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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...
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.
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 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.
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
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.
The frailties in question here could have been plugged by their parents in one line: "If it looks too good to be true..."
Well that is some sage advice there, but I remember seeing the commercials and nothing about struck me as being too good to be true. In fact, they didn't provide a whole lot of details so I just figured they were selling $300 computers for $1500 and financing them at 30% interest. That's a money making business plan, and for some reason perfectly legal in the US.
I also remember seeing an commerical for a product (probably a weight-loss pill or something) that made a sounds-too-good-to-be-true claim then backed it up with "If it wasn't true, we couldn't say it on TV!" I shook my head so hard it rattled, but it must be plausible to someone.
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