shit get away with it. (Actually.... anyone in UK able to get info on people? ;))

I'm sure anyone who uses them know this, but eBay are fuckin useless... if it's one company that could really do with a decent competitor it's eBay... How long before GBay (permanent beta)...?!

Nothing as exciting as Russian gangsters, sorry!
 
Last edited:
I got screwed out of a few hundred thousand in commission by my old boss a few years ago. We had become good friends, and I knew we were spending the money on advertising to keep the sales coming in, so I wasn't too worried at first. Eventually once I realized that I wasn't going to ever get paid, I left and started my own company.

I was dumb and didn't have anything specific in writing, so I can only blame myself on that one.

However, it made me stronger and much more business savy. Also I've been able to create a very successful business because of it.

PS. He went out of business 1 year after I left, so he got what was coming to him. :repuke:
 
The most that I was scamed was for $1000, I did a ton and I mean a ton of work for a guy and he disapeard. I worked for months to contact him and I just could not get ahold of him. I then found some more of his contact infor and still could not get him. It is now to late to do anything so I learned the lesson that when someone owes you money jump on them hard right away, don't wait a few months like I did.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom
Back