In My Not So Humble Opinion

Archive for the ‘News’ Category

I’ve compiled the following information because someone you know and care about may be solicited by someone involved in a “Cash Gifting” scheme. There is a huge surge of these groups right now, who are taking advantage of people during the recession. A search for “Cash Gifting” on Google shows 207 paid listings for these scams. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The “Cash Gifting” groups are soliciting under a bunch of different names, but the theme is the same. You join, pay a cash “gift” to the person who recruits you, and then you recruit people who give cash “gifts” to you. Their premise is that it is legal to give a gift to anyone, and they’ll tell you that it is exempt from taxes. Some of these groups claim that a charity is being supported, or that this is a charitable activity. Cash Gifting, under any name, is an illegal Ponzi pyramid scheme. Participation could mean at the least that you lose the money “gifted” and at the most, you could be arrested for participating this illegal activity, which is a felony. You can also be sued by everyone you get to sign up under you.

Don’t let biblical quotes and the false representation of being a charity fool you into believing you can gain monetary success through an Cash Gifting program.

The Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission suggest that anyone who is approached to join a gifting scheme should:

• Consider that a legitimate gift has no strings attached
• Avoid being misled into thinking a gifting club is legitimate because the members say they consider their payments a gift and expect nothing in return. This is an attempt to make an illegal transaction look legal.
• Be wary of success stories or testimonials of tremendous payoffs. Very few members of illegal gifting clubs or pyramid schemes ever receive any money.
• Take your time. Don’t buckle under to a high-pressure sales pitch that requires you to join immediately or risk losing out on the opportunity.
• Remember that pyramid schemes are illegal. Avoid plans that offer commissions based solely on recruiting new members.
• Don’t be swayed by assurances that the scheme has been “approved” or that charities will benefit from the gifting club. Before risking your money, your reputation, and your peace of mind, review the plan with an accountant or an independent attorney who is experienced in consumer law.

 

They also promote themselves as a legitimate business opportunity, where there will be:

• No Selling
• No Explaining
• No Chasing Family or Friends
• No Convincing
• No Products people don’t want or need

Other groups claim you can get a “Mortgage Free” home by saying:

• you can obtain a custom built home, with very little money as down payment.
• you do not have to pay any further out of pocket expense to own a home.
• you will obtain your home in far less time than with a conventional mortgage.
• you can earn large monthly incomes forever, and they can even be “willed.”

These people are flooding the internet with a bunch of false information. They have nice websites, and they publish press releases. They claim to be endorsed by Oprah. They send chain letters, and do telemarketing. They claim you can get (fill in any dollar amount here) from people all over the world. They say you can turn $5 into $75,000 in 3 weeks. They say that the more you “gift,” the more you’ll receive. Some of them include a product or download, or lifetime membership as a way to try to cover up the illegal “gifting” activity. Don’t believe what they tell you.

There are also “download” and “lifetime membership” groups that are cash gifting scams that claim (quoting one such website):

• You will answer no emails!
• You will never need to build a website to earn money
• You will earn money without paying membership fees or recurring membership fees!
• There will be no silly over saturated affiliate programs you will need to promote!
• You will obviously sell . . . absolutely nothing!
• You won’t ever talk to prospects. Okay, you will answer to your referrals, but you do not EVER need to physically do it or via phone. This is limited to comments and talking “through the pen”!
• You will NEVER call anyone!
• You will obviously NOT gamble, and with my help . . . not even with Google Adwords!
• You will receive money without paying subscription fees and NO Monthly Subscription!
• You need NO high start up costs!
• In fact when you join, that will be the ONLY money you will be spending!

These scams masquerade under a bunch of different names, and the scammers dress up their scams in different ways. If they promise you Free Money, run in the opposite direction. The names change all the time, so just because it’s not on the list below doesn’t mean that it’s a legal group, activity or opportunity.

Some names, terms, and websites often used by groups like this include:

