A particularly nasty hoax has been spreading itself around the internet via spam messages to countless E-Gold account holders. The message claims that E-Gold founder Douglas Jackson was shot and killed by a police deputy on Friday evening. Here’s one of the emails that C4G Forum members have received :

E-gold founder, Douglas Jackson, 51, of Sheridan, Mont., was 4 times shot and killed Friday night on the Seventh Street ramp at East Seventh Avenue by off-duty County Deputy Daniel Montana Jr., police said. A spokesman for the Jackson’s family told Fox 31 that the autopsy details show the shots came from 3 to 7 feet away and were fired at a level angle, not from someone lying on the ground. The investigation is ongoing, said DA spokeswoman Pam Russell. More details at hyipops.com

This spam email is completely unfounded and the sources (hyipops.com or tellhyip.com in other spam emails) have zero credibility. There is no truth at all to this spam hoax and the people who have launched it should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Although many E-Gold account holders are aware that Jackson is not from Montana, evidently there are many who are oblivious to details. If you receive this hoax spam message, just dump it, it’s not true.

Update: The two sites listed in the spam hoax email (hyipops.com and tellhyip.com) are actually passing a Trojan to visitors’ browsers, so *DO NOT* visit the sites under any circumstances. Please see the report here.

MySpace.com, the world’s most obnoxious social network, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation won a ruling today to have the domain name myspace.co.uk turned over to them, even though the uk domain was registered in 1997, six year before Myspace was founded. The ruling (pdf) was made by independent expert Antony Gold as part of the arbitration process run by the .uk domain registry, Nominet.

Total Web Solutions (TWS) of Stockport had registered myspace.co.uk in 1997 and used the address to offer mini websites to subscribers and email services. It said that though it no longer offers the mini websites it still provides email services to 18 subscribers at the address. As part of the judgment against TWS, was the fact the domain appears to be parked yet derives income from PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisments displayed to visitors of the page. When contacted by Myspace, TWS had sought up to £220,000 in return for the domain, however, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, being the devouring corporation that it is refused topay TWS for the transfer of the domain and elected to take TWS to court regarding the matter.

TWS claims that it had used the myspace.co.uk page for advertising previous to the News Corp acquisition. “The Respondent has not done anything other than to continue the uses or its domain name myspace.co.uk which it commenced in July 2004 or earlier, before it knew of the Complainant and before it acquired any rights in the descriptive name “MySpace” in the UK. Though TWS recognised that the nature of the advertising changed, it said it did not control the advertisments displayed on the site and that it should not be punished for the popularity of MySpace. Gold said that it was not relevant that TWS did not select specific adverts, that it owned the pages displayed and must be responsible for them and the income it gained from association with MySpace.

“This advantage and the use made of the Domain Name by the Respondent is unfair,” he ruled. “The income the Respondent is deriving from its pay per click links at the site of the Domain Name derives in part as a consequence of it being able to trade off the reputation of the Complainant. Accordingly the Domain Name in the hands of the Respondent is an Abusive Registration.”

This case is unprecedented in that it shows sufficient evidence that (in the UK at least), registration of a domain name does not constitute a copyright or informal trademark based on conception date. Although common sense would dictate that TWS should essentially own the informal trademarks to the term “MySpace”, it just goes to show how a corporation like News Corp can bully anybody around. The fact that News Corp refused to pony up a measley £220,000 for the co.uk domain name is ridiculous considering how much money the corporate giant rakes in with their sensationalistic news networks. Shame on MySpace and News Corp for trampling on entrepeneurs and shame on the people who ruled in favor of MySpace on this judgement.

