On Monday 26th September 2022 I received an email from someone called “Chris Shane” with the subject:

Fwd: First Week’s Results FTA Live Trading with Tony Langley Now 8 More Spaces Released

What’s strange about it is that it was forwarded to me twice to different email addresses, one of which caught my attention immediately for reasons I won’t go into at the moment.

At the bottom of each email was an Aweber unsubscribe link and when I clicked on that it wasn’t my email details which were listed.

The email address is obscured but the letters that are shown match the email address Chris used:

Both emails contained the unsubscribe link and were forwarded to me by Chris putting my two email addresses into the BCC field.

I emailed Chris to ask him where he got my email address and he came back with a simple explanation:

“I had some emails that I had gathered over the years and thought as a nice pay it forward for Tony Langley, I would forward it out, as it includes watching him live“

On prompting him some more he claimed:

“I had rented a list some time ago and it was on there“

And then after a third prompting he gave me a tiny bit more in the way of detail:

“The email was included in the email list that I purchased/rented when I was looking to sell a gambling product when you could do that“

When I asked him to confirm where “purchased” or “rented” the list he backed off:

“Please do whatever you want too as this conversation is getting a bit long now for something that I thought would help people“

Following a further request for him to confirm where it came from he gave up:

“Please now stop emailing me and move on“

Chris had suggested I contact Tony directly but unfortunately I didn’t get any answers there. Tony knows little about Chris Shane except that he “seems like a decent fellow who is a full time trader” and “no idea how he would have got any emails to be honest“.

So I thought I would ask the world wide web if anyone has any further details?

Did you receive the email forwarded from Chris?

Do you know where Chris may have got your email address?

Do you know who Chris Shane is?

Comments welcome below, I will update as I hear further from Aweber and others.

1st Update (05/10/2022):
Tony has changed his mind. Suddenly he does know who Chris Shane is as they worked together at Shell. Chris still works there according to his LinkedIn profile. In Tony Langley’s words:

“I taught Chris Shane to trade, as l have know him for a lot of years.

He does trade full time, which means he puts in the amount of hours required to be a full time trader along side doing a full time job, as most have done including myself to be debt free, which led to me leaving my full time work for Shell.

I have helped several people at the company over the years along with hundreds of other people.“

So the original claims were not 100% correct, or some might say they were lies.

Remember in the 90s when you would go online to ‘surf the web’?

When you’d begin by searching for one topic and half an hour later you’d be reading about something completely different – simply because you’d followed links from page to page?

The way websites were put together back then was different to how it happens now. Webmasters would provide links to similar sites so you could read more about a topic on someone else’s site.

That doesn’t happen as much today. Perhaps you are different but I don’t tend to surf the web from site-to-site. Instead it’s more a case of:

– do a web-search

– read a page from the results page

– press the back button to return to the search results to seek more info from another site.

Over the last few days I have been searching old topics because I am planning on doing the 2006 version of my 2005 writeup (http://bizoppsuk.com/10_years_2005.php).

So my search has taken me to lots of different biz opp websites, forums, blogs and so on.

By the way, have you seen the Warrior Forum recently? Oh dear…

Anyway, I stumbled upon someone doing something I considered several years ago but discounted for a number of reasons.

Back in 2007 I was at a seminar in Coventry listening to a Canadian marketer called Scott Paton do a presentation about the positives of podcasts for marketing. It was very interesting and I made plenty of notes. I even considered doing a ‘Biz Opps Podcast’.

It never happened, I didn’t pull the trigger but during my recent web-surfing I followed a link and came across one well-known biz opp marketer who has started to podcast.

The show is called “The Laight Show” and as you might have guessed, it’s Nick Laight who is featured on the show along with a friend/business partner/employee (?) called Rob (apologies to Rob because I don’t know his last name).

I’ve just listened to the first 3 podcasts on Soundcloud but unfortunately there aren’t anymore to be had at present. The last one was on 29th June so hopefully we will see another soon. I’ve pressed the follow button on the Soundcloud app so I expect it’ll tell me when another is published.

In the spirit of surfing the web 90s-style, you can find out more by using this link to go to Nick’s site:

http://www.digitalupstart.co.uk/the-laight-show/listen-to-first-podcast-nothing-planned/

Lucky me I’m being spammed by Gary Ambrose.

At some point in the long distant past I stupidly let Gary know one of my email addresses and now I am simply unable to prevent him emailing me through his “Email Aces” service.

He puts a link at the bottom of each email underneath some text that says “you can use the following link to unsubscribe, or update your contact details”.

I click on the link and another page opens which says:

“If you would like to remove this email address from this autoresponder please click the appropriate link below. Your email address will not be removed until you click the link below.”