1-Up
90 days with Dell
A Gift Network
Abundance
Abundant Living System
ALS
Avalanche of Payments
Cash1234DotCom.com
CashGifting4Every1.com
Cash Giving Mentor
Cash Gift Proof
CashGiftGenerator.com
CashGiftTrainer.com
Cash Leveraging Made Simple
cashinwithchris.com
Charity Begins at Home
CommonSenseCashStation.net
Constitutional Rights Kindness Free association
Decide Freedom Now
Dedicated Marketers
Destiny
Elite Activities
Elite Activity
Elite Resurrected
Environmental Constr Solutions Inc.
Epic Wealth Systems
Eventis
EZ1Up
EZY Cash Gifts
FailProofCash.com
FastSimpleCashFlow.com
FGH Marketing
Freedom Club
Freedom 3000
freedomfighter3000.com
Freshmen Nice people Sophomore
fromrobbedtoriches.com
Get My Free Money
Gift Gifter I gave
Give Freely
Give Helping others Activity
Giving and Sharing Gifts
Golden Rule Associates Panel
goodyboyce.webs.com
Home Business Start up Funds
I have gifted Giving Family
ICF World Homes
Investment Club
Invited by Fellow man Community
Jacob’s Ladder
key-to-cash.com
Liberty League International
LivetoProsper.biz
LivingRoomGoldMine.com
Mission Cash Complete
Mortgage Free Homes
My Incentive Website
NetESPRESSO
NewCashGiftingSystem.com
Operation 20k
Participation Register your gift Giving
Pay it Forward
PIF
PopnLife
Power of People Network
Prosperity Man’s Channel
RealPassiveCash.com
Receive Junior Participant
Retirement Club
Right to give Senior I have received
Rockstar Marketing
Season of Sharing
Sharing Caring Invitation
Summit
The Abundant Pay it Forward Gift Program
The Cash Leveraging System
The Friendship Investment Club
The Last Program
The Online Cash System
The Power of Leadership
The Spirit of Giving
The World’s first Interdenominational Belief System on the Internet!
thiswillbehuge.com
Toni’s Resources
True Wealth Today
Upgrade My Cash
You can retire soon
YourFatPockets.com

Note: I compiled the above information from data collected from http://scam.com/, the BBB, FTC, and other online resources. If you have legal, incontrovertible proof that one of the above groups is not involved in illegal activity, please comment to this post, and I will remove them from the list.

Update:
Since posting this earlier today, I’ve beeen contacted by a dozen people who want me to sign up with their scam. Can’t these people read?

Tips from The Great Fruitcake Recycling Project

DENVER – December 13, 2008 — Driving in the winter means snow, sleet and ice that can lead to slower traffic, and hazardous road conditions. To help you make it safely through winter, here are some suggestions from the Great Fruitcake Recycling Project to make sure that you and your vehicle are prepared.

Everyone knows you need a shovel, jumper cables, tow and tire chains, but did you know that you should also carry fruitcake with you?

Your fruitcake essentials for winter driving:

3-4 Large Fruitcakes, with waterproof matches, to burn in lieu of flares. Because of its high alcohol content, your fruitcakes will light quickly and burn bright against the snow.

1 Bag of crumbled fruit cake to spread behind your tires if you get stuck on snow or ice. (Hint: The best crumbs come from fruitcake run through a wood chipper or industrial grinder. Your local lumber yard or grain elevator can help with this.)

Several fruitcakes, cut into slices (a table saw is handy for this task) – if your other provisions run out, having fruitcake as the food of last resort will give you the motivation to find a way out of your dilemma before you have to eat it.

Store fruitcake in the trunk of a rear-wheel drive vehicle to aid in traction. The weight of the average fruitcake will replace 1-2 sandbags, giving you more space for additional fruitcake.

A spare fruitcake can be used as a wheel chock in case you need to park on an incline.

Because of its density, the average fruitcake will burn for up to six hours, which will keep you warm, should you run out of fuel.

About The Great Fruitcake Recycling Project:
The Great Fruitcake Recycling Project is in its fourth year, helping to minimize the environmental impact of fruitcake proliferation by offering useful ways to recycle fruitcake. Its owner, Barbara Bailey, still has way too much time on her hands. You can find out more, here: www.fruitcakerecycling.com

DENVER (Dec. 9, 2008) The Great Fruitcake Recycling Project is asking concerned citizens to think about recycling their fruitcakes this holiday season.

Many recyclers tend to think of gift catalogues, greeting cards and non-foil gift wrap when recycling during the holidays. Champagne bottles, popcorn tins and cardboard boxes all show up in recycling bins between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Recycling fruitcakes will take this environmental action one step further.

When recycling your Christmas trees, and wreaths, you may be tempted to add your fruitcake to the wood chipper. Because the half-life of a well-aged fruitcake is at least 50 years, The Great Fruitcake Recycling Project recommends that instead, you join the new fruitcake movement: Regift, Reuse, Recycle.

Regifting of fruitcakes actually started in 1913, when the first fruitcakes were sent via mail order. With nearly every household receiving a fruitcake via mail, in addition to the home-baked ones being circulated, the cycle was started.

Reusing fruitcake can be as simple as repurposing this year’s gift as a doorstop, or using one in a variety of craft projects.

