Some scammers are really getting good at IM.

[FDJustin]

I found a ballsy scam today, when I started looking through the comments on cnn, related to the recent posting about broke people getting forgivable house loans. Part of what makes it ballsy is how it's structured... cnn-jobs.com-secure.info/work-from-home/ As you can see, it's set up to look like it belongs to CNN. The actual domain name is com-secure.info

If you are going to check it out yourself, you do so at your own risk. Chrome and avast haven't alerted me to any problems, but I can't promise that such an unscrupulous website doesn't carry any VTDs. (Virtually Transmitted Diseases. I just coined that now. Anyone who used it in the past are retroactively copying me.)

So the website is laid out like a combination of a news cast and a blog, professional blue and whites of course. It has a banner for 'News Daily 7' with login links and a few other things. The sign in / sign up links aren't clickable, most of the other things with links lead you towards 'googlebizkit.php'. I'm not going to bother checking that page out.

Past the banner you have a splay of "as seen on" and a bunch of news icons, to show just how real the story must be.

Down the page you have many pictures of cheque's and faces (faces build trust after all), along with sales copy I haven't cared to read through.. But what I gather from skimming, they have it laid out like a report/interview of a lady with claims of making 5-7k a month on 15 hours or less work.

Further down there is a long line of 'comments'... Which are a mixture of 'people' asking if it's for real, saying things like they just lost their job, and other people of course coming in with pictures of their own cheques and stories about success.
It's a pretty clever way of slipping in testimonials while keeping to the lie of it being a news reporting site. But can you leave a comment? Of course not. "We apologize for the inconvenience, the comment form on this article is temporarily closed at this time."

And.. When you close the site, surprise! You're treated to that familiar gray box with all the text. You know, the one that says you're the thousandth visitor, and look! You get a free copy of 'home income kit!'

All in all, it was done by someone who really took their time to study the usual IM scene and apply it to their thang.

 

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[FDJustin]

P.S. I originally wanted to point out that I was also impressed with the method behind delivery. That article will be widely read, yes... But more importantly, it will be widely read by a combination of people who are jealous of the articles prospect, and those who are attracted towards it because it might be a way for them to enrichen themselves. Both seem like the perfect scammees to me. The jealous are hung up on not getting the same kind of breaks, then poof. An 'opportunity'. Those who are looking for better finances see yet another easy answer to run after.

Even the message itself was well delivered! Some cute 20's-something girl who knows how to type English delivers the link, and even starts off by saying "Somewhat off topic, but".