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.

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

In my ongoing quest to find decent betting systems and opportunities I took a chance and ordered the “Automated Winners” horse racing betting system.

This purchase decision came only after recieving a glowing email recommendation from Matt Fyles – the man behind the 30 Minute Unitrader, Ternary, V System, Heptamatic and more.

(Matt Fyles and the 30 Minute UniTrader System is a page containing a full review of Fyles’ UniTrader system).

In his promotional email Matt said:

How would you like an income of up to £975.45 every day by doing nothing more that placing bets guaranteed to deliver “automated wins”.

The sales page promised that all you needed to do was log in each day, discover what the selections were and then place your bets.

So that’s what I did.

Sadly the system failed in my test.

Big time.

The recommended bank of 50 points was swiftly reduced by more than 60% in a matter of just a few weeks after following their selections.

And all this even though buyers were promised that they could turn £5 into hundreds of pounds everyday.

Fortunately this product was sold through Clickbank who have emailed me to let me know that my refund has been processed today.

What a waste of time.

The full review and results can be found on the main site:

Review of the Automated Winners betting system – including test results

And so the search goes on. Do you know of a decent tipster or betting system?

Or are they all a waste of time?

The review of the 30 Minute Unitrader system on BizOppsUK.com provided an email address so that other people who had used the system could send in their experiences.

Below is a summary of the emails that were received.

Email contents are quoted as received although names, email address and any other pieces of identifying data have been removed.

Segments that talked about other systems or segments that were unrelated have also been removed.

Email one received 02/03/2012:

“Like you I recently purchased the 30 Minute Unitrader Method and have been struggling to make any profits at all. A few days after I received the DVD?s I received another similar circular from Tim Lowe offering what he calls the Ternary System compiled in cooperation with Matt Fyles. It seemed to be the same system in a more professional presentation but he seemed to imply that it was not necessary to trade ?in play? in matches where the non-favourite had scored. This was the major drawback for me as it was not always convenient to be present when a match was in progress.”

Email two received 08/03/2012:

“I bought the system a couple of weeks ago. Like yourself, I was quite exited about trying it having watched the cd’s and I am aware that there are people out there who make some good money doing things like this on betfair.

So far I have not had many opportunities to trade due to work and family commitments, despite monitoring it for an entire Saturday and most of a Sunday. I took two trades early on, just to test the water, for small stakes of £10. These were profitable, but then my third trade with a £50 stake took a loss of £22 when the underdog went 2-0 up and the odds changed very quickly! I have not had the opportunity to trade since.

I found that the odds did not move that significantly on the profitable trades yet they moved quite quickly on the unprofitable trade. This was my fear about the system as although I am not a betfair guru by any stretch, I know that too many people trying to do the same thing can distort the odds.

So the jury is out for me although I suspect I will be sending it back as I don’t think it fits in with family life. I think I need something I can do as and when I get the time rather than watching  the screen like a hawk all weekend!”

Email three 10/03/2012:

“I bought the system 3 weeks ago and in that time gave it a good try entering 15 trades during that period.

I was determined to make it work as it all seemed very feasible and I have some experience of Betfair, but not this particular trading method.

I decided today to return the system for a full refund.

Your review was very fair and balanced and reflected my experiences almost to the letter –

1) I agree that 30 days is not enough time to find out if it may turn around in the long run, Matt says to be patient, 30 days is not long enough to follow his advice.

2) I believe that Matt should have demonstrated more trades on his DVDs as I was presented with many scenarios where I was left scratching my head. A more in depth analysis of each trade would have been helpful, particularly when only partial trades where matched.

3) I agree that Matt’s sales letter is somewhat exaggerated. I was winning small amounts on some trades and losing more on others. My bank was diminishing over time and it gave me absolutely no incentive to carry on.”

Email four 31/03/2012:

“After reading your review on 30min trader i thought i would just drop you an e-mail. I have bean useing the system for a bit but also not much joy only managing to end up with a 0.64p profit useing £20 trades after about 4 weeks.”

Comments welcome below or at the email address given in the original 30 Minute Unitrader review:

Matt Fyles and the 30 Minute UniTrader System

*UPDATE*

Email five received 11/04/2012:

“I have just come off your page and am relieved that it ain’t just me!!

I too got this and proceeded with a positive attitude although immediately after watching the only 3 videos needed (yes same as you but I guess newbies would love the guidance) I immediately worried about the liquidity and noted that the trades he took were over a year ago!!

I had one match go two goals from underdog and I stillmanaged break even and that was encouraging BUT when I started getting ‘favourable’ results, the prices simply didn’t ‘happen’ – like you I ended up with small losses and a few small wins but the losses far outweigh the wins and I was only using £10 stakes and one of my losses was from waiting for a better price!!

I add that I noticed in your review that you kind of ‘kicked yourself’ for maybe waiting too long to get a good price but I think you are being too hard on yourself as in the supplied trade examples, Matt frequently waits a considerable time and even after not getting the high price he enters, he then enters another price which isn’t showing as available so I think this system is flawed fromt he get go as i.It was working for HIM and that was over a year ago and ii.The new system influx of users has killed the prices and iii. The Liquidity isn’t that good for many of the games any way!

All in all super-disappointing and if you go to : [removed – it was a page on Tim Lowe’s site with testimonials on it]

You’ll see a testimonial from Matt himself talking about receiving a cheque for over £400k!! from Tim for one of their joint ventures!! Oh and he goes on to say it’s totalled more than £1 million!!! so clearly he doesn’t make a tidy living from his football system does he???”