AdsEense Scam - what should I do?

Yesterday, I got a meeting with a 'club' of adsense $$$ maker. I accepted the meeting as I was hoping for tips, advices regarding my sites. The lady was cute and my wife dead jealous.

Talking about Adsense, she talked about the 'system' of the 'money circle'. That's when I started to see little horns on her head.

The system is quite simple - $5000 entry fee then 20% of adsense income. (horns suddenly grown a bit).

The 'system' is quite simple - 50 adsense sites, hundred of 'free http proxy', a neat screen scrapping, auto clicking whatever scripts and a run button. They even have heir own Adsense toolbar to see their stats.

I estimated the circle made of 20 webmasters who inter-click each others too. I saw the script running, the number of clicks growing and one of her adsense account going wild (she said to have 10 accounts). This month Google EFT is $23,xxx for that account.

We have just her first name - Jenny "something", no phone numbers, no email address, just 2 URL stored in my browser - both are like http://24.25.25.263/~whatever
She will call back in a week or so to see if we are interested. The $5000 fee has to be paid in cash.

I did a whois for both IPs and it goes no where:
inetnum: x.x.x.x
netname: UNKNOWN
descr: UNKNOWN
country: UNKNOWN
org: UNKNOWN
etc...

I asked my engineer to investigate further on the IPs but, they sound smarter than what I thought.

These people are mega thieves. But how can I report them? I don't want to blow $5,000 to have a peek that I may not have...

Any ideas will be very welcome.

 

Personally id send an e-mail to adsense support and get them to investigate it...

 

https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/request.py?ctx=adsense_fe

 

I did that before posting here

And waiting for an answer... but I was hoping for a shorter and faster way to get them erased

Thank you for the link.

 

Just appaling

 

@dp: they wanted cash ... She's clever AND beautful, sounds like my wife, but she's no thief

@plmerlin: did you get there adsense id (<script> .. </script>) thingie? report that to google adsense and let them deal with it.

 

What are their IP addresses? How about telling Google about this, $23K EFT payment should be easy to catch if you give them a city at least.

 

$23,000 on one account... I'm no theif but man... thats temptation nocking on your door.

Kinda reminds me of when nicholas cage (in lord of war) was given present of 2 beautiful girls who will do anything he wants.. only they're in a part of africa where theres a 50/50 chance each girl has AIDS and there's no condoms for hundreds of miles.

Do you have info on how long they'd been doing this? What city are these people in? How old were they (averages)... I knew there were fraud rings out there.. but this is like mega-fraud

 

I'd be extremely wary if I were in your shoes. This doesn't sound like your average click-ring of greedy but stupid webmasters, but rather something a bit more organised and therefore more dangerous.

There are a number of scams I can see that could possibly happen. They could take the $5000 and run, take the $5k and run off with your bank details or sign you up to this fraud ring, your 'real' involvement in which you have yet to be made aware of.

Let's say her claim to have 10 adsense accounts is correct and each account is bringing in $20k per month. This makes an annual figure of $2.5 million. I would guess that there is more than one person running multiple accounts. That's a lot of money and a lot of reasons for not wanting anyone to derail the gravy train, especially a webmaster who is peeved about click fraud.

You're way out of your depth and the people you need to be talking to are the people who handle high tech, organised crime in your country.

 

I would call google, they may put up the 5 grand and get you in as a spy to figure out their ways and how to locate them. I would if I was google, just go along with it like your one of them them bust them. like some undercover cop deal lol.

 

Looking back, it seems like they are only after your $5000. If they are making $23K+ on just one account a month, why would they expose themselves for $5000? How did you find this person anyway, who did the approaching? Did you actually see $23K+ in their account?

 

People with that kind of money doing this kind of thing are extremely dangerous . It's like.. the adsense mafia!

 

Actually remember they asked for 10% of all adsense revenue. So it was an ongoing exchange.

Does seem weird that they would expose themselves for a fraction of their ability to earn. Nobody ever said the average criminal is smart though.

 

That 10% was probably there to make it feel less "free money" like. I still vote for running away with the $5000. But if they are raking in $23K without getting caught, I wouldn't rate them average.

 

That's the problem... how many of us 'could' be interested by 'investing' $5000 to get a $23,000 check every month? (minus the 20% bonus to the 'ring')
That's also the danger. What about Adsense if tons of people cheat at this level? Advertizer will see their costs increase and their sales decrease due to false clicks. Bottom line we will all suffer (adsense and adword).

I know what you're talking about, we spent 10 years in Africa and have seen the terrible effect of AIDS. I had a team of 50 people and during the last years I was loosing an average one per month. That was the most depressing part.

We reported the fraud to Google, we will see. I'll try to get another meeting an get more information to report. I'm afraid these people are not alone. My business partner told me that he heard that the are multiple rings like this.

 

I would recommend like mentioned before you contact your local law enforcement agency and ask for the organised crime division. Or internet fraud. Then explain to them in full what happened and what they asked you to do and so on. They in turn should contact google and if they will get a quicker response then you will, the law enforcement agency will then I guess do their own investigation and might put their own person in the ring and go from their, or they may ask you to do it.

I would highly recommend contacting the law enforcement agency now so that they get on it straight away, this could also be considered as a mlm. Which I believe is illegal in most areas?

Drew.

 

here a idea... she keep getting 5000 of people like you. Then she use that money to pay out to older members and they see that money comes in and get new members and so on...... ever heard that story before? Basic the system does not work but with 5000 us it does she can pay you out not google.

 

I think Yellowberry.org is right on the money...litterarely, they don't get their money from google and are making you believe with some sort of automated script you are looking at the adsense stats of an account that is making money like crazy what in fact isn't happening, but it's like a movie being played out for you making you believe it's for real.

If they where truly geting their money from google they would not attract people in the way they are doing, they would keep it at a minimum (they as in the founders of the scam) because you would be getting unneeded exposure to the scam itself with the risk of blowing a ''good'' thing that is happeing for them or him or her.

You said beautifull girl? that's the trick...say something bad with a smile and you more likely to get away with it and also some men out there want to impress the girl and show with the 5K to give the impression ''i'm a businessmen too you know'' yes some men are really that simple.
It all smells like a scam.

It's a ponzi scam, a new age ponzi scam!!

Keep your money and go on a nice vacation thinking about making your adsense work for you in the traditional manor because trust me those people are scamming the living daylights out of people