In December 2007, Bloggers around the world were introduced to a new comment spam bot that seemed to bypass Akismet’s spam filtering leaving strange comment spam on their blogs. The bot, identified as Idetrorce, had left the ambiguous comment “Very interesting, but I don’t agree with you Idetrorce.”, however no link was supplied, leaving bloggers scratching their heads as to what the true intentions behind the Idetrorce bot are. Some believe the wave of Idetrorce comment spam is a precursor to some larger scale attack scheduled for later deployment while others claim it is the work of a geek who forgot to include their link when spamming blogs on a mass scale. While the speculation as to the nature of Idetrorce is still circulating through the blogosphere, the uncanny connection to the scam clearinghouse TalkGold.com has been revealed unknowingly by a twist of fate. Uncovering the mystery behind Idetrorce, one commentor on a Digg.com thread entitled “Who is Idetrorce” had the following to say …

OK, the real question to ask might be: whois Idetrorce.com From which we see it was registered this weekend, Registrant: Brian Krassenstein, … Fort Myers, FL 33908, United States edbri871@gmail.com That name and email address, also edbri871@cs.com seem to get frequently accused of mischief and scammery, eg. see http://www.webservertalk.com/message157514.html http://www.hyipdiscussion.com/unmoderated-fight-forum/20405-talkgold-full-scammers-now-6.html http://wwsnforums.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=271 http://web-life.org/vb/archive/index.php/t-6484.html … etc Could just be a coincidence though, don’t rush to conclusions

For anybody who doesn’t know who Brian Krassenstein and Eddie Krassenstein are, they promoters of numerous online ponzi and pyramid schemes on their forum Talkgold.com, where their shadowy activities date back to 2003. Before that, they were well known for their incessant spamming, Paypal schemes and other dubious online activities. It comes as no suprise to find out that the domain Idetrorce.com had been registered through them. Typical to the Krassenstein brothers’ methodology, as soon as the heat was on regarding the Idetrorce fiasco and as soon as they were outed as the people behind this massive comment spam wave, they conveniently dropped the domain name.

All of this ties together with the Krassenstein brothers recent activity. In November 2007, a rouge “scam busting” organization known as CattyShaq sought to shut down TalkGold.com but two days before the ringleader of CattyShaq was to file a complaint with the FBI, Brain Krassenstein publicly announced that TalkGold.com had been sold for $500,000USD. The alleged sale [article here] to Akmed Malakar, who coincedentally has no information about him available on the internet, was announced by a person named Peter Gant on Articlebase, a person with no past history of writing articles for the ArticleBase, which is not suprising because the article was written by Brian Krassenstein himself using the identity Peter Gant. Just look at the signature of the author Peter Gant (About the Author: information found at: http://www.talkgold.com/forum and http://websalesdb.com). Krassenstein is well known to write articles under the pseudonym of “Brian Berg” [article here] and with the impending scenario brought about by the Cattyshaq minions, the phony sale of Talkgold.com was a smokescreen to thwart the actions to be taken against the Krassenstein brothers’ cash cow. In conjunction with the alleged sale of Talkgold.com, numerous blurbs of information praising Brian Krassenstein have turned up on forums and websites across the interenet, such as this blurb from hubpages (http://hubpages.com/hub/Brian_Krassenstein)…

Brian Krassenstein is a web entrepreneur whom I interviewed last year for an ebook I had been writting. He has authored several ebooks himself and is also a webmaster of over a dozen websites and directories. From what I gathered Brian spends numerous hours a day following the latest SEO tactics and publishes his findings in the electronic books he sells as well as several websites which he shares and helps individuals who are looking to start a career online.

The blurb was posted by a person named rgrise45 and even more interesting is the fact this person, rgrise45 has posted a blurb about Edward Krassenstein (http://hubpages.com/hub/Edward_Krassenstein)

One thing that Eddie regrets about his online business is that he was too open about some of his personal information. He explained, ” There are some terrible people out there. Jealous people, and competitors who will go extremely low to cause you and your business harm. There are people who make up lies, distort facts, and slander your name just to cause harm. If I could change one thing that would be not using my full name when dealing with competition in a direct matter. There are things said about me on internet discussion forums that aren’t true, yet there is nothing you can do about them to have them removed. The internet is a broad array of website located in thousands of legal jurisdictions accrossed the planet. It is impossible to track who makes up these lies, so you just can’t let them hurt or discourage you.”

Could rgrise45 be Mario Degryse, the scammer behind 2003’s biggest scam, WeeklyGold? Mario Degryse was well known on TalkGold.com and is/was a close associate of Talkgold.com moderator Frederik Laguese from Belgium, who goes by the handle me222 and runs the ponzi scheme affiliate site Autosurfs.net which is advertised across the TalkGold.com network of sites.

