Pay to Read Emails a Scam? An expose’.
By RJW Aug 2008
Earn Two Thousand US Dollars Every Seventy Seconds?
Yup, that sure sounds good, but are pay to read emails a scam? That was the question several other friends and I started out with about 8 weeks ago in June 2008.
We’re like plenty of people, struggling to pay the bills and trying real hard to learn how to make money on the internet, so when these rumors about a system where one got paid well to read email advertisements came along, well, we snapped to attention.
Here’s the url for the site I joined and tested. Take a look if you’re not familiar with them.
http://www.jacobmails.com/pages/index.php
When I joined in June the membership was about 1200 and the
amount claimed to have been paid out was about 12 million dollars. You can see
that in just 6 weeks the membership appears to have grown by 772, and the
amount paid out in the last 6 weeks is about 40 million dollars.
What seemed very interesting was that they weren’t offering to pay a penny per email, or five pennies per email, but dollars. Lots of them. Not five dollars, not ten dollars, not fifty dollars, but two thousand dollars for spending 70 seconds watching each email! It seemed outrageous. We cautiously counted our good fortune for stumbling onto this very discreet program.
Before we dived in we did our due diligence and searched the
internet for headlines such as the one you see above, ie email scam etc. Nothing. Not even a hint on
discussion boards or blogs, just a ghostly silence. Ok, we thought, that’s not
bad, no complaints. Maybe it is for real.
We tried to understand how such a program could exist, how it could pay that kind of money and survive. We theorized it might be a limited numbers corporate study group, watching how people responded to ads. We theorized it might be Russian mafia laundering money. On the email web site there is a contact button, but emails sent with these questions enclosed brought no answers.
The Web Sites
Now the read email web sites are very professional looking,
with nice graphics and well placed advertisements that scroll and change. A
well presented members box where one can sign on and control where the emails
go is at the top of the page. Everything looks, well, like someone spent plenty
of time and money setting it up. In order to receive the credit that one builds
up, paid US dollars via paypal or several other means no less, one has to build
up a certain minimum sum in the account. Its always a large sum too, like half
a million dollars, and they say one can expect to receive payment after a
length of time has passed, in some cases 15 days, in other 60 days or two
entire months.
They offer payout in cash, or in kind credits towards advertising using their sites. All the major money transfer websites we’re familiar with are represented; Paypal, Alert Pay, Liberty Reserve, E gold and E bullion to name a few.
Now, in order to receive all that lovely cash, not credits, quicker, if one signs up as a paid member, bronze, silver, gold and diamond, then the getting paid parameters become much shorter, ie $50,000 and 15 days. I decided that we should find out if this was for real sooner rather than later, instead of wasting months and months of clicking adverts, so I stuck out my $100 via paypal for a diamond membership, and overnight I was a member of Jacob mails.com.
The Ads Started Arriving
From the first day I received about 35 emails per day. Many of them were for other sites just like Jacob mails, but were paying different amounts per email, and with quicker or slower pay out times. The rest of the ads appear to be regular mainstream ads, the content of which we’re very familiar with on the internet; dating sites, get rich quick schemes, military recruiting ads, all sorts. When I pressed on any links within these they all were active and working and led to home sites all over the world.
With busy days I spent several hours each night clicking and opening the ads while I watched TV, and in about 3 weeks I had crossed the diamond member’s payout threshold of $50,000. All I had to do was put in my request, notify which account my money was to go into and then wait.
I Request my Earnings
Well, I waited, and waited and waited.
You might guess how the rest of this goes.
After The Money Didn’t Show Up
began emailing them politely pointing out that some
oversight had led to the omission of my payment and could they, well, get with
the program, I’m ready.
There was no answer of any kind to half a dozen emails asking for clarification and payment. In fact the only thing that happened was that the membership information box that I should fill out to request payment, has been removed, so that now I can’t even request any money.
E Mail Scam Investigated
After a few more weeks it has become clear that no payment would be forthcoming. I went over to paypal that I had used to pay for my diamond membership. I intended to see whether paypal could recover my $100 fee, as they sometimes can.
When I looked closer at the transaction details, I saw that
the payment goes to an individual in
‘Web Accept Payment Sent (Unique Transaction ID #7TW6XXXXX)
Name: Lixin wang (The recipient of this payment is Non-U.S. - Verified)
Email: lxinwng@gmail.com
Payment Sent to: support@jacobmails.com ‘
The Bad
Here are several names of ‘Pay to Read’ emails sites that I used, to no avail.
.jacobmails.com/pages/index.php
pink-mails.com/pages/index.php
/best-mails.com/pages/index.php
/mailsmoney.com/pages/index.php
pretty-mail.com/pages/index.php
/eagle-mails.com/pages/index.php
.ippomails.net/pages/index.php
When I wanted to upgrade an account for faster pay out, I discovered that many of the account numbers are the same, despite being on different web sites. You can copy and paste these links to your url bar if they’re not actively linked;
Here is a link to a list of known fraud sites; http://www.ptctalk.com/scamalert.php
Its safe to assume that nearly everyone of these sites are scams, and exist solely to skim off hundred dollar members fees as people like myself join up for the gold memberships. I’ve also read the idea that these sites somehow create fake high traffic flows to improve the online rankings of a different website.
If these thieves get 1,000 people to sign up, they’ve made a hundred thousand dollars. It’s possible they have deceived a lot more than that
The Good
Reportedly some websites do pay out, and one recognizes them by the one cent per email pay outs. But…there are even complaints about these sites too, that they will pay out some tiny amounts, and then cease any further payments.
Here is a link to sites that are known to have paid
out; http://www.squidoo.com/ptcsites
If you want to see discussion boards about these scams, it’s hiding out under the words ‘ptc email scam’. (paid to click, or pay to read) Just type that into google and see what you get. There’s actually plenty of discussion about this, it’s just hiding behind the term, pay to click, not read email.
The Ugly
I filed a complaint with paypal, they can be very active with fraudulent use of their service, but to this day, about 4 weeks later, I haven’t heard anything from them, not even to acknowledge receipt of my email.
Needless to say, there’s been no sign of a refund either.
Who Am I?
My friends and I decided that if these sites turned out to
be a fake, that it should be filed online somehow and made public, to warn
others, hence the publication of this article.
I also have an interest in getting wealthy online and when I investigated other ‘get rich quick ‘ schemes I discovered that over a third of them have complaints against them with the Better Business Bureau and others.
