Blog Contest Fraud – Beware It’s Real

How do you know if you've been 'scammed' by a blog contest? Well, first there is that 'sinking feeling' in the pit of your stomach, which you brush off. Then at the end of the contest your jaw drops and you ask "what just happened here?" Then you think, it's just sour grapes and again brush it off. But then a friend gives you a slap in the face when he says: "hey buddy, you've been scammed."

That's what happened when I entered my very first contest, using my personal blog, BPWebNews. I would have used this blog but it was around the time of migrating to WP and some permalinks were messed up. The prize money was to be used on BWS to hold contests and other forms of advertising. My entry, a review of the contest owner's blog, satisfied all of the rules and the writing was pretty darn good (lol). So I had a pretty good chance of winning. Take a look: Technical ravings from a teenage millionaire.

Some Definitions

1. scam- "A fraudulent business scheme; a swindle." i.e. to defraud, usually of money.
2. fraud-"In the broadest sense, a fraud is a deception made for personal gain." I also like the definition "A piece of trickery; a trick."
3. libel-"A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person's reputation; The act of presenting such material to the public. i.e. malicious.

So let's use the term fraud. I honestly feel I was tricked for someone else's personal gain. In this case, my hard work amounted to free publicity and blog traffic for the contest organizer. I'll state upfront that this conversation with our blog readers is not malicious or meant to defame. There are lessons you can all learn. The facts are presented as I experienced them. It's all laid out for your own conclusions and to prompt clarifying information, especially from the contest organizer. So here is the story, you be the judge. Be sure to see the Summary at the bottom for the 'smoking gun' signs I uncovered.

The Original & Revised Contest Rules
The contest started Dec 16, 2008 on the owner's established blog called www.anddjournal. info, for the purpose of promoting his new blog. The original end date was Dec 28, but he extended it to Jan 4, 2009 to allow time to "transfer the money to his Paypal account". It was basically a competition to write the best review post with the proper backlinks. The one winner was to get the $1,000 prize. Surprisingly the organizer stated "This contest will include no blind games." --- that was the last thing on my mind (naive that I was.) On Jan 4, he original contest rules were wiped out when the winner was announced. The contest owner explained how he made the decision, but unfortunately it had little to do with the original runs! All of a sudden page rank was a major factor. Use the scroll box to see the original and revised sections of the post.

Notice the winning post was on the front page of an article 'blog'. Shvoong has a high page rank, but articles migrate off the front page rather quickly. And the entire contest post was scheduled for the chopping block, to be removed on January 7,2009 --- something I had never heard of! In announcing the winner, the blog owner said "@antiro_morail: Please provide your correct e-mail adress as the e-mail address provided is either wrong or cancelled." --- one of rules was you had to use email subscription, so he had never confirmed?

Protests Start
The first protest came on Jan 6th and I added a comment in support of the complaint. However, my comment which suggested contestants delete their backlinks was never published. I have a copy in the scroll box. Later the blog owner agreed to leave the modified post and not delete it .

The winner finally identified himself on Jan 7, but there was still no link to his blog or any way of us connecting with him. He said on 07 Jan 2009 at 6:04 pm:-
"thanks aitya for choosing me winner. My e-mail provided in the comment. Please give me money"
and then 3 hours later the money was transferred and he said at 9:28 pm -
"Got the mony. Tanx. Hope to see more contests."
During that time, the contest organizer sent me a private email saying I would be the winner if antiro did not respond. This was a stall tactic since my comment was never published -- more about that later. I wonder who else got the same pacifiying mail? I decided to leave things along and monitor the second contest that had been announced.

More Flags are Raised.
The slap in the face I mentioned earlier came with a comment not on my review post, but on another post about Googles Friends gadget. There was one comment from "anonymous" who said I should stop talking against this young blogger and just ask him to pay me for my review post. Read it on my review post --- funny, he's English and lives in the same location as the teenage blog owner in India. Would have been nice of him to send a newspaper clipping about this young millionaire.

