I was browsing on my favourite "free classifieds" site, Adlandpro last night when I came across this ad:

50 GUARANTEED PAID SIGNUPS
You're GUARANTEED 50 PAID Signups!! In 90 Days or Less Details Here!!
http://www.smllc.tv/index.htm
ORDER NOW AND SAVE $100.00

Click on the ad and you come to a fairly amateurish looking site with a photo at the top of a woman wearing a rather cheesy grin on her clock. The site makes several offers, but the one in the classified ad costs $425...

It seems too good to be true, doesn't it... Well, if is SEEMS too good to be true then it ALMOST CERTAINLY IS too good to be true.

Consider.

The best performance for signing up paid affiliates that I know of was achieved by Daegan Smith, who grew his Success University organization by 625 affiliates in just 90 days. After six months his group had grown to 2,000 affiliates.

Other top affiliate marketers such as Ewen Chia and Stone Evans regularly recruit over fifty paid up affiliates to Empowerism each month (Ewen recruited 147 affiliates in September alone).

These guys are the best in the field, yet none of them offers any of his affiliates "50 guaranteed paid sign ups for $425". Then along comes a website with the claim to be able to do that for EVERYBODY who signs up. What if 100 mugs pay $425 each? Are we really to believe that the people behind this dodgy looking website can produce 5,000 paid up members in three months? What if even more people paid up - 500, say... would they really be able to "guarantee" 25,000 paid up members in 90 days? It is crazy.

It is a classic "get rich by doing nothing (apart from paying us)" scam.

Here is what I did to check out the site...

Firstly, the URL looks dodgy, doesn't it? The domain suffix ".tv" refers to the Polynesian micro state of Tuvalu but conjures up images of online porno and amateur youtube film-makers. Surely a website offering a genuine service would go with ".com" rather than ".tv".

Secondly, there are no names on the home page of smllc.tv. When I searched in the testimonials all I discovered was that the cheesy faced bird at the top of the page might be called "Lisa".

The only place I found a real name was when I clicked on ORDER HERE NOW.

Apparently a chap who calls himself "thomas wheeler" would like me to send him $425 via westernunion.com. It would appear that "he" can give a name and the vaguest of locations:

Saint Louis
Missouri -
USA

Thirdly, a whole page of the website is dedicated to explaining why they can't use Paypal. Here we discover that Lisa is "Lisa Thomas" and her accomplice is someone called "Jon". Of course, the non-use of Paypal would have nothing to do with the fact that Paypal require that you give them a verifiable street address, would it?

Going back to the main listings page I discovered that some of the other traffic generating services have Paypal "Buy Now" buttons for you to click. However, they are just window dressing. Presumably the idea is that Paypal buttons will impress the gullible visitor who will also swallow the "explanation" about why he can't send $425 via Paypal for his 50 paid up affiliates...

When you press a Paypal button you get this message from Paypal:

This recipient is currently unable to receive money.

Fourthly, in the left hand column there is a list of dodgy affiliate schemes. Not all the links work. One told me the referrer's name was neither Lisa, nor Jon, nor thomas, but "Paul Fowell".

I am not claiming to be an expert web detective or anything like that, but here's what I did to check up on smllc.tv away from their site.

FIRST STOP - GOOGLE.COM!!

This is easy. I simply pasted smllc.tv into Google's search field and out came the following info...

smllc.tv are scams | iGotGot.com
I know a friend who had put in 250 $ for signups and did not get any signups in the past 3 months nor will they reply . If you have had any deals with them ...
www.igotgot.com/node/79 - 14k - Cached - Similar pages

GetPaidSignups.com Anyone know them?
I was scammed by a website service at www.smllc.tv for the amount of $230 and ... After my bad experience with smllc.tv I found a link somewhere to this new ...
www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=31715 - 32k - Cached - Similar pages

Tazmania Advertising is a Very good company!
I have not tried them out because I tried smllc.tv instead and lost my $575.00. Now I have quite all internet business/affiliate programs I was in because I ...
www.scam.com/showthread.php?p=450594 - 127k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.scam.com ]

Business for Sale in the Glasgow Area - Sun Local UK,
... their web address http://www.smllc.tv/index.htm and by the 30th August guess what no sign ups and when you try to contact them no response, so all my. ...
glasgow.local.thesun.co.uk/sale/business/sale/ - 239k - Cached - Similar pages

I didn't even have to qualify my search by adding the word "scam" to my search terms!

"Who Is" Search...

The name and other details of a webmaster on an otherwise annonymous site can usually be found by looking up the URL on

who.godaddy.com.

However, when I ran a search for smllc.tv it turned out that the site is registered by a proxy company called domainsbyproxy.com which is designed to protect privacy - and conveniently conceal the "private" details of website that is masquerading as a public company.

Once you send smllc.tv your cash, the only contact you have with them is the email address that they kindly supply and apparantly do not respond to.

So now, who wants "50 guaranteed" paying affiliates for only $450" from "Lisa" and her no-Paypal play pals?

David Hurley
Grasp-The-Nettle.com

Labels: internet scam, smllc.tv, website checking

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