I then click that link:

“The email address, ben***@*****.com, has been removed from this list.

You may receive one or two additional emails from this account over the next 24-48 if there are messages currently in the queue.

Please take note that you have removed yourself from one Email Aces account, not from the entire system. If you are subscribed to other Email Aces accounts, you may continue to receive email from those accounts. “

Now please tell me if I’m being stupid but surely I’ve just followed the instructions and had myself removed from Gary’s email list?

So by this time next week I should be fully cleared from his system and I should never receive any Gary Ambrose emails again. How I’ll live without receiving the emails about such wonderful junk like “Income Black Box” I don’t know but I’m willing to take the chance.

For the record, these were the variables in the unsubscribe link in the email I got today:

ee=10773021
ii=792
p=1370593185
m=b275270

I will update when I recieve more email from Gary. I’m confident that I will receive more email from him simply because I’ve got screenshots of when I clicked on the unsubscribe links in June 2013 and January 2014. Nothing changed then and I doubt it will now.

If emails continue to come I’ll start posting the email replies I’ve sent to Gary previously, which I doubt he ever read. On the Warrior Forum he even admits that he doesn’t bother answering 99% of the support tickets placed on his Listwire site.

“I’ll make no bones about it, our support desk is answered rarely because 99.9% of the questions that come in are already answered on our support forum, and in the support manual.”

Does not surprise me whatsoever. Let’s not forget that Gary teamed up with Keith Wellman for years. He obviously learned a great deal about customer service from Keith.

Keith, of course, is now long gone from internet marketing after his business seemingly collapsed. I discovered he sold his house at a considerable loss, this being the house he used to brag about in sales letters and videos.

Time has not been kind to many of these people who used to call themselves “internet marketing experts”. Some have gone back to working 9 to 5 – Keith Wellman is now a shop assistant for Apple.

Others, like Gary, cling to the internet marketing affiliate link email dream. One can only speculate about how well he’s doing but he certainly seems confident that his unsubscribe links work when he is trying to defend himself on the Warrior Forum.

I must strongly disagree and I’m not alone (link opens in new window):

Gary Ambrose: Spammer

There are others on the Warrior Forum who complain about the spam but you’ll have to find that link yourself because I refuse to link to that particular forum.

More to come…

*Update 24/11/2014*

Spam received today from Gary. Subject: “Fastest – Results – Ever”. The unsubscribe link states that I signed up for Gary’s junk on March 6th 2013. I can guarantee that I didn’t sign up for any email lists on that day because it has been years since I subscribed to any list aside from “Sportsure” and we all know how that turned out…

Gary’s plight almost makes me want to send him a few dollars via PayPal. He’s obvious desperate to make money.

Q: How are you finding it so far?

A: So far I am yet to make up my mind about SportSure.

It’s nice to be able to reach Tony and Pauline easily through the website and the webinars have been reasonably interesting.

Not having the webinar replays is irritating. It’s not as if they haven’t had time to prepare for the course. SportSure was obviously conceived on or before July 2013 when the junk sites began to appear. They really should have made sure all of the webinar features such as live screen sharing and publishing the replays were ready long before Tim Lowe started sending out sales letters.

I’m 50/50 on whether to carry on beyond the first module.

The main gripe I have is the early change to Method 1 – the so-called Early Goal method. This is a method that we were told has been working for two years. One of the two system creators, Tony Langley, even told us that he doubled a £300 bank in one month using the method. And he did this just a couple of months ago.

It’s a little suspicious that this has to be changed so early due to losses that are twice the size that Tony claimed they would be.

[Edited by Ben – 31/10/2013 – benefit of the doubt]

I did put in a request for a download of Tony’s first month’s results to be put in the member’s area in spreadsheet format but Pauline Wheeler-Reid (the other system creator) told me “the video showing Tony doubling his bank is on the website already”.

This would be fine except that the videos on the website are quite useless in their current form. Tony created them by capturing the full screen of his laptop and he has his laptop set at a very high resolution.

Therefore, when these videos are presented in a small box on a website the text on Tony’s screen is far too small to read on the viewer’s screen. Through the SportSure support centre I’ve given them advice on how to fix it but really I should’ve charged for my expertise as, let’s face it, Tim Lowe certainly would have.

Q: Have you put any of the SportSure strategies so far into action and made good profit or see potential for good profit?

A: I have been using the one strategy (the Early Goal method or “9 Minute Profit Plan” as Tim Lowe calls it) but have yet to see any profits after 32 trades. 28 winning trades and 4 losers leaves me down 2.86%.