Consumers who are unable to regift or reuse their fruitcakes are encouraged to send them to The Great Fruitcake Recycling Project, where they are busily working on solutions to the problem of Fruitcake Proliferation. For more information, go to www.fruitcakerecycling.com. Their motto: Together, we can make a difference, one fruitcake at a time.

About The Great Fruitcake Recycling Project:
The Great Fruitcake Recycling Project was established in 2005 with the goal of educating the public on both the versatility, and environmental impact of fruitcake. Their website contains fruitcake facts, helpful uses for fruitcake, a forum for the community to share its concerns about fruitcake proliferation, Fruitcake Cards, and Fruitcake games. Its owner and webmaster is clearly a woman with too much time on her hands.

I started sitting in this room on Tuesday. It feels much, much longer. Daughter was admitted to ICU from ER because she was, and is, very sick.

You learn a lot of new terminology when your child is sick. “Septic” is one of those words. It means an infection that is in her blood, so every part of her body is under attack. It makes blood pressure drop to the floor, and fluid seeps into places it has no purpose to be, such as in her lungs.

She’s on a ventilator to help her breathe, has a central line (line in a vein of the neck that ends up in a vein of the heart) to give her medications, an arterial line (in an artery in her groin) to monitor her blood pressure, IV’s in both arms to give her fluids and other meds that need to be given slowly, a feeding tube down her throat… if there’s a place to stick her with a needle, they’ve been there. Then, even with all these holes and lines and tubes, they still have to stick her in each arm once a day to take blood samples to check the progress of the infection.

Seeing her helpless like this, waiting while she slowly comes back to life, is excruciating. I’m not supposed to talk to her or touch her, because it causes her to become more awake and agitated. I can only sit here and watch.

She’s being treated to the best medical care available. People are in her room every few minutes doing something to keep her comfortable and help her heal. They are giving her medicines to fight the infection, help her body shed some of the water that’s pooled in the wrong places, fight her nausea, pain, and the anxiety that comes from being tied down in bed with tubes down her throat.

So here I sit, and take comfort in every little bit of good news. Her blood pressure has been stable for 24 hours. The antibiotics are killing the infection. They’ve turned down the ventilator so she can breathe more on her own. Maybe tomorrow (and they say this every day) the fluid in her lungs will be gone and they can remove the ventilator.

If you have children, hold them close, tell them how precious they are, and that you love them more than they will ever know. They are fragile little creatures.

By now, everyone in the US has received the bailout chain letter email that says the government, instead of bailing out AIG, should give every American over the age of 18 $425,000. Each person then pays tax at a tax rate of 30%, which leaves $297,500 in their pocket. They claim this will boost the economy more than bailing out AIG. People would pay off their houses, buy new cars, put something aside for college, and life would be one big block party.

As if.

It sounds wonderful. Everyone would benefit from a boost in lifestyle, the recession would end, and the US would be strong.

No, not really. Let me explain.

It’s not just that their math is wrong, which it is. The logic is what is flawed the most. I’m not going to cover everything, but let’s look at a simple view. The effects will fan out from there.

1. If AIG is not bailed out, millions of people would immediately become uninsured. The money that they get from the bailout alternative would need to be set aside to cover medical costs, to self-insure their property and casualty risk, and cover investments and retirement benefits that they have lost.

2. Those who invested with AIG, and were receiving retirement payouts would lose their benefits. The bailout alternative payment would not cover their living expenses and medical costs for the rest of their lives, and these people would then increase the rolls of welfare recipients. They lose their quality of life, and everything they worked for.

3. Many businesses who depend on AIG for their liability coverage, workers comp, employee benefits and lines of credit will fail. Their employees will lose their jobs. The money these employees would get from the bailout alternative would need to sustain them while they try to find employment, while competing with the drastically increased numbers of unemployed. These people would be at a huge disadvantage to everyone else who didn’t lose their jobs, and got this bonus.

Step back from AIG now, and look at what this payout would do to the economy.

1. Raising minimum wage has been proven many times to have no positive impact on the economy. It just raises the dollar value of the poverty level to keep it in line with inflation. The poor stay just as poor as they were the day before.

2. More money doesn’t equal greater wealth. Flooding the market with more dollars has the opposite effect. If everyone got a big check as suggested, the dollar value of the poverty level would be raised once again. As we learned in Economics 101, prices will go up. More people will become impoverished. The rich stay rich; the poor stay poor, with more dollars in their pocket. That dollar is now worth less.

None of this takes into account all the money AIG owes others, the money the US owes foreign governments, the money foreign governments owe us, and all the complicated bookkeeping that goes into running a country as large and wealthy as the United States. Our leaders are making the best of a very difficult situation in order to protect everything we hold dear. It’s more than a simple financial decision.