Introduction
I wrote this book based on the research I did to dig myself out of the hole I had been scammed into. Because it had been scam after scam after scam.
I decided not to get mad or get even – just get my money back somehow, write up what I had encountered, and then move on. And writing this book is part of moving on.
While I’ve put the bulk of this data into several blogs, ebooks, presentations, papers, and so on, I’ve decided to cobble it all together into a single book so that people can get this data without having to go through what I did.
After I’ve done what is probably thousands of hours of research, my view on this was distilled one night, waking up after long hours editing and researching links and references on scammers. This is the post I wrote early the next morning:
Remember Pinocchio when he visited that island and just escaped being turned into a donkey?
Well, that’s the same chance we have with our efforts to stop scammers by getting people to simply wise up. All that free beer and pool is just the temptation – much like Pinocchio and his friends. Skip school and have some fun, said the fox and his cat-buddy. The fox got paid for delivering boys to the coach driver. That’s our telemarketer. That set-up on the island with all that free beer and pool – that’s the sales floor and product fulfillment.
What happens to our hero/heroine? They slave away in the mines for the rest of their lives paying off the debt they just racked up. Nothing in this universe is free, after all.
What’s in that beer? It’s the idea we’ve all been sold on that you can “get rich quick” and leverage your easy credit to start making 6-figure incomes overnight. It only keeps us working in the mines – same as it always has.
But how about we wake them up – like Pinocchio? What if they just quit drinking the beer (Kool-Aid) for just a little while and see the people around them sprouting tails and ears?
The part of the story you don’t see is where they get enough people in the village missing their kids and complaining about this guy with the stage coach and the mines – that the authorities crack down on him and find some technicality to take away his coach license. Sure, he just finds some other business to go into, but that island shuts down because there is no one paying for it any more. No one to work the mines means no one to pay for the mining.
And that’s a close approximation to what happens as people start complaining like hell about the scams they encounter.
Here’s an idea: while a lot of people besides myself have said to complain like hell to all the authorities they can – what if they also started helping other people to not get scammed to begin with? They just simply help people wise up about what they are doing online and on their telephone. People don’t have to give away their telephone numbers or credit card numbers. They don’t even have to use credit cards at all.
People don’t have to be victims. But they can go ahead fall for any scam they like – if that’s what they choose to. The idea is to give them the choice.
So our job here is not just getting our own lives free from scammers and rip off artists, but it’s making this planet we live on a bit safer place for everyone else.
Course Content
