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How the Dark Lord of the Internet Made His Fortunes
theodp writes "Over at The Atlantic, Taylor Clark's epic Jesse Willms, the Dark Lord of the Internet tells the tale of how one of the most notorious alleged hustlers in the history of e-commerce made a fortune on the Web. 'Accusing Willms of being a scammer,' Clark writes, 'does him a disservice; what he accomplished elicits something close to awe, even among his critics.' The classic themes Willms' company employed in 'sponsored' links for products that included colon cleansers, teeth whiteners, and acai supplements, Clark reports, included dubious scientific claims and fake articles ('farticles'); implied endorsements from celebrities and TV networks; incredible 'testimonials"; manipulative plays on insecurities ('You wouldn't have to worry about being the 'fat bridesmaid' at your sister's wedding!'); and 'iron-clad' guarantees that 'free trials' of the products were absolutely 'risk free.' But beneath his promises of a 'free trial,' the FTC alleged, Willms buried an assortment of charges in the fine print of his terms and conditions. After the 14-day trial period for each product, customers automatically became enrolled in monthly subscription plans, for up to $80 a month. 'The product was never the point,' explained an FTC attorney. 'The point was to get as many hits on each credit card as you could.' Despite a publicized $359 million settlement with the FTC, Jesse Willms is doing just fine financially-and he has a new yellow Lamborghini to prove it. After settling his tax debts, Willms surrendered his assets of just $991,000 to get the financial judgment suspended. Willms has left diet products behind and pivoted into information services. 'As of November,' Clark notes, 'if you searched vehicle history on Google, Yahoo, or Bing, ads for Willms's sites were among the first things you would see.'"
. . .would have been a political career.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
His fines are still less than what his income was? Oh and some probation will really punish him too!
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
scam the public
make money
hire lawyers
throw some cash at the gubment
profit
Dark Lord of the internet would mean he has immense powers, like being able to silence anyone by remotely rooting their computer and choking their network interface... while saying things like, "I find your lack of faith disturbing. And commanding a fleet of zombie botnets that can DDOS large corporate networks.
This guy is just a bait-and-switch con man like any other before him that have existed throughout history. He just scaled it up a notch by using internet spam techniques and getting people's credit cards.
Dark Lord of the internet? Please, it's not like he pirated music or anything.
:wq
Or, put another way: You, as an online consumer, are on your own. You cannot trust the Web’s gatekeepers to protect you from suspicious operators,
All telemarketers, email offers and Internet Ads are scams.
No exceptions.
Willms isn't the only one to survive and thrive after the government imposed a huge Internet ad-related fine. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt even managed to get named to the Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees in November, after his company agreed to forfeit $500 million for allowing online Canadian pharmacies to place advertisements through its AdWords program targeting consumers in the U.S., resulting in the unlawful importation of controlled and non-controlled prescription drugs. In December, the Mercury News reported on Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood's ongoing efforts to stop Google from making it too easy to buy drugs online without a prescription (screenshot). In his 2011 Senate testimony (PDF), Schmidt said "we absolutely regret what happened. It [drug advertising] was a mistake," and replied "Absolutely" when asked if Google had "taken steps to make sure that that sort of thing never happens again."
'Accusing Willms of being a scammer,' Clark writes, 'does him a disservice; what he accomplished elicits something close to awe, even among his critics.'
No, scammer is quite apt, and the summary fails to mention anything that makes him deserving of any awe. Nothing but common scum, it seems; successful scum, but scum nonetheless.
This is a very murky area of the law. In the US pharmaceutical prices are the highest in the world due to laws favoring favoring drug companies. For example one drug that I take (I have a prescription) costs nearly $700 a month, even with an insurance plan, while in Canada the cost is $160.
Prices are also rising significantly faster than inflation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescription_drug_prices_in_the_United_States
There are other issues with prescription drugs in the US, including collusion between insurers (including kickbacks) to keep generics of the market after patents expire, and egregious manipulation of patent laws that keep some drugs on patent on the US when everywhere else in the world they are off-patent.
As any economist would predict this creates a black market, and other channels to satisfy demand for lower priced drugs. Legitimate Canadian pharmacies offer their services in filling US prescriptions at Canadian prices. As you might imagine this pisses of the US pharmaceutical companies to no end.
While I agree that some disreputable pharmacies were using Google Adwords to sell dangerous drugs without a prescription, I think that the more powerful motivation here was to choke off Canadian pharmacies from selling needed drugs to US patients with prescriptions at lower than US prices.
not celebrated for for how clever there evil is
Willms handled this as, by now, you might expect he would: by hiring a search-engine-optimization company to create a bewildering array of interlinked Web sites with domain names like jessewillmsethics.com and jessewillmscharity.com in order to stack his search results with favorable material.