The winning trades offered small profits but the losers were very big in comparison. Rather than being around 35% of the stake which was Tony’s claim, they actually amounted to over 60% each time.

These big losses took me into negative territory on trade number 3 and I haven’t been able to crawl out since.

My aim on signing up was to make at least £90 profit in the first 30 days in order to cover the first payment. Despite the poor results I still hold some (perhaps naive) hope that this will happen.

Q: As I understand it they will give 1 strategy per month.

A: Yes, it is one strategy per month for as long as you are a SportSure subscriber so if you stay in for the full 12 months you end up with 12 strategies (and spend £1600+).

Q: Will they give live support and show the exact trades they will be doing with results?

A: There is support via the member site and from my limited experiences they are quite quick to answer. I did receive a letter through the post from Markiteer Ltd on Wednesday of this week that told me more about the membership – you can cancel any time and you will still have access to the site until the end of that month’s time i.e. pay on the 1st, cancel on the 2nd and you’ll have access until the 30th.

Not sure about them showing the exact trades they will be doing with results. They haven’t done that so far and they have yet to provide the results of the month’s test that I requested which is very disappointing.

Q: The Google spam as a form of marketing is a bit off putting but it does not necessary negate the fact this could be a good training system.

A: I fully agree that the SportSure Google spam does not mean that the training is bad, it’s simply a daft attempt to try and stop anyone else writing about SportSure and having their opinions read.

[Edited by Ben – 31/10/2013 – benefit of the doubt]

Conclusion:

There’s still some time for the bank to get into profit before the refund window closes.

On the sales page (published on simple-sports-trading-profits.com) Tim Lowe sits on what appears to be his dining room table with Pauline and Tony and states “they really wanted you to be successful early”.

What he is saying is that they picked strategy number 1, the Early Goal method, because it has a high strike rate and should leave subscribers with some early profits.

If I were offering a course where I wanted people to stay for 12 months, I’d definitely offer the best one first to hook people in.

As a SportSure subscriber I really hope this isn’t the best of the 12 strategies.

Update 29th October 2013:

Please note that I have been informed by [removed] that the junk sites, videos, blog posts and “reviews” that are talked about in this blog post exist because they are a result of:

…marketing done by other people.  This is marketing over which we have no control and yet you seem to be suggesting that somehow we are doing something underhand…

[edited, again, by Ben]

End of Update

I’m going to make a prediction.

I predict that Tim Lowe will soon be announcing a new sports trading system called “SportSure” and rather than releasing it with Matt Fyles he will be teaming up with his customers Tony Langley and Pauline Wheeler-Reid.

Before you start thinking this all came to me in a dream and I’m some 21st century Mystic Meg I’ll reveal my secret… it’s already plastered all over the web.

Over the past couple of years a strange series of websites have popped up announcing Tim Lowe’s new products. Sometimes, as in this case, before any sales letters go out through the post.

Blog posts appear with several comments from customers but suspiciously these customers discuss the sales page before it has even been released.

Yahoo’s “Answers” website has a question from somebody about the product and then an answer shortly afterwards pointing to a “review” on a website.

For example “Susan” asks about a letter from Tim Lowe on 9th July 2013 and 6 minutes later “Brian” answers, pointing her to a SportSure blog post on makemoneyforum.co.uk:

Simple-Sports-Trading-Profits-Yahoo-Answers.pdf

And here’s Brian and Susan again with their question and answer session about AITradeSafe in February 2013.

This time Brian answers Susan in less than 5 minutes! He is helpful enough to point her to ukdropshop.com where in the review there is a link to AITradeSafe with the code “Lowedown” at the end. What’s Tim Lowe’s email newsletter called?

Upto1000percent-Yahoo-Answers.pdf

All very suspicious.

Collating the various websites that currently advertise SportSure we have:

onlinework.biz – created September 2013, owned by “D Roberts”, registration address Flixton Road, Urmston, M41 5AN

It says:

“Don’t lose hope; SportSure is different, and is being taught by professionals”

The article is so popular (before SportSure has even been released by the way) that it currently has a rating of 9.7/10 from 9 votes cast.

Also reviewed on this website: AITradeSafe, “The £250 Method”, “Peter Butler £50 a Day”, makemoneyforum.co.uk, “Income Bonus Scooper” and JacVapour

slideshare.net – on 6th July 2013 somebody posted a slide on this website that points to makemoneyforum.co.uk.

It says:

“SportSure Sports Trading on Betfair. Promoted by Tim Lowe. Produced by Pauline Wheeler-Reid & Tony Langley”.

A user named “profitmaximiser” posted a comment saying “Sportsure Looks great.”

