Online shopping multi-level marketing companies (MLMs) aren’t new. My Power Mall (MPM) has been around for a while, Team National has been in the mix too, and now Shop to Earn has popped up and is being aggressively marketed by its members. My bottom line on all of these companies: Don’t waste your time or money. You can find better deals on your purchases outside their systems. And the systems are really nothing more than typical MLM recruiting schemes. Shopping is not the objective, recruiting is. Let me explain these programs to you…

Yes and no. Great accountant answer, huh? The truth is that the Internal Revenue Service has some special red flags in place that help flag your tax return for an audit. Those super-secret red flags are revealed to no one. Apparently the IRS system takes your tax return data, runs its super-secret algorithm, and decides if your tax return is a high risk for problems.

When I first saw headlines about this case, I was sure there must be a whole lot to the story and that the bank would have laws and documentation on their side. Wrong! The story of the fraud is recounted by Greg Miller, the son of Bette Miller, the woman being fleeced. He wrote the narrative for Consumerist.com, the site giving this story a lot of publicity. Here is a summary of the main facts:

With stories of identity theft surfacing daily, it's no wonder that consumers want to be able to keep an eye on their credit reports from Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. But there can be a hidden problem with these credit monitoring services. Each time your credit is checked by a third party, it lowers your credit score a little. If you personally check your credit, there is no impact.

This was reported on Ars Technica, and the writer is pointing out the misuse of intellectual property laws in attempting to shut down Lowes-sucks.com.