Warning Signs
I found this well written article on how to avoid blog contest scams (fraud). Here are a few quick points that hit home with me. These should make you better prepared to recognize any deceitful methods before you enter a contest. Remember not all contests are bad, we only hear about those that are not run properly or honestly. Fransiska and Mr. I wrote about Organizing Blog Contests, an excellent way to promote your blog. You offer great (but not too great!) prizes and get backlinks and good 'word of mouth' from the contestants. Often the contests gain subscribers and lots of reader comments. All very valuable in the blogosphere. The article about scams lists several categories of scammers. I've selected these two since the contest I entered most closely "behaved" like these.
The Fake: "... there is never really a winner at all, but the scammer pretends that someone has been awarded a prize. ... "
The Changer: "... the scammer will change the rules right in the middle of the contest. ..."

Other red flags:

a) If it's way too good to be true -- you know that story already, so apply it to contests also! In hindsight $1,000 cash without sponsors is a bit much even for someone who is independently wealthy.
b) Contest organizer deletes or never publishes your comments because they raise uncomfortable questions.
c) The winner has no link to his blog, profile or personal website.
d) The contest post is deleted. Sort of like, hiding the evidence.
e) The organizer communicates with you by email instead of openingly in the blog post comments. This is a form of stalling and fake sympathy. In my case, when I suggested removing my backlinks, I was told I'd be given the $1,000 if the declared winner did not provide his email in 36 hours. You guessed it, the winner showed up in the 'eleventh hour.'

Smoking Gun
It took some time researching and writing this post. In the meantime I found these things:

- I followed the second contest held by the same owner on his new blog. The prizes were again cash, totaling $2000 for three randomly selected winners. I saw some of the same warning signs. A contestant had questioned or reminded the owner to 'do it right this time'. That prompted me to submit a comment, which was also not published. I got a couple of personal email to assure me of some 'honest (youthful) mistakes' about one of the winners and that he would ask for the money to be returned. He also said he had never heard much about the YouSayToo site that one of the winners used. But I found his profile on that very site ---the link was sitting in his blog's sidebar!

Here's a copy of my comment:

# SBA Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.February 1st, 2009 at 11:46 am

Very ironic that you should say "OK, Doubts again". The fact that the 3 winners are not active bloggers makes it a bit doubtful. why bother saying that qualifying blogs need 12 posts when two of them use article sites (kevin Sacco's link doesn't work and it's on an IT discussion forum, Daniel M. joined YouSayToo in Jan and only posted 1 article)! SD's article was written in Jan, but his prior article was Aug and then all others in April of last year — how does this benefit your purposes of links from active blogs? You seriously need to rethink your contest rules. You said to the winners "Also, you can post the image of PayPal or Moneybookers account on your blog to make it clear to others that you were really paid." — neat trick without a blog! I'm waiting to see it before I continue this discussion…

- I then looked very closely at the winner. Someone pointed out there was no link to his blog, so the contest organizer provided the blog link. I found some google ads and some affiliate ads with the same ids as those currently used by the blog owner! Another coincidence maybe? NOT. In his haste, he got a bit careless in using an older blog as the winning link. The affiliate name is 'Rich Reeds' and I had noticed that name in his first blog --- WP shows in the bottom of the browser the real name used to login and write your articles, not the name that you put on the posts. I'm no Sherlock Holmes but they appear to be the same person. Click on these thumbnails for full views (very large images.)

• ***The posts are by "Aditya" but if you place the cursor over the author name WP shows the real login name of 'richreeds' This only happens when the two are different. Try if for 'SBA' on this post and you see my first name.

• The affiliate name from the winning site (click to see url in browser)

• is the same as the on on ANDDJournal. info (click to see url in browser)

• These are views of the source code showing the same Google publisher ids: owner's and winner's.

-The icing on the cake in terms of deceit was when I found him using a supposed scan of his 'paypal account', but the image url points to another site. The other site owned by two men also claimed that income using the same image! He had pointed to their image directly (not copied and renamed!) when someone asked for proof of his earnings months ago --- Haste again makes Waste. (click to see full page in browser)

What Can You Do
Things you can do if you get bad vibes about a contest you want to enter.
1- make a protest in the contest post comments or on your blog and ask the owner to explain. If you're not satisfied, remove your backlinks and encourage others to do the same. Use Google cache of the modified post to recover any 'deleted' rules as soon as you find out this was done.
2 - watch for the warning signs and ask questions before you waste your time entering.
3- observe contestants without links and start questioning before the contest ends.
4- read this post, beware of scammers for a real live case.

I have nothing else to say (finally!). Let's hear from you. And that includes the Contest Organizer.