Just today I sniffed out a scam.  The irony is that the guy who was promoting this seemingly get-rich-quick scam (as a JV partner?) preying on stay-at-home mothers has a site that I subscribed to quite a while ago called dontgetscammed.com.

Mark Hodges, the webmaster of that site, sent a message to me today that seemed slicker than slick.  It was supposedly written by a woman called Rachel Ryan who allegedly parlayed a chance meeting with a millionaire IMer into a home-based empire perfectly formed for women allegedly like her, a single mom scraping by.

The letter and the audio testimonial by Rachel (or staged name Rachel) were both so good that I doubted a stay-at-home mom with NO online experience a year or so ago could have written such a masterpiece or produced such a convincing audio.  It struck me that Rachel was a composite fraud created by a very good copywriter called Mark Hodges or an expensive outsourced one.

When I did a search for Rachel Ryan, the only possible match  on the first or second page of Google and Yahoo were for a retired porn star.  That made me even more suspicious, so then  I did a search for Rachel’s program called stay-home-millionaire.com and that led me to a series of scathing reviews saying that that program is a piece-of-crap, pedestrian scam.  I had reached the same conclusion, although I was still a little willing to give Hodges and his protege(?) the benefit of the doubt.

But then I found what to me was the clincher that my suspicions were justified.  The domain registration for Hodges and Ryan were to the same PO Box in Minnesota.  Rachel is most likely a nom de plume for Mark Hodges or he used his live-in girlfriend as the perfect cover for his target customer.

This allegation by me may be wrong, but I smell a rat…and so should you each time you see a sales page with circles and arrows showing huge earnings, flashy Ferraris and 16-room mansions bought using the method the guy/gal is flogging.  It’s hard for me to imagine why anyone including myself would even entertain spending one nickel or yen on look-at-me, you-can-be-like-me con artists.  “As seen on Oprah” is the absolute best final reason to run, but many fraudsters use that name-dropping technique on the thick-of-skull.

If a deal seems too good to be true, it often is.  Sometimes the guru or wannabe selling you their version of the Brooklyn Bridge really does make money using the software and methodology he’s/she’s trying to convince you to buy with a “Can’t Miss!” logic.   They tell you that there product is the last turnkey deal you’ll ever need to become like them:  a rag who got rich.

The best litmus test for such people as Rachel is to ask many questions before purchase.  If they don’t write back with congruent, verifiable information rather than just sales puffery…then pass.   One-time offers that are worth their weight in gold are as rare as a three-eyed crocodile.

You and I cannot be successful with even the perfect system until we believe we are worthy.  The change in our fortunes is not brought about by gawking at the successful and hoping against hope for the lucky break.  You need to find your passion.  Nobody has the perfect formula for your long-term success other than you.  Follow your dream, not Rachel’s.