They call themselves "reputation management" companies now.
I call them paid liars.
You're talking about his lawyers, too, right?
...while saying things like, "I find your lack of faith disturbing."
That's your generic Dark Lord, your internet Dark Lord would say "I find your lack of windows disturbing." or "I am altering the website's terms of service. Pray I don't alter them any further.".
That's basically how cardholder-present transactions work. You enter your pin, the card produces a hash of the recipient, time, and amount, and a shared secret. The merchant then presents the hash, the time and the amount to your card issuer (via some layers of indirection) and they confirm that the transaction is valid. For Internet transactions, unlike in-person transactions, you can guarantee that the recipient has network connectivity, so it's even easier for them to communicate with the bank and verify the hash.
Some of the schemes for one-time CC numbers actually allow the CC number to be re-used, but it's only valid for one transaction of a specific amount per day. If you want to use it again, you have to correctly guess the amount that it's valid for that day, and put in your fake transaction after the next person to be issued with it requests it, but before they use it.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Um, doesn't this:
dubious scientific claims and fake articles ('farticles'); implied endorsements from celebrities and TV networks; incredible 'testimonials"; manipulative plays on insecurities ('You wouldn't have to worry about being the 'fat bridesmaid' at your sister's wedding!'); and 'iron-clad' guarantees that 'free trials' of the products were absolutely 'risk free.' But beneath his promises of a 'free trial,' the FTC alleged, Willms buried an assortment of charges in the fine print of his terms and conditions. After the 14-day trial period for each product, customers automatically became enrolled in monthly subscription plans
just describe advertising in general??
While I agree that some disreputable pharmacies were using Google Adwords to sell dangerous drugs without a prescription...
Even worse than dangerous drugs, some were selling counterfeit drugs. Now, those were Indian outfits, not Canadian ones. But the FDA kind of views them the same, outside the U.S. dodging regulations so therefore no quality control.
Bad as Bernie Madoff ... and noone shot him either. What is wrong with ol' fashion vigilante justice = rope + tree? America slumbers under cosmopolitan legalism .... way too feminized & pussified a culture .
I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Usually fine print doesn't matter. In reality, a place can charge on a card if it wants to until the credit card processing agency yanks their merchant ID.
The fun part is when you report your card as compromised, and a month later the shitheads start siccing the debt collectors after you. Yes, legally the debt isn't viable, but hiring knee-crackers is a tactic that does work and generates income by the more criminally inclined sites. As soon as you give one of these firms your name and address, it gives them the ability to make up debts and "sell" them to bill collectors who will call up relatives, neighbors, and co-workers in order to tell them you owe money and are a deadbeat. Since the collectors are not in the US (using haxx0red voIP connections), the normal laws about fair debt collections are not enforced, and can't be.
Yeah. Not so much.
Libertarian view : If someone is committing murder, rape, robbery, theft, fraud, arson, trespass, etc. — then it is proper to call on the government.
There really should be a term for the common practice of creating a flawed statement, ascribing it to someone, and then using it to make them look bad.
--- Mercutio was right.
That's spelled s-l-a-s-h-v-e-r-t-i-s-e-m-e-n-t you insensitive clod!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There are a couple of things I found quite disturbing about this story.
One was how easily he got off from prosecution. To mention just one episode,
So how come this Jesse guy not in jail? Isn't that fraud, piracy, etc?
Another disturbing thing in this article is that it turns out people actually click on shady adds for colon cleansers, buy these things, and then use them!!!. What?!?
If you're going to live the life of a sheep,
Never pondering the wide or the deep,
We don't want to hear you, sad little creep,
When they come with the shears in your sleep.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
It applies to some Libertarians even if you are not of that kind. The word is meaningless now since so many people stick that label on themselves just because they like the sound of it. The outright Royalists (with the current wealthy as the seeds of a hereditary nobility) are some of the weirdest ones I've had the misfortune to meet. Others at the other extreme resemble the Russian anarchists before they were purged, when they were still "useful idiots". In the middle there's pretty well the majority of the political spectrum.
So IMHO if you throw just about anything at so wide a group it's going to hit somewhere, so people should just ignore such cheap shots.
I don't know, pussies can be pretty tough. . .
“Why do people say "grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”
Sheng Wang
Kvetch about guns - check Kvetch about taxes - check Assholes - sure, I'll grant that (but I'd grant that about the majority of people in politics of any stripe) But the Troll bits are so ludicrously invalid as to make it too implausible as anything except a troll.
--- Mercutio was right.
There really should be a term for the common practice of creating a flawed statement, ascribing it to someone, and then using it to make them look bad. Foxnewsy?
- I can't help punning, I'm the product of a Jesuit Education. -
Foxnausea? Foxnaughtia?
- I can't help punning, I'm the product of a Jesuit Education. -