Forum Scams- LIKE DON WINNER'S SITE
This is how this popular scam works:
- The scammer locates some forums that are relevant to the business you are trying to promote like information on moving to Panama, wella Don Winners site and Forum
- Next you enroll in the forum and post questions like hey I am looking for a good piece of land or house to buy. I am thinking of buying from PanamaLandsite1234.com. Has anybody dealt with them.
- You of course have several screen names on the forum and use another screen name to give your shoe store a reference by saying oh I bought from this other store and they were great. Don’t buy from Panamalandsite1234.com they are a scam operation. Of course no facts are given. To really embellish it a link is given to another forum where the scammer has posted similar negative postings to hurt the competitor and references this link to make it really look like the business being targeted for slander is a big scam when they reality is the forum poster and the business they are praising are the scammers. Wolf in sheep's clothing trick. Doesn't this just reek of Don Winner's site. Oh I am your friend and I love to hang around in forums all day long giving out free advice, you can trust me look at how many great posts I have in this forum. This is commonly referred to as a confidence game, they get your confidence and then scam you. This is profound with alternative health care products and even takes place in the offshore financial sector.
- To thicken it up more the scammer using additional screen names again posts positively for the business they are trying to promote making it out to be a popular product or service when it is anything but that.
- There is a whole industry of professional forum posters who can be hired to go around the internet posting whatever you want on forums. They will have no reservation bad mouthing businesses or promoting junk products. These people are usually in third world countries and will do almost anything to make money.
Thus you see how deceitfully unscrupulous people can promote a scam business. The point of this is not to use forums as a source of references for the credibility of a business any business. Many forums are far from impartial in that the forum owners have businesses that the forums are indirectly used to promote. If the forum owner just provides a forum for people to post they are not really responsible for what is posted.
So how hard is it for the forum owner to create a screen name and promote a product/service or bad mouth a competitor thus committing deniable slander pretty Easy for Don Winner to do and that is what happens on his web site.
Forums are not a reliable place to go for information about sourcing products or services. If you listen to the postings on forums you are going to get hurt.