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When you type in the phrase, "I wouldn't say I owe my life to Oprah...", you will come face to face with one of the many acai berry affiliate marketing blogs from Jeanna, Jen, Amy or Carrie. Their stories are basically the same. They are married to a wonderful guy, they have young children and they had struggled with their weight for a long time. Now, thanks to the breakthrough weight loss powers of acai berry supplements (or sometimes hoodia supplements) and colon cleanse products they lost weight fast and feel sexier than ever. What a surprise--many live in either St. Paul or Minneapolis. Chances are, if you were to visit their websites, they'd live in a town near you
Back in December, when The F-word.org. Food. Fat. Feminism wrote about the Invasion of the acai berry diet scams, She did a Google Search for "I wouldn’t say I owe my life to Oprah, but I would say that if I hadn’t been watching when Dr. Oz came on to talk about a new superfood called Acai berry, I’d probably still be fat." She came up with 392 results.
Google evidently is trying to do its own version of a colon cleanse of these sites. If you search for that entire sentence you will still get over 300 results. Type in the shorter, " I wouldn't say I owe my life to Oprah..." and you'll only get just j1 result.
Google may be trying to cleanse them but they are still out there enticing women to take advantage of their free trial offer. From The F-word.org:
It appears as if the company’s “free trial” offer carries a hefty price — if consumers don’t call and cancel within 15 days, they are billed the “super low price of $78.84″ for a 30-days supply. And when consumers do try to call to cancel during the limited phone hours offered by the company, they must endure 4-hour hold times or they find that the phone lines mysteriously disconnect.
The thing about that 15 day free trial - the 15 days begins as soon as you place your order, and it's usually over by the time the mail delivers your sample product. So, even before you've had an opportunity to try it, your credit card will be billed for your 30- day supply which, by the way, you agreed to when you accepted the free trial offer.
Wafflesatnoon.com (It's Time To Wake Up) did some great sleuthing for her post, The Fake Diet Girl, and created what she refers to as a photo album of the women and their aliases.This screen capture is just a peek. The Carrie I found via Google is part of the photo album.
The Center for Science In The Public Interest has a comprehensive report on the acai berry scam and also unveils the true identity of our girl Carrie. Turns out she lives in Germany. Her name is Julia and according to the German photographer who made the original photos of her available on Istockphoto.com, the pill companies manipulated some of the "after" images to give the impression of weight loss. Julia's stolen identity has been used on at least 75 web sites.
The free trial offers are not limited to weight loss, one of the most prolific centers on Google Profusion, alternately known as Profit Profusion and Twitter Profusion that promises to teach people how to use CPA marketing and make a killing with Google Adwords;according to www.reportonlinescams.com the Profusion scams are the biggest ripoff they have uncovered. Around 500,000 people may have been scammed with promises of starting their own business and making a killing. Like the acai berry scam,the Profit Profusion scammers advertises on Facebook, MySpace and search engines.
Travel Light uncovered this scam by clicking on an ad on Facebook for a mystery shopper. She has a list of six reasons why she believes buyers should beware.
5. They only pay in checks. Why is there no Paypal option? Most of my legit online jobs uses Paypal to transfer payments. 6. Google has nothing to do with it. 7. Lastly, read what those who got suckered in say about their experiences.
MSNBC.com recently reported on these scams and recommends you do some due diligence before signin up for a free trial.
