• Mona Vie: Don’t Use Our Name in Your URL, Unless You’re Wikipedia (and We’re Doing the Editing)

    Earlier this week I wrote about the MonaVie lawyers going after bloggers who do unflattering critiques of the company. Their premise was silly: You can’t use our name in a URL. Here’s exactly what they said in their threatening letter […]

  • Here Come the MonaVie Lawyers…

    When will companies learn? Trying to silence critics of them with bogus threats of legal action just isn’t effective. We have something called “freedom of speech” here which guarantees us the right to speak our minds, so long as we’re […]

  • The Pink Truth about Direct Selling and the economy

    All year long we’ve been seeing news story after news story about how “direct selling” (the name meant to disguise multi-level marketing and confuse consumers about the true intent of the companies) is a great option for making money during […]

  • Direct Selling (Multi-Level Marketing) and the Economy

    All year long we’ve been seeing news story after news story about how “direct selling” (the name meant to disguise multi-level marketing and confuse consumers about the true intent of the companies) is a great option for making money during […]

  • Inside ShopToEarn’s “customer service department”

    A reader of Fraud Files recently contacted me to offer some information on the inner workings of ShopToEarn. Readers of this blog have had plenty of questions about the company and its founder, Patrick Welsh. One reader did a bunch […]

  • Mary Kay Cosmetics is Suing Another Product Liquidator

    Times must be tough over at Mary Kay. Instead of focusing on “enriching women’s lives” as the company is so fond of saying, they’re instead busy running around suing all kinds of people. A couple of weeks ago, Mary Kay […]

  • Australian Scam Sounds Exactly Like U1st Financial!

    One of the credibilty builders (i.e. smokescreens) that United First Financial agents use when trying to sell their Money Merge Account is… “It’s based on the Australian banking system!” The claim is that this “system” has been used successfully in […]

  • Usana Health Sciences Misrepresenting Distributor Earnings

    written by: terminatedramp USANA publishes a distributor average earnings chart to be used to recruit new distributors into their business opportunity. See the following USANA website that provides their earnings chart: http://www.usana.com/dotCom/opportunity/payplan/index. Quoted from their website is the following:

  • The UFF Money Merge Account Fraud

    Today a seller of the United First Financial Money Merge Account product threw out a challenge: Show him how a simple spreadsheet can pay off a mortgage faster than MMA. He said that his client owed $200,000 on a mortgage, […]

  • Conflict of Interest For Medifast Auditors?

    UPDATE: On February 17, 2010, Medifast Inc. filed suit in US District Court, Southern District of California, alleging defamation, violation of California Corporations Code, and unfair business practices. On March 29, 2011, Judge Janis Sammartino dismissed all of Medifast’s claims […]