It’s too early for this crap. I opened my inbox and got blasted with some extravagant HTML, like something from a 1990s Geocities site, and I’m left blinking in pain. I’m going to put a small sample below the fold. You might want to put on your sunglasses before you look.
Who reads these things? It’s so typical — lots of inane creationist content, wrapped up in the most hideous, desperate visual noise. It’s unreadable. Except for one thing that I haven’t seen laid out so explicitly in Christian literature before — an announcement swam into view.
A remarkable loan offer? This is blatant shilling for shekels. I waded deeper into the multi-colored muck and found it. Here it is:
The details are a bit sketchy. They claim that they have someone who will match your donations, $50 for every dollar you loan them, and they’ll bounce your profit right back to you. Loan them $10,000, and they will send you $18,000. Send them $2,000,000 (I think that’s optimistic for the suckers they’ll hook with this scheme, but dream big!), and you will be rewarded with $8,200,000, or 310% profit.
Well, gosh. Tempting. If I were an idiot. I wonder how many people fall for this nonsense? I guess all it would take is one wealthy old lady with diminished competence and a deep love of the Lord to make these scammers’ day.
Who do I forward this email to to get them arrested? This is the most obvious god con I’ve seen in a while. Plus, they may have damaged my eyesight.
I haven’t seen something this ugly since Time Cube.
MC900 ft Jesus called it over 30 years ago. Glob, I feel old.
Wow, thanks PZ, I suddenly feel 20 years younger.
Calling themselves “Reformation” anything only proves they’re nothing but stupid worked-up bigots who either don’t know jaque merde about what the Reformation really was, or actually want to see European civilization burn and sink into pointless genocidal savagery again, while they christurbate in everyone’s faces the whole time.
All that old-timey Geocities look? That’s the most intelligent part of all this.
Firstly: My eyes! The goggles do nothing!
Secondly:
Investment of money? Check.
In a common enterprise? Check.
Expectation of profit? Check.
From the efforts of others? Check.
Hmmm… Is this offering of an investment contract registered with the SEC, I wonder?
That happened to the Aunt of someone I know.
She was old and from the generation where women weren’t encouraged to be financially competent. Not suffering from age related cognitive impairment or at least not very much any way.
The Nigerian xians managed to get her bank account details.
They drained her bank account down to zero.
It wasn’t a lot of money but it was all that she had.
She still believes that the Nigerian xians really needed all that money and they really will pay it all back someday.
Which is why my friends had to intervene and work things out with the bank.
She still has a bank account and gets her Social Security check deposited.
Withdrawals are monitored so that it doesn’t all end up in Nigeria. Again.
Bernie Madoff would be proud if he were still alive.
that pyramid scheme is as old as the, umm, pyramids.
Cheapjacks. It should be 9900% profit: Mark 10:30 “Who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time”. The website design reminds me of the 1990s, there’s still a website on local history here (UK) that uses that sort of layout- and very useful it is.
Good freaking lord, I’ve seen Geoshitties pages that were easier on the eyes…
Christurbate . I’m so stealing that ! That is the perfect description of what rabid fundies do mixing up self hatred of their own bodies with religion
Is this offering of an investment contract registered with the SEC, I wonder?
I’m sure it is, and I’m sure all the relevant documents are up for all to see on their MySpace page. Unless they got really hip and moved it all to LiveJournal…
Principals of Web Design 101
#1: Use as many bright colors as you can
#2: 1-point fonts? Sure!
#3: Underline everything
#4: White space? Who needs it?
#5: Colored text on red backgrounds? It’d be a sin if you didn’t.
Wow, the Puritan Hard Drive! I wrote a blog post about that thing 12 years ago. And it looks like they haven’t changed most of their website since then. I clicked on it because it showed up in one of the ads that FtB was showing at the time.
Thank the Lord, this enterprise will conclude in a very short time!
Like, overnight?
(How can it be both “once in a lifetime” and “back”?)
Well, I guess unlike Trump, they are at least sort of honest about the scam.
Not surprise the scam leans heavily into the matching funds line. The target audience are already conditioned to respond to it.
I once emailed Relevant Radio (a conservative Catholic radio network) during one of their quarterly pledge drive weeks where they were telling listeners that for every dollar donated would be matched (dollar for dollar) by their “partners.”
I asked them what was the largest amount I could give that they would match 100%. Curiously, I never received a reply…
While they’re probably not doing anything illegal, all these religious fundraisers play fast and loose with the truth about matching funds. I have never heard them say that there’s a limit on the matching funds. So if they’re looking to raise $10 million, and I pledge the entire $10 million, are the “partners” really going to chip in for another $10 million? Doubtful, because if they did, why would they be asking listeners for money anyway, since the partners can give them all they need?