The summary points to “sportsuretrading.com” which was registered on the 3rd July 2013 by Waverley Media. No website exists on that domain at present. It also points to “simple-sports-trading-profits.com” which is also owned by Waverley Media having been registered on 2nd July 2013.

Blog on blogspot.co.uk

Posted on Friday 5th July 2013 somebody has created a blog with the name “sportsure-reviews-sports-trading” and text along the lines of:

“Launching is the brand new Betfair System by Tim Lowe Called: SportSure”

The blogger who posted this has the G+ username “Make money Forum”.

Following his clickable username to G+ reveals a profile page that advertises “Profit Maximiser”, SportSure, JacVapour, “Peter Butler £50 a Day” and others.

He claims to live in London and appears to use a picture of an author called Peter Johnson that can also be found on this website:

http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupHomepage.asp?GroupID=820963

DailyMotion.com (9th July 2013)

Next up we have a “video” that is just a waste of bandwidth for everyone concerned. It’s 30 seconds of this:

The summary points to a blog post on makemoneyforum.co.uk.

makemoneyforum.co.uk

And now we come to makemoneyforum.co.uk which is owned by a “non-UK individual” known as “Robert Maxwell”.

Did he not fall off a boat?

10/10 with 9 votes cast on this one.

“SportSure is a Brand New Betfair Training Course That Has Hit The Trading Market”

Only it hasn’t.

Yet.

A drop-down widget thing appears when you go on this blog which announces that “Simon Roberts” is the admin.

When he isn’t doing the admin for strange advertising blogs it seems that Simon Roberts like to use his image to advertise hair transplants:

http://www.wegrowhair.com/hair-transplant-solutions/

Or maybe it’s just another picture of a random man lifted from the internet.

Also advertised on makemoneyforum.co.uk: Profit Maximiser, “Peter Butler £50 a Day”, AITradeSafe, JacVapour, “The £250 Method”

Youtube.com (5th July 2013)

The useless video from DailyMotion (see above) has also been uploaded to Youtube.

The summary points to the blogspot blog mentioned above. It’s Peter Johnson’s picture here again. The same Youtube account has another video advertising Profit Maximiser.

Another Blogspot blog

Again this was posted on Friday 5th July 2013 by “Make money Forum”.

I’m not sure this is what Google intended when they created Blogspot but they have been given the privilege of having this drivel hosted on their servers.

The gist of it is:

“If you have come across SportSure Trading Then Read On.”

~ more inane text here ~

~ Youtube video here ~

“Join SportSure Today, and learn yourself how these two people are making enviable profits from Betfair.”

The PR websites

On the 10th July 2013 there were “press releases” posted on prlog.org and pr9.net pointing to ukdropshop.com.

In what is becoming the norm in these suspicious blog posts, the ukdropshop.com blog post already has a score of 10/10 with 12 votes cast.

According to the drop down widget that appears when you land on ukdropshop.com the “editor” here is somebody calling himself Jason Jones.

Jason really needs to take some action because some cheeky websites are using his personal photo as an example of how to get to grips with photo editing:

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/stubble/

The whois for ukdropshop.com shows the owner is hiding behind privacy protection so he doesn’t want to be found.

Also advertised on ukdropshop.com: “Peter Butler £50 a Day”, AITradeSafe, JacVapour, “The £250 Method”, “Bonus Scooper”, Tim Lowe’s V System

vimeo.com (9th July 2013)

The same useless video on this site, this time from “John Jones”.

From the summary:

“A brand new concept that is about to hit the market, called SportSure by Tim Lowe, and training by Pauline Wheeler Reid, and Tony Langley. Entertainment?”

It points to one of the blogs above.

Weebly.com

3 different pages:

Tony Langley SportSure Trainer
Pauline Wheeler-Reid SportSure Trainer
Tim Lowe The SportSure Marketer

None have any information on them. It’s just more digital landfill.

Twitter

There’s also a “SportSure” twitter account with no followers but 13 tweets, each one pointing to one of the websites mentioned above.

——————————————

I could go on but it’s depressing looking at this kind of tripe.

When somebody purposely goes all-in to game the search engine results like this, with extremely suspicious scoring systems on blog posts, likely fake reviewers and photos of random innocent people taken from websites you have to wonder what’s going on.

[Text removed by Ben on 29th October 2013]

How do I know it’s this same Urmston-based marketer?

Breadcrumbs. There are always breadcrumbs that lead back to the source.

Whether these posts are from somebody called Steven or Donna or both only they know.

UPDATE 17th October 2013

Please see the main site for an initial review of SportSure Trading Programme, which was released yesterday:

Review of the SportSure Trading Programme from Tim Lowe, Pauline Wheeler-Reid and Tony Langley