Mr. Wonderful Indicted

[Number Six]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/busin ... ml?hp&_r=1&

“'When I think of Jeremy Johnson, I think of the most generous person I ever met,” said Mr. Gardner, an assistant loan officer in Provo, Utah. “Whatever he had, he would give and give and give.'

"But what Mr. Johnson had to give — and it was quite a bit — may have come from consumers who got taken. The Federal Trade Commission says Mr. Johnson was “the mastermind” behind one of the largest and most intricate online marketing frauds ever perpetrated in the United States.

"Mr. Johnson founded and ran a company called I Works, which, the agency says, marketed programs to help people get government grants for personal needs and earn easy money. According to a civil complaint filed by the F.T.C., the company lured consumers with online pitches for free or “risk-free” CD-ROMs that required only a nominal shipping fee and then charged their credit cards for recurring online memberships they were unaware of and had not consented to.

"Over five years, Mr. Johnson, along with I Works, company executives and related corporations, supposedly swindled “unwitting consumers” out of more than $275 million, the complaint said. The company also discouraged dissatisfied customers from seeking refunds from their credit card companies, the complaint said, by threatening to report those customers to a company-operated consumer blacklist called BadCustomer.com."


Not sure if this alleged scammer belongs in this section, but what is striking about this online marketing fraud is that in his community he was seen as a great all around guy, a philanthropist with a large heart...until judgment day arrived, and I'm sure he will be professing his innocence of all charges until he either is able to cop a plea and avoid the slammer or goes down in disgrace.