My girlfriend's mom has gotten taken by a scam. Her mom doesn't understand enough to explain it fully, but here's what my girlfriend knows:

The offer is from a VOIP company called i-Fortuity.
They charge a fee (you're meant to consider it an "investment") and help you set up a website using some info of theirs. There seems to be the option for you to personalize it or not.

Somehow the website you have set up is either providing service or sales from the company to their customers doing some kind of search. If you've paid a premium fee, your site is supposed to be among the ten first hits returned to the customers.
You aren't required to make calls or do any selling, but you are required to do a bit of maintenance on the website.
Supposedly, the money you get from these customers clicking on your site is eventually enough for you to live on.

My girlfriend can't figure out the purpose of these sites-- extra hosting, VOIP servers, or what-- because this is about as much info as she can get out of her mother; sometimes it sounds as if you are actually providing VOIP service somehow; other times it sounds as if you are running a site that actually makes sales; other times it sounds like it's an ad site. There doesn't seem to be any info about this at all on i-Fortuity's own site.

She wants to know... well first, obviously, it's a scam, but what, if anything, are these individual sites actually doing? She's never heard of any kind of setup like this, so she isn't even sure what to google for (she's tried searching phrases like internet hosting, VOIP hosting, etc.)

Has anyone ever heard of this kind of setup?

I wonder if it's some sort of adclick scam where they pay other people to click on the links, and take a percentage of the adclick revenue. Google is supposed to hunt these sites down and kill them, but hey, it's not like theyt really hurt google too much. Disguising them as various independent websites might make it more difficult to pick them out. Just a theory, who knows if it's what's actually going on.

From a Google search (looks like i-Fortuity and Intelefone are the same thing) it looks like their web site is supposed to be reselling VoIP service and they're supposed to get a percentage of the revenue. Basically, it looks like a bogus franchise system.

Thanks for the info. Vixy has joined the BBS, so she can take the conversation replies directly from here. I know she's in good hands.

There's nothing obvious about sub-franchising, so I avoided the use of the term "MLM", but you're probably right.

It's real touchy. I don't know the particulars of that establishment, but one of my friends here worked for quite some time at a company where she built websites for customers. It was basically a pyramid scheme. Her boyfriend went to a company dinner one time and asked the salesmen "So... what exactly do you sell?"
"We sell opportunities for you to sell opportunities."

That's right. They sold the ability to you to sell to somebody else the same ability. They had these very simple webpages created that basically had a phone number and an email and a professional look to it and a call center behind the number. That was about it. The dudes that ran the place were printing money.

They did eventually get raided by the FBI and shut down, but no money was ever returned/refunded.

Done. CC company is quite nice about it, of course.

The whole thing was of course a grand conspiracy of Tony's to have Vixy join his online world

In which case - welcome Vixy

Get a room!

Phew, good deal. That's the best news I've heard coming out of a scam in a long time.

Hm.... might be tough to weigh in on the "side of good" if few scammed people are calling to refute. Critical mass gets the credit card company's attention (once, someone I know had their card PROACTIVELY stopped and replaced as part of a huge fraud prevention).

I thought there was a governmental department that cracked down on all MLM "companies" with a vengance?

Good luck. And welcome Vixxy; nice avatar.

It's not illegal, it's simply a matter of their contract with their credit card processor. If you want to take credit cards, you have to agree to Visa/MC/Amex's terms, and that includes no minimum amount, no discounts for cash, no surcharge for credit.

Matthew

Sure you can write anything you want into a contract. Being able to enforce it is a different matter. Unfortunately, unless congress can be influenced to do something, or a retailer simply ignores it and makes it stick...

Well, the blame for that lies entirely on Visa/MC/Amex. All it would take is them coming down hard on a few merchants and word would get out. They don't have to sue them, just refuse to allow them to accept credit cards. It'd really cut into the bottom line of a lot of mini marts and gas stations if they couldn't take credit cards.

Matthew