December is normally the month that all the “of year” posts come out so I might as well follow suit, however on this site being named the best of or the biggest of the year might not be the best thing.
So the winner of the Biggest Scam of 2009 is going to be the Dazzle White teeth whitening pens, why is this the biggest? It has by far had the largest spread of all the other scams I have seen including the multitudes of Google scams. You might argue with me that the Google Scams are more widespread and they may be more widespread and more knowledge of them however since they are run by so many companies the financial gains has been spread to many groups.
The Dazzle White scam seems to be one or two groups named in the dazzlesmile lawsuit. Just Think Media / Jesse Willms and Epic advertising seems to be the largest group involved. Here is what I am seeing and how I am basing it, I can not see the financials of these companies so I can only guess but in the dazzlesmile lawsuit we have seen claims that in 7 days almost $100,000 dollars was racked up with fees to the affiliate network, with thousands of orders in a few days. We also seen in the lawsuit that the offer was packaged with two separate billing groups and products. So the orders reported by one company can be doubled because it was really two orders just going to separate places.
The fact that the scammer turned white knight turned victim also helps the Dazzle White scam to be one of the largest most widespread scams of the year.
The amount of people scammed in this seems to be in the hundreds of thousands and one report I heard but have not verified is that one affiliate made over $10 Million dollars on the teeth whitening pen offers. This would put the order number at 250,000 this is hard to believe and like I said I have not had the opportunity to verify so take it with a grain of salt.
The sheer number of sites promoting this scam also stands out, with 3,770,000 results for “dazzle white” this does include sites like mine however and other people who are trying to out the scam but it does not include the other names for this product as there seem to be several.
Next year I hope to have voting for the person or group that deserves the award as well as basing it on comments on this blog and others. Dazzle White stands out among the scammers as my pick for the Biggest Scam of 2009. What is your pick?
This article is part of a group writing project for the 2009 year in review
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Interesting, but what’s the scam part in there? Do the pens not work or something?
I’d also like to say that Lockerz is a pretty well thought out scam as well.
.-= Damian´s last blog ..Lockerz Scam =-.
@Damian the scam is it’s almost impossible to get out of the billing, they also bill from other companies once you sign up you get about 3 more companies who now you have a “membership” too that are going to charge you $50 to $100 dollars a month.
Ohhhh, that’s pretty terrible! Thanks for the update!
.-= Damian´s last blog ..Lockerz Scam =-.
Great post! The “white teeth” scam is certainly visible… as is the “Acai Berry” scams… but dollar for dollar, a larger scam would have to be the “Avoid Foreclosure” scams that are RAMPANT. I work for a non-profit that assists homeowners that are struggling with mortgage payments. Day after day we hear about homeowners who have paid THOUSANDS (and sometimes TENS of THOUSANDS) of dollars to companies/agencies that – in many cases – were the same ones who were selling the crappy loans to buyers just a few years ago! And we’re seeing this in Minnesota – it has GOT to be worse in hard-hit states like California, Arizona or Nevada.
NO ONE should have to pay to get help with their mortgage!
Thanks for letting me rant!
Sooo Damian looks like we are going to agree to disagree. Lockerz is quite legit the scam site is only up to make a buck guys trust me. Click my name I got the good facts about Lockerz. To the OP Dazzle White does suck nice post.
@LockerzIsLegit
it’s not about wheter lockerz ships the prizes or not, nobody doubts that. The problem is that it’s pretty much impossible to win anything, while Lockerz makes you believe that once you have enough points it’ll be easy to get your free item. That’s being misleading.
Sorry for the OT Matt, it’s just that I have had enough of people saying “my uncle for a free shirt, Lockerz is legit” all over the internet.
Back on topic, those teeth whitening ads are incredibly widespread, sometimes I come across non-english sites that are just the badly-translated versions of the ones you see in the US, they are exactly the same, fake testimonials included.