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BlueHippo Scam Collected $15M, Only Shipped One PC
An anonymous reader writes "Turns out that those BlueHippo commercials advertising financing for computers and other electronics for anybody, regardless of credit, were way more sleazy than you thought. The FTC is bringing this fraud down, but not too soon. 'According to the FTC, the company's brazen business model continued without interruption after the 2008 settlement. "In fact, in the year following entry of this Court's Stipulated Final Judgment and Order for a Permanent Injunction, BlueHippo financed — at most — a single computer to the over 35,000 consumers who placed orders for computers that could be financed during the period,' the FTC told a court (PDF) yesterday. In the meantime, the company took in a cool $15 million in payments from consumers, who don't appear to have received anything in return.'"
Why bother running a successful business with a plan when you can run a fake business and get the hell out of Dodge when it starts coming down around you? The customers, of course, will want their money back, but will probably get a 15% off your next purchase coupon, good until yesterday, while the lawyers will get a few million to settle.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I remember watching their commercials and going to their website to check it out. The fine print clearly stated that you will not receive their computer printer/combo/etc. until after you mail off the last payment!
I thought to myself, who in their right mind would even consider giving this company a dime, but apparently there were 35,000 such individuals.
The lesson here folks: if it's too good to be true then it probably is.
If you can't mod them join them.
Not surprised that BlueHippo are a bunch of worthless subhumans; but that they would be so audacious about it.
Had they actually shipped a few thousand bottom-of-range refurb Compaqs or whatever, which are pretty damn cheap by the pallet load, they never would have attracted fire from the FTC. The way that their "business" was structured(at least back when I checked their website when I first heard about them), they should have been able to clear fairly impressive margins on the backs of the poor and clueless even without cheating. And, if they had avoided legally actionable fraud, they presumably would still be operating today.
Why would somebody do that? Is enforcement so weak that getting away with it is a rational expectation?
How many would invest with Bernie Madoff if he somehow miraculously got out of prison - regardless of the name of his company?
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
I just went there and clicked a purchase button that said I needed to log in, but my SSN would do just fine to log in.
This is a pretty great scam.
Hey! I like drugs...
How did they get 35,000 people to agree over the choice of a Windows desktop theme?
But how can it be perfect if the we cannot protect those who need protection most from those who would steal their money. If $1 gets spent by ACORN in a questionable manner, an act of congress is immediately enacted,but when those not so well off are robbed, we can't even make the criminal parties stop, much less put them in jail.
Or look at Verizon. They are stealing from their customers in $1.99 increments. And don't tell me it is not stealing. If you went to store and got charged for everything you put in your shopping cart before you checked out and left the store, and the store refused to refund you money if you did not actually want the merchandise, I am sure the cops would be called.
Of course Billg loves the free market. If a contractor installs unlicensed versions of MS Office on a clients computer, that contractor can earn a million dollars bounty forreporting the company, and then the BSA has every right to put the company out of business with exorbitant and irrational penalties. But if MS steals software, they can just blame it on a contractor and then apologize.
People are decrying the direction of the US, but I think after the past several years of pretty constant theft of tax dollars and personal property by the elite, a change was and is necessary.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
You can never make enough laws to keep people like this from exploiting others.
It would never occur to those of us who have been raised with an inkling of an idea of good and evil to treat others in such a despicable manner.
It has nothing to do with free market. It is an issue of ethics and values.
Without the adoption of some standard of right and good within the individual heart, there is no hope of restraining people from similar scams.
I'm not doing great financially, but those of us in the know are pretty good about staying on the connected side of the digital divide.
Not only that, but we are the same folks that keep old parts around and every now and then are able to build a workable setup for someone that could really use a computer. People that are thrilled to have something, even if it comes with a CRT monitor and has a 7 year old video card.
I've 'volunteered' hours working on crappy emachines for people because I know they can't go out and buy something fast and great.
F you BlueHippo. I know these people personally, and a computer means a lot to them.
I went to their website (Google for bluehippo), and when I clicked "Purchase" I was taken to a login screen.. where my username is my SSN, and password is my mother's maiden name. Yeah, I'll give them some more personal info after I enter that...
In the meantime, the company took in a cool $15 million in payments from consumers, who don't appear to have received anything in return.
Well, they received a lot of advertising, didn't they?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
1. Scam idiots
2. Collect millions
3. Flee the country with your millions. Looks like China is about the only livable country without an extradition treaty to the US. Hong Kong sounds very nice.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Compare BlueHippo's logo to Demby Wishingwell from Playskool's Weebles videos and toys. Is it coincidental?