They also never say what happens if the donations fall short of the matching limit. Are “partners” who pledge to match a million dollars really going to hang on to half of that if the pledge drive only raised $500k? Again, very doubtful.
Matching funds are nothing more than a high pressure sales tactic designed to close the deal.
How dare you all blaspheme against the Almighty Lord Mammon! Did not his Son say, blessed are the usurers, for they have our Almighty Interest?
It’s right there in the Book of Profiteering, between the Book of Smith and Wesson and the Book of Flamethrowers.
Invest now heavily and gain the Book of Nukes for Fun for Young and Old.
And the Lord Mammon’s Official Theme:
Unfortunately it’s not ment for us, we can spot it’s a scam right away.
It’s ment for those with decreased mental competence, such as an aged person with dementia. It’s self-filtering, as they are the only kind of person who would fall for it and sign up.
@tacitus
Its dumber than that even. “Matching donation” commonly works like this:
1. Someone donated $10 million dollars to the campaign.
2. This goes into a spending pot for future projects.
3. To prevent this slush fund, which they have no intention of using 100% of on the current project, from utterly disappearing they “dole out” a “matching” percentage of the fund, based on new, small dollar donations.
4. Because of this, there must be a limit, because if they didn’t impose one then enough people donating would result in the entire fund being used, and them having nothing left to scam people next week with “matching funds”.
Basically, the big donor has already given every dime they plan to, or the amount they can match is left over from the prior project, along with what ever the big donors give this year, and they all pull this crap, because they intent is to always have an big account they can draw money from, and people being idiots would get pissed if they told the truth and said, “Heh.. for us to keep operating, and make sure we can still do projects later, if donations drop next year, we need to keep some money in the bank for later use.” This would likely get a lot of idiots screaming at them, “Why if you have ‘blah’ don’t you use it to help people?!!” So, instead they came up with this matching donation gibberish, which allows them to keep such an account flush, but also con the same fools into throwing more money at them, on the grounds that it will be matched, somehow, magically, by some mysterious unknown entity, with a bottomless wallet.
So stupid.
Note, to be clear, its only a scam because its a lie. The basic idea of not bankrupting yourself by using 100% of your working capital every year, and keeping some in reserve is sane. Just.. too many people are bloody idiots, and would freak out that you didn’t spend every single dime, every year, on what ever you are trying to do with it. However, this does lend itself to scams, since you don’t have to tell people, if dishonest, that you took in $10 million, but only “spent” $1 million. You just claim that its “money set aside to match donations later”…
Unfortunately, no one. The FBI would be the interested party, but the times I’ve contacted them, they seem only interested in pursuing from people that have been victimized, not stopping future victims. The don’t seem to give a US Mail address, so the Postal Service won’t do anything.
Kagehi @ 21, have you ever worked at or closely with a non-profit organization? Each year, at the end of their fiscal year, they go to great lengths to “spend” their excess money, lest they generate a profit. Doing so lawfully is quite an art form that they have to master.
One that I’m quite certain that I’d foul up.
I have noticed a falloff on spam via e-mail. That’s now being offset by an increase in SMS delivered spam. Yesterday’s prize winner, one claiming to be from USPS proclaiming a package was undeliverable (normally, I’d ignore such for a number of reasons, chiefly that I receive few packages). I looked at the message, as I did recently go through a problem with a package that was undeliverable.
Classic scam e-mail, time urgency, check, beyond dodgy URL, check, lousy spelling, nope that one has excellent spelling and grammar for a change. I’ll probably show it to my mailman, so we can both laugh at it.
Oh, the domain is also listed in mail filter listings for phishing sites.
Well, it did close with one thing that’s factual.
“The US Postal team wishes you a wonderful day”.
@23
You might have notices that I said this was a) kind of understandable, and b) not always a sign of corruption, or at least I tried to imply so. It annoys me because of the semi-shadiness of it. Its literally a lie, implying that all of the money donated will be matched, because some mysterious source, which hasn’t given anything yet, is going to cut a check for that full amount later. In most cases, even if it does get used “year end”, as you say, they money, in many cases, literally “already exists in their account”, its just being doled out “per match”, as needed.
Now, in some cases this isn’t a problem, but.. what if such a group, whether a charity, or a political group, needs to spend $10 million on something literally “right this second”, or something approximate to that, but half their funding is tied up in this matching BS? Answer – maybe they don’t spend it, because that would undermine their matching nonsense, or.. maybe they push even more donations, and fall short, because they annoyed the hell out of people with yet another email saying, “We will lose any second now if you don’t send in a matching donation!!!”
I don’t know.. its just seems.. less than honest, and transparent, and potentially counter productive, even if it sort of works.