The Krassensteins themselves were alleged to have operated the large scale ponzi scheme “Please-Invest” in 2007, again, the proof behind the allegations are clear for anybody who analyzes them with a rational mind. The Krassensteins are also currently involved in the pre-launch of another pyramid scheme called “Team Earners” (http://www.teamearners.com) which is, as usual, claiming “This type of program will be 100% real, 100% legal in all jurisdictions, 100% reliable, and best of all 100% exciting!!”. Team Earners is plastered all over TalkGold.com forums yet it has still to launch but why the temporary placeholder website must make these claims of legitimacy is a sure indicator of the ponzi underbelly of the beast.

That being said, brings this article to a closing speculation. Could the whole Idetrorce spam bot wave be a herald for Team Earners? After all, having a monster spam bot that bypasses Akismet’s spam filtering could be a huge boost to any pyramid scheme the Krassenstein brothers plan to launch in the future?

Feel free to share your opinion here or at our forum : Talkgold.com Found to be Behind Idetrorce SPAM Bot

You’ve probably seen this banner to the left while surfing the internet, about a “Beach Bum” who is making millions of dollars with his laptop.If you’re an avid internet marketer or entrepeneur there’s no way you could overlook the latest “Big Program”. In two short months, Ty Coughlin’s Reverse Funnel System has invaded the internet by storm, taking up ground in every corner of the internet imaginable. From Myspace to Squidoo to Facebook to YouTube, invading ever marketing blog, popping up in every traffic exchange, autosurf, PPC advertising program, every nook and cranny, there’s no where you can go to escape it. The reach of this program is highly remniscent of 12DailyPro’s saturation in 2005, when you couldn’t spend more than a half hour on the internet without seeing a 12DailyPro banner or advertisment somewhere.

Is The Reverse Funnel System an MLM ?

From what I’ve seen of the Reverse Funnel System, it doesn’t seem like there is an actual product that is being promoted but the general idea is to promote and encourage new members into the program. While many conventional MLM’s have an element of roping in new members to earn from the program, they also have some sort of product they are promoting as well. When I think of MLM’s, the first thing that comes to mind is Amway and Herbalife, both of which have useless products that are horribly overpriced. Both Amway and Herbalife are the scourge of the working world and anybody who has ever worked in a large office has experienced that terribly over-zealous co-worker who tries to push the products on everybody in the work enviornment much like Jehova Witnesses knock on doors seeking to convert people.

Enter the Kool-Aid Drinking

For those who are unaware what the term “Kool-Aid Drinking” means, it’s a reference to the Rev. Jim Jones and his infamous Peoples Temple that left the United States citing religious persecution and relocated to Jonestown, Guyana in the 1970’s. Eventually, the cult commit mass suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid resulting in one of the most bizzare and tragic genocidal incedents in modern times. The reference to “Kool-Aid Drinking” in today’s internet marketing community refers to any cultish group of people who follow through blind devotion with a dollar bill dangling in front of their face and a whip being cracked across their back. A good example of “Kool-Aid Drinking” is the marketing flop Agolco. When Agloco debuted, thousands upon thousands of people flocked to the new messiah and proclaimed Agloco to be “the answer”, yet almost a full year later, Agloco is all but washed up and burnt out with nobody having earned a dime for all their hard work. As if people haven’t wised up yet, I’m seeing the same people who praised and hailed Agloco now hailing Ty Coughlin as the second coming of Christ and The Reverse Funnel System as the answer to all their prayers.

So What About all Those People With Expensive Cars and Big Houses on Ty’s Site?

I have to admit, in one respect it makes me want to laugh and in another respect it makes me want to cry when I see the affiliate pages for the Reverse Funnel System. The testimonials are what interest me the most because for a program that’s not even two months old yet, it’s quite impossible for those people with the fancy cars and big houses to have profited enough from Ty’s program to make those high dollar purchases. Intrinsicly, the advertising is false and misleading and although most entrepeneurs are intelligent enough to see through the thinly veiled disguise, the fact remains that many, many stupid people will fall for the bling bling and part with their hard earned money and part with their time only to make the people at the top of the food chain fatten their wallets.

Reverse Funnel or Reverse Psychology?

The thing that turns me off the most to The Reