Thanks to all of those who responded asking for further information on this Exciting Money Making Opportunity! But, applications – for suckers – are now closed 😉
It seems that the ‘scam radar’ of my regular readers was well and truly up [AJC: And, I didn’t even have to publish on April 1st, like I was first planning … too obvious, huh?]; take Rick, for example:
I look forward to the follow up post where you outline the lessons to be learned from this post. You did a great job including all of the hallmarks of a sca.. ah, questionable investment: limited time offer, “GUARANTEED”, astronomically huge returns, no knowledge or effort, a new secrete system, and an inherently shaky premise .
Seems like I won’t be able to sell any snake oil on this site …
For those of you who are wondering, here is some ‘scam sniffer bait’ that I threw out for you:
1. Making an offer like this is a HUGE departure from my previous statements: no advertising on this blog; no product sales ever; etc.; etc.
2. If you did a Google search on Derren Brown – or, even just click on the link that I conveniently provided … not all scammers are smart 🙂 – then you would find that Derren is actually billed as “the maestro of mind control” and is a “performer … [who] is in a class of his own, exhilarating audiences with his unique brand of intelligent and theatrical entertainment”. Hardly a “horse racing phenom” ….
3. As in most scams, there is a crumb of truth to my claim that the “foolproof horse-racing system that has been making him … and subscribers … millions of pounds.”
– It IS foolproof, but not profitable (you have to bet on every horse to ‘guarantee’ a win … d’oh!)
– It has made him, and the subscribers to the stock of the various TV stations airing this special, millions of pounds in broadcasting rights …. nice.
4. I am excited to be able to lie “that I have acquired SOLE RIGHTS to the package WORLDWIDE” …. c’mon, I can’t flag every obvious BS statement for you!
5. It’s always good to have testimonials … scammers are masters of those; trouble is, if you Google this one, you’ll find that it’s for something that has nothing to do with The System … in fact the whole section was just ‘lifted’ from another racing product promotional site and I merely cut/pasted the product names:
“Punters look for winners, not fancy color adverts endorsed by famous racing personalities. The System© may come with modest presentation, but has proved to be an explosive winner-finding system that leaves its flashy competitors far behind. The System is definitely an investment and not an expense.”
Odds On Magazine
6. I think that the best one is the banner ad that I put on the next day’s post (you can see it here); it’s actually for some other product entirely – I have no idea what, nor do I care, but I did leave the product name in to make it even easier for you to play ‘spot the scam’!
In fact, you’ll be pleased to know that I don’t even know Derren Brown, and I know even less about horse racing; I haven’t put money on a horse, even socially, in about 20 years 🙂
The point of all of this?
Well, next time you think you’re getting something from the horse’s mouth just make sure that you’re not being the horse’s ass 🙂
Applying even a little common sense will stop you from losing an AWFUL LOT OF MONEY in life …
… and, money saved is EXACTLY the same a money earned (just with less upside).
PS I strongly encourage you to watch the videos that I linked you to … now that you have some idea what it’s all about, it may lose a little of it’s ooomph … but, just seeing how Derren can flip heads on a totally fair coin toss 10 times in a row is a hoot!
That was the first thing I noticed about this guy when I looked him up on YouTube. He had a hundred other videos about all of his different mind control techniques. I thought this guy had to be a total scammer.
Not sure if anyone noticed or cares for that matter, but I copied and pasted my reply from the same web site you used for most of your comments. I thought it would be funny, well it was to me at least.
I was hoping this was fake, I was beginning to wonder where you were going with this.
@ Scott – More ‘scam buster’ than scammer … in much the same way that I risked losing a few readers in trying to make a point about spotting scams (c’mon guys, how does ANYBODY fall for this type of shi …?!) except that he has turned it into a profession.
@ Matt – I didn’t notice! So does that mean that you were scamming us and you really want to subscribe? V. funny! 😛
I suspect people fall for this kind of scam because they are desperate, but today they also have to be lazy too. As Adrian pointed out the internet really makes spotting scams easy- a minute with Google and you will know for sure.
As an aside I’ve heard a great way to find the true value of any investment system is to see how much it is going for used on eBay. If a dozen people are selling it for $1 with no bids that is a pretty good indicator!
The sad thing is I suspect that if the people running scams put the same amount of effort into promoting legitimate businesses they would make more money in the long run. After all it’s pretty hard to sell something that really is worthless- and it’s hard to get any repeat business. If you provide some real value with a good or service it can sell itself. Even a simple product like carbonated sugar water can be the basis of a 94.5 billion dollar company with great marketing- like the Coca-Cola Company.
-Rick Francis
@ Rick – Interesting comments, and timely …
… we’re currently watching an Aussie mini-series called Underbelly which showcases the true story of 30-odd drug/mafia related murders over the last 10 years in Melbourne, of all places. One (almost) happened very near my own house in the nice, safe ‘burbs (but that’s another story).
The thing that struck me is the effort that these ‘crims’ put into the machinery, infrastructure and sales networks in order to illegally import and sell the hard stuff.
The problem is that if they get caught they go to prison; if they don’t get caught they might get shot by an irate supplier/partner/client/cop.
And, at the end of it all, there’s no exit plan – other than the ones described above 😉 – i.e. who can they possibly sell to? No nice, fat IPO’s here …
My point: if they put the same effort into a legitimate business they would be obscenely (but legally) rich! Go figure …
As I read the post, all I could think to myself was that AJC had jumped the shark (meaning your blog was going to start to rapidly decline in value)!
Glad it was a joke…albeit a mean one.
@ myjourneytomillions – 🙂 I hope it came across as MORE than a mere joke … even a mean one?!
I must admit, I expected to lose readers in the week between the post and the denouement, but: (a) it didn’t happen and, (b) I thought it was a fair price (I’m gambling again!) for the point that I was trying to make about being ever vigilant for scams, no matter the source … remember how many people trusted Madoff implicitly?