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Behind The "Work-At-Home" Street Spam Signs

Posted by Hemos on from the tracking-down-the-man-with-the-plan dept.

Sabalon writes: "If you live almost anywhere in the U.S. then you have probably seen tons of the 'Make thousands working at home' signs tacked up almost everywhere. Cockeyed.com has an interesting story of one persons quest to uncover the source behind all this money just waiting to be made, the company behind it (or not behind it for legal reasons), and an oversaturated market." Spam, just another medium.

7 of 528 comments (clear)

  1. I don't know about you... by red5 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't know about you,
    But every time I see these I make sure to take them all down and through them in the trash.
    I figure that if it's on public property and I'm a tax payer.
    I have a right to remove them if I see fit.
    Now if IBM got fined for the Love Peace Linux graffiti.
    I wonder what these guys get.

    --
    I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
  2. WOW! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Rob Cockerham, a very pleasant guy who is sort of everybody's favorite mad inventor in this area (midtown Sacramento) runs that page... At the risk of dooming him to eternal slashdottedness, I urge you all to spend a half hour poking around the site at his various experiments. I have been lucky enough to be present for the polarbear/ketchup-packet extermination, for instance, and saw his fake banana sculpture at the mall on many visits. What a nice fella.

  3. Re:site down, mirror by costas · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I read the site a week ago. The end conclusion is that an MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) is behind all of this: Herbalife.

    The other interesting part of the story is that just today, a group of VCs bought out Herbalife which floundered after its founder OD'ed.

  4. Re:site down, mirror by JabberWokky · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Everybody keeps talking about the "fact" that there is no decent solution. I have one. Don't tear them down, don't spraypaint them. Help out the poor company.

    Print up a bunch of stickers that read something along the lines of "This sign is from a Herbalife distributor", and label them all. After all, they put the signs up, they should be properly credited (and fined). Do it long enough, and the company gets associated with the signs. Once that happens, the municipality can (and likely will, under the pressure of pissed off citizens who now know who they are upset with) go after Herbalife. Just because they aren't directly responsible doesn't mean they have no legal culpability, especially when a whole city goes after you.

    --
    Evan

    --
    "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  5. Killing Street Spam by maggard · · Score: 5, Interesting
    1. Tearing them down is not the answer. It'll just come back tomorrow posted by another fool. It is far better to tear off or deface 1/2 of the ad and leave the rest. This defeats the ad and serves as warning to the next spammer to come by this is not a good location.
    2. Use the right tools. A utility knife is excellent for these. Wire cutters are perfect for snipping through their ties. Duct-taping a utility knife to a pole is perfect for slicing those high-up signs in half.
    3. Try and catch the spammers in the act. If you see them photograph them. Get pictures of them posting signs. Get their license plates. Get their faces. Call the cops and tell them what you're doing & where you are. Also call your local paper or radio station and tell them you've got some of these folks in front of you, would they like the story?
    4. Removing signs is not illegal, defacing them can be. Yes weird as it may be cops don't like it when you simply compound the problem, in effect you're putting up another illegal sign. Some cops will harass you, others will run you off, be wise and don't get caught.
    5. Get you local AG to pursue these folks. Yes it isn't a high-priority crime and there are always more dupes but it isn't all that hard to follow the money trail, shut down these vermin, there is a quality of life issue here.
    --
    I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
  6. Signs? Now they're attacking personal time... by Uttles · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's right, these goonies of herbalife/quixtar/amway are out in full force trying to sign up as many unwitting subjects as they can. Here's my personal story:

    I started my own website, tigerslash.com, and in an effort to promote it I made my own bumpersticker and put it on my car. One day when I was getting gas, a "successful" looking "businessman" across from me asked about tigerslash.com. I told him what it was, briefly how I made it, and things like that. He then proceeded to ask me if I was willing to work on other internet projects, and I said "if I have the time, maybe."

    Well, I thought I was going to make some extra bucks on the side for a little web design, and Mr. X made me think the same thing when he followed up with "I run a website and I need some extra help with some of it." Then he proceeded to give me his business card, and I gave him mine, and he said he'd call once he'd consulted his associates...

    Well he did call, so I thought I was going to make some quick cash for a little web work. We set up a meeting for that thursday and when it came around, I was interested in seeing what needed to be done. Well, I show up at the office and he presents me with this flyer about Britt Worldwide and all this information about their web strategy and "e commerce infrastructure." This is when the bells started going off in my head.

    Mr. X then proceeded to elaborate on the whole mission, online sale of products combined with multilevel marketing. It was called Quixtar, the next big thing, and it sounded like a great scheme... if you were an idiot. I didn't beleive one word of it. I sat through about 30 minutes of this and took the brochure politely and left.

    When I got home, I went to the website and started shopping. Amazingly, everything was overpriced. I thought "how in the world would they get people to buy this?" The fact is, the only people who do are the ones coerced into joining, so that they earn "points" with their purchases. If you're at the top of the pyramid, this is great, but if you're the average Joe, all you're doing is paying their salaries and getting $5 a month in return (after spending hundreds on "great products.")

    I did some more digging and low and behold Quixtar is nothing more than Amway with a new name. It's the same owners, same company, but they don't say a damn thing about it when you ask them face to face. What a scam.

    Needless to say, I was pissed. This form of Spam had approached me with a technical need in my field of work, then proceeded to waste my personal time travelling to, meeting, and researching these people. All that effort to find out I had been recruited for Amway. That's the worst type of spam ever.

    --

    ~ now you know
  7. WorkFromHome: Yahoo and Not 4 U! by darkstar2a · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Just yesterday I was the lucky recipient of a H.F.O.B. (Huge F***cking Obnoxious Block) advertisement while reading a yahoo mail message. I bookmarked it and researched it after I finished the rest of my work for the day.

    After hacking through the initial 'contact' page which goes to GREAT lengths to make sure you didn't enter a dummy email address or phone number (pattern matching, predicted strings, etc) I was sent to the following link [Distributor ID removed to make sure he can't profit from it] page. It's a server that they pay for (one way or another) to have a tracking link.

    The result, for $39.95, you get sent to you 'free shipping' your Information Decision Package (Gee, sound familiar) that contains 'EVERYTHING' you need to know. (yeah right)

    I also immediately began receiving emails to the single-register email address I setup. In 24 hours, I've received 4 messages so far.

    My FAVORITE part is on their contact page . Throughout the whole site they tell you that you can't contact them before you order your $39.95 IDP, however on the contact page they have this to say:

    After reviewing our website, if you still feel you need "more information" before you purchase a guaranteed decision and training package, then chances are that this is not for you and you wouldn't meet our qualifications.
    Meaning, if your not stupid enough to pay $40 for something you know absolutely nothing about, your smarter than we are and you'll see what kind of financial idiots your looking at.

    How fun, how timely!

    I'm just getting to this, so it's probably going to be buried in deep. If you get this far, I hope you enjoy the information!

    Garth