It must be wonderful to have a friend/business partner like Simon Stepsys when he is willing to shamefully shill for you.

Stepsys has published two poorly written articles on “articlebase.com” to try and rank for the term “Shaun Smith Scam“. Looks like he is trying to help out Shaun as they appear to be working together in order to sell a product.

The product is called “How to Market Experts” and promises £70,000 per month. In fact, Shaun and Simon are, according to their adverts, “Two of the Top UK Internet Marketing Experts“.

Not sure I could agree with that description. I’m not even sure I could find anyone other than those two who would agree with the description either.

Shaun is facing problems as some of his customers aren’t altogether happy with their purchases and his poor guarantee.

For example, there is this site:

Shaun Smith Scam

According to that report Shaun is only prepared to give a refund on his “700 per day” product if the purchaser follows Shaun’s step by step instructions. Also Shaun warns that should the purchaser “miss use” (nice spelling) the system, no refund will be given.

Sounds like a great excuse to use whenever he doesn’t want to refund unhappy customers.

Onto Simon’s articles…

The first one is called “The Truth Behind The Shaun Smith Scam Issue“.

Simon says: “Shaun Smith has started in the internet marketing business sometime in 2005”

That’s probably true. From what I’ve read Shaun was in prison before that after being found guilty of fraud.

The remainder of the article is a poorly worded attempt to keyword stuff the term “Shaun Smith Scam” in as many times as possible. I guess Simon thinks that is the best way to rank high for a term – he should know, being one of the “Top UK Internet Marketing Experts”

Simon’s second article has the title “Why The Shaun Smith Scam Is A Lie“.

Apparently “a certain Shaun Smith have been accused of selling products that did not deliver what they are supposed to do“.

Simon even concedes that Shaun’s products could be considered “ineffective” and that Shaun really could be out to swindle his customers’ hard earned money. Don’t believe that Simon would say that? Here’s what he wrote:

“You see, the Shaun Smith scam issues solely revolves on the fact that a couple of clients and customers are unsatisfied with the turnouts of their ventures with the marketer’s products, claiming that the whole product is ineffective and that the man is only out to swindle other people’s hard earned money. This could be the case“.

So, is “Shaun Smith Scam” a valid term to use?

On the internet people will tend to ask a question like “is [insert marketer’s name here] a scam?”

It isn’t a valid question. A person can’t be described as a scam but their method of doing business can.

For example, let’s say someone purposely sold a poor product with inadequate advice but then refused to refund unhappy customers. Could that be considered a scam?

What about if a marketer openly promoted what is basically a thinly disguised pyramid scheme, could you legitimately call that a scam?

How about if that same marketer was caught copying proof of earnings from another marketer’s site and claiming them as his own?

What about if a marketer claimed to be “bringing in £20k a month” but was actually spending £19k on advertising to make £20k, leaving less than £1k profit?

I think you’d agree that those methods of doing business are pretty scummy and could probably be labelled as a scam.

Shaun Smith is very vocal about how much he likes YourNetBiz. That particular “opportunity” is covered on another blog post and the main website:

A Couple of Things That Worry Me About Shaun Smith and YourNetBiz

An Outsider’s Review of YourNetBiz aka MyInternetBusiness

Simon Stepsys spent a lot of time in 2006 promoting the illegal pyramid scheme “Prosperity Automated System” in the National papers (before the SEC shut it down).

I certainly can’t blame anyone for labelling what these two marketers do as a “scam” following their past behaviour. 

And I wouldn’t EVER recommend either of them, or their products.

—————–

As an amusing aside, Shaun has posted a video of himself on YouTube:

I’ve taken a copy for myself in case he tries to remove the video so I can re-upload it. Check it out around the 2:50 mark. He has one of his mentoring students, “Mick”, on the phone as he is driving:

Student: I’ve signed up for Twitter and all that now but it’s two weeks and I’ve had no-one. I’ve tried eight or nine places every morning and had no-one.

Shaun: So you’ve had no opt-ins at all or?

Student: Not a thing, not a single thing.

Shaun: Right, OK, errrrrmmmm…. OK…. we’ll have to… errrmmmm… are you doing any YouTube videos at all at the moment?

[some further conversation] 

Student: YouTube? I haven’t done that yet Shaun, just advertising in eight or nine places every morning doing it over and over again and I’m getting nothing…

There you have it folks, Shaun Smith’s mentoring student has been following his advice for two weeks and hasn’t had a single person opt-in to his newsletter.

I’m sure you can draw your own conclusions from that…

A quick post today just to point out that there’s a new cash gifting scheme being heavily promoted by UK marketers.

Paul Raven and Julie Wilson have teamed up to promote the “Abundant Living System” in much the same way as they used to promote the Number One Success System.

Previously Julie had teamed with Paul Stevenson when promoting NOSS but this time it initially appeared that she had a new partner who called himself “Paul Raven“.

After tuning in to one of their conference calls it quickly became apparent that Paul Raven had exactly the same voice as Paul Stevenson.

Also, all promotional material pointed to Paul Stevenson’s UKMentor.net website.

How strange! Or maybe not… Looks like Paul has decided on a change of name to promote ALS.

Still, it doesn’t really matter. This is yet another illegal gifting scheme, much like the others that Julie and Paul have promoted in the past.

The laws haven’t changed and organised gifting schemes are illegal in the UK.

You can read more about why these schemes should be avoided on the main website:

Chain Gifting from the “Cash Mentoring Team” – Julie Wilson and Paul Stevenson

Just for fun, here is a summary of Stella’s Global Pension Plan status updates over the past couple of years.

If I have missed any, please do let me know… Enjoy!

——————–

September 28, 2007

We have 94.601 members at this very moment, who would be accepted as a Compensation receiver by the insurance company. 

We have a little more than 100.000 members already, but not all of them qualify because of their age (they will qualify, however, for the Loyalty Program Rewards) or because of the incomplete information in their profile. 

October 21, 2007

All Members hereby have the chance for MULTIPLE POLICIES IN GPP!

We have a limit of 250,000 additional policies altogether

October 22, 2007

We have finally figured out the deadline for the program, and here it comes! This is going to give the members a clear schedule how to work towards the rewards.

– program will be closed on the 31st of December 2007

– documents have to be provided during January 2008

– payout will be between the 15th and 29th of February 2008

December 31, 2007

So, the new plan is, that all the purchases are ceased on the 31st of January.

January 26, 2008

The Trust Partner and the financial companies representatives had meetings with several high level government officials and they finally found the way to produce the Banking Solution You need. The license necessary to conduct such a business/service is being applied shortly and while it’s been processed the technical side of the Banking Solution is being created.

January 30, 2008

The company, who’s going to provide the solution, is applying for the financial license shortly

The Trust Partner has asked me not to close the site, i.e. the sign ups and additional policy purchases until the Banking Solution is ready and is being launched. Hence you can, if you so wish, sign up and buy additional policies without hurry.

We will go in one month steps from here, meaning that the site is open for one full calender month until the situation is reviewed again. For example, if the Banking Solution is fixed during February, I will close the site in the end of February and no more purchases is accepted. I think it’s better to know this in advance and not trying to guess the date in case this and that happens.

March 3, 2008

Our current schedule depends on the banking license at the moment. We haven’t been given a date when it will be granted, so I’m unable to promise the payout to happen any specific time

May 6, 2008

Please continue with your normal life, earn your money you need for your living, keep yourself updated in our forum and do what we tell you to do and then some fine day not very far from now anymore we will let you know that your money is on your account! So please don’t spend the money just yet!

July 16, 2008

We are now ready to start accepting the documents…

August 21, 2008

We have almost made it! Everything looks really great! GPP is actually done! There is nothing else we need now except the 100.000 documents. And this is a FANTASTIC NEWS!!!

The deadline for sending in the documents is hereby extended to the 15th of September 2008.

We have very precise rules and these will not change.

Of course the sign up functions for new and additional contracts remain open until then

November 20, 2008

Dear GPP Members,

First of all, the most important figures of the week:

76.001 (or 76% from the required 100.000 sets of documents)

The Final Deadline: 31st of January 2009

This date is absolute and means, that we MUST reach the initially set target of 100.000 qualified members. Otherwise the program closes without payout.

Please note the decreased sign up fee of 20EUR!

——————–

Obviously, these are just snippets from Stella’s updates but I think that it shows the timeline quite well.

Comments are closed on this post but most welcome on the main GPP post:

Global Pension Plan – Do Your “Due Diligence” 

It’s all change with the “Cash Mentoring Team” – Julie Wilson and Paul Stevenson – as they have decided to change their website address this week.

The new address is bigbankbalance.info but the content remains the same, as does the makeup of the site – it’s all a framed page hosted on Paul’s ukmentor.net domain.

Changing websites frequently is a technique used by the “Number One Success System” owner, Jim Humphrey.

The website he uses to run his cash gifting schemes is currently noss123.com but in the past he has used the following domains:

TruthWealthToday.com
UpToYouWealth.com
RRS123.com
TLC2003.com

I’ve just one question:

If your cash-gifting scheme is legal, why do you need to keep changing the name and website?

Surely keeping the same brand name and website is beneficial and avoids confusion?

I won’t hold my breath for an answer from either Julie Wilson or Paul Stevenson.

However, I will predict that when this blog post is spidered and starts to rank in Google, Julie and Paul will change the domain name yet again.

Read more here:

Chain Gifting from the “Cash Mentoring Team” – Julie Wilson and Paul Stevenson

After listening to another of Julie and Paul’s recruitment calls, it has been revealed that the so-called “Number One Success System” runs from at least two different domain names and is based in Hawaii.

The first domain name – noss123.com – was already widely known but they recently announced a second site which is “tlc2003.com”.

If you go to either of these sites you will see that both are advertising pages for the cash gifting scheme and, tellingly, both constantly refer to the need for privacy and invite only participation.

“Privacy is paramount“, the websites repeat.

And, indeed, privacy is paramount – whoever registered these domains is trying to hide their identity.

Noss123.com has its WHOIS details protected by 000domains and has been protected since it was registered in June 2007.

However, this second domain was only registered in January 2008 and, until around the 27th of that month the registrant’s details were available for everyone to see.

So, who originally registered “tlc2003.com”?

I won’t reveal his name just yet but he is from Haleiwa, Hawaii, US.

Both websites seem to resolve to the exact same IP address in Montreal, Canada.

And you can check this for yourself.

To bypass the need for a password on either site, just type in the site address and then add “/main/” to the end i.e. noss123.com/main/ or tlc2003.com/main/

Then click on “Join” and it will ask you for an invitation code.

I managed to guess one after a few tries – see if you can do the same!

When you click on Submit, one of two things will happen.

Either you will have guessed a correct code and the site will show you an “Inviter Confirmation” page including the person’s name and qualification status.

Or you will have failed to correctly identify a valid code and it will return you to the “Join” page after 5 seconds.

Now, in both cases, on both sites, the IP address displayed in the browser address bar is the same and gives a location in Canada.

What this suggests is that both Noss123.com and tlc2003.com are run by the same person – Mr Hxxxxxxx of Haleiwa, Hawaii.

I wonder if cash gifting schemes are illegal in Hawaii? Might be worth looking into…

Can you find a valid Invitation Code? If so, please feel free to let readers know what it is by leaving a comment below.