A Close Call...

Most people that are active on the internet are aware that there are plenty of scams and fraudulent activities taking place out there. I've always thought of myself as pretty alert to this type of thing -- I always visually inspect a link address on anything before I click on it, I have super firewall protection, I never answer that poor guy in Nigeria that wants me to help vacate his deceased father's will, etc.

On the other hand I often do business - blind - with companies in Europe or Asia that want a quick consult on their internet or off-line marketing. Generally if I don't know them, I ask for 50% up front -- they risk half, I risk half. It's fair.

When I work on someone's site, I also always check the domain registration as a means of understanding who I'm dealing with. I will also do a "site: domainname" query on Google to see what kind of links the client might have to their site. It's often quite informative.

Last week, I was contacted by a gentlemen from Thailand that wanted me to make a proposal for increasing the traffic to his site - www.careerexperts.org. I looked at it. It was a credible site, had some copy issues, some navigation issues, no keywords, content not very keyword oriented, and other things. I look up, as I do, the domain registration and, sure enough, it's owned by the guy I'm talking to but his address is in Vancouver.

I ask him in our next email exchange how he got from Vancouver to working in Thailand. I'm thinking: must be nice to sit on the beaches of Thailand while the rest of us work for a living in -10 degree winters. He ignores the question but presses on with the details of my services. I tell him I'll prepare a proposal and send it to him. He tells me how please he is to have hooked up with me.

Then, I do the "site: www.careerexperts.org" query. The first listing is WHOIS from network solutions. Nothing unusual. But the next 30 or so listings are liberally laced with words like "con artist", "scam!", "Top story on Global TV 6PM", "Better Business Bureau Vancourver" and so on. There's even a few YouTube videos of news clips about my possible-future-client from major news networks warning consumers about him. I browsed through all the links. The fellow is a convicted sex offender and has multiple convictions for consumer fraud, wanted by the FBI for questioning and a whole lot more.

I write him a letter. I explain that I was doing my usual "homework" on his site and that the "site: www.careerexperts.org" results had amazed me with how many people one could piss off in so little time. I told him, I would be passing on doing any work with him.

I never heard anything back.

But it was humbling to me. This fellow was very smooth and I'm very worldly-wise (so I like to think) and if I had bypassed my usual routine... well, who knows?

It was a lesson; a lesson to reinforce my vigilance. The internet can be an amazing place, it's true, but it can also be treacherous.