But how can it be perfect if the we cannot protect those who need protection most from those who would steal their money.
The free market is not perfect.
But how on earth would you stop someone like this in an un-free market? Remember they are quite willing from the outset to break any law. If all the laws you pass men nothing to them, how have you helped except make it harder for honest people to run a business, who then quit leaving more room open for scams?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...the Sucker.
Somewhere, P. T. Barnum is laughing at you.
Regards;
Yeah, but who here cringed every single time he said the word labtop instead of laptop?
Do you have any good examples?
Bruce Perens.
Looks like we have a good test target for one of those tungsten rod gravity projectile satellites.
I got the terms of yer settlement right here.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
your criticism is only valid if complete enforcement was ever a goal anyone ever considered practical
law enforcement is just a maintenance function of civilization:
1. it never ends
2. it can never possibly be done to completion
and the realization of either truth isn't discouraging or disenheartening. it's just the way it is
people with a moral compass and people who will screw little old ladies out of their hard earned cash are both reborn in every generation anew, in a sort of statistical stasis. its an eternal state, and we must continually pursue and punish wrongdoers, forever, job permanently incomplete
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I just called it and got through to someone calling themselves Danny Archer. They did not provide a company name in their greetings instead asking immediately for my first name.
If they're shut down they need to be shut down.
If schools actually taught things like basic economics and proper math this wouldn't be a problem.
They can make regulatory rules in their area of authority, and they have the ability to bring people to civil court for failure to comply but that's all. They aren't a police agency they don't have anyone with arrest powers.
An arrest would have to come from someone like the FBI, or the state's police agency. However for that, there'd need to be a criminal charge brought by a government prosecutor.
They did not provide a company name in their greetings instead asking immediately for my first name.
Should've told him your first name was "Detective" to see how he reacted.
It isn't worthless. Enforcing the law, imperfect though it may be, does help and serves two major functions against people with no morals:
1) It deters some of them. While the sociopathic types that just don't care for others can never be made to care, they are generally extremely self interested. Well, something that often works then is threats. "If you do this, we will punish you." They don't want to be punished so they don't do it.
2) It gets rid of some of them. Lock a criminal up, they can't go and commit their crimes. For those that won't be deterred, you simply remove their ability to cause problems.
So while not perfect, it is worthwhile. It is also really the only thing you can do. There is no way to have a perfect moral code that prevents crime. Reason is even if you had such a code, and if everyone were taught it all their life, you'd get the scoiopaths who just don't care. They really don't have morals like most people. They can't empathize with others so all they care about is themselves. Morals won't work for them.
Anything involving humans as they are now will not be perfect. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do the best we can.
...even while he was working for Sebben & Sebben.
And he even had the utter gall to appear AS the corporate symbol, too.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
People have god-given frailties, which scammers EXPLOIT by victimizing people's blind spots or weak points. Your post blaming the target of BlueHippo fraud was insensitive and cloddish. But you will mature over the next few years, and become more aware that humans who are *average* or even *below average* still deserve our respect. You, too, have your blind spots and two Achilles heels.
Wendy / the Darwin Awards
No, but it's them or us.
They didn't do that in good faith. They knew it was a scam and cannot possibly work, just as well as we know now.
Why not blame the previous generation? The generation after us sure will.
If we don't end it now, then here's our next choice: do we try to con our kids into being the ones who die homeless, or do we accept that fate for ourselves?
We all know it has to end some day. The longer we continue the lie, the more unbearable it becomes. If we stop lying and our parents and grandparents pay the price, I don't see how that's our fault. They're the ones who tried to stick it to us.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
The frailties in question here could have been plugged by their parents in one line: "If it looks too good to be true..."
I demand that people use common sense and take some responsibility. If they don't then we end up with a society where everyone lives to covers their ass.
Bags of peanuts say "Might contain nuts", coffee says "This is hot", people drink 12 pints of larger, then crash Accident and emergency at 3am wasting NHS money because their stomach pump is free (Expat Brit, so I don't care about that one any more).
It's a brutal world out there, but you will mature over the next few years and come to realise that people have different points of view, which you aren't going to change by patronising them.
I bet the full ramifications aren't public yet (and never will be, on purpose).
I am thinking there was a lot of money laundering going on with all those "investors". Some were legit and stupid, thinking their boy had the magic touch and could consistently beat the market for huge percentages, but it couldn't have been all of them. There are probably cons mixed with cons mixed with even further cons and crimes inside that story and it goes way beyond Madoff. Regulators were aware of him, lower level ones were told to sit down and shutup and we are supposed to swallow their fairy tale bilge "they couldn't find anything" for years and years, despite numerous attempts. I just slap ain't believing that. I don't believe there was an "intelligence failure" with iraq and WMD, some other events as well, including madoff's currency transfer and evaporation service.
The old adage of "follow the money" still works, in his case, you have to start with him in the *middle* and look and follow BOTH ways, not just use him for a starting point and look upstream only. That's what they WANT you to think, but I don't believe their official story that the crimes all started exactly with him, I'm just too naturally skeptical now from watching government and big business over the years. My default is "they are always corrupt until proven otherwise" on any big money or big power subject. The *best* you will ever get out of them publicly is a rough surface level/convenient facade view of reality. I just do not believe in the "few bad apples" in the barrel excuse they always use. It's a default rotten apple barrel, with a few good apples who get shafted by their corrupt superiors.
And because those are the market cops who allowed this to go on and on and on and on, I have to therefore assume there was (and still remains) massive crossover corruption at the highest levels.
Agreed. --However, the truly psychopathic types don't believe that laws apply to them. This Hippo company is a good example. I doubt that the company leadership is actually neurologically capable of believing they will be stopped or punished, or that they won't be able to fast talk their way out of their troubles. Those dots simply don't register for them to connect.
And sadly, the bigger a company one has, the higher up the political ladder, the more true this becomes. The entire Bush team, for instance, should be in jail forever, but instead they're playing golf and sipping beers. This is why psychopaths are determined to turn the entire world population into psychopaths.
We need a better system. Interestingly, we have the reliable technology and knowledge to determine psychopath from normal human; their brains look a LOT different. We should be using that technology. Heck, even basic questionnaire tests can be used to raise red flags and point out subjects requiring further testing. Presidents of both countries and companies should be required to pass a mental fitness test. It seems pretty obvious to me.
-FL
What kind of economics or math course teaches you to:
1. Read the fine print that says they won't ship your machine until the last payment.
2. Not divulge your SSN and mother's maiden name.
3. Check out the background of a retailer you're unfamiliar with.
Or anything else that might help people avoid this scam.
Don't get me wrong, math and economics are useful, but they don't teach you how to avoid cons.
The health care system is entirely different. Social security is structured like MLM. You pay people based on those at lower levels paying in. Like MLM, it's sustainability is entirely based on an increasing number of people paying in. With reproduction rates falling in developed countries (the environment can't sustain the old population growth anyway) the system will fail, because there won't be enough paying in. If you think of it as a retirement account where you put money in through your working life to retire on at old age, it actually has a negative interest rate for today's young workers. That's like putting $100 into a savings account today so that you can have $75 in 10 years. You'd be better off sticking the cash in your mattress.
The health care thing is nothing like that. It's not structured like MLM. It's sustainability is not an issue. As far as employers dropping coverage, there's little motivation. Say they pay $35,000 for the average worker per year including health insurance. If the government forced them to stop providing insurance and forced you to buy a $10,000 family plan, you're simply moving the expense from the company to the individual. It would then cost the company only $25,000 for the average worker if they held all else equal. So they could increase salary by $10,000 and remain at the same cost as they were before, $35,000 per employee. The only thing that could screw people would be the employers, and they're equally capable of screwing people today. In reality, under the health care bills today it would encourage employers to carry coverage and penalize them for not doing so. But your standard Fox News analysis is going to try to scare you into believing the health care bill equals communism.
The agent told me that they service BlueHippo.
It is a third party corp setup to take the fall should the parent company, "BlueHippo", be sued. That way they can claim that they offered the service in "good-faith", but the third-party was the one involved in the illegal activity.
"There ought to be limits to freedom." -George W. Bush
Wrong. The way I stated it is is perfectly correct when in context.
If someone says '90% of X is very Y', it's perfectly correct to respond '90% of X isn't Y at all'. That does not mean that '90% of X is non-Y'.
If I had wanted to say '90% of the population was unemployed', I knew how to say that.
You've decided to read the '90% of the population' as some sort of statistic, like I was talking about the population.
A common way to understand it, but in context I was just using it as a repeat of his mention of 90%, and pointing out that his hypothetical 90% couldn't even be employed, much less have insurance than way.
Here is what I said, rephrased:
You assert that 90% of the people in this country have insurance via their jobs, but that's idiotic...they can't even have jobs, much less insurance.
Again, like I said, slightly confusing, and able to mislead people, but correct in the context of talking about 90% of people. And I immediately clarified what I was talking about in the next sentence, which rather makes you a grammar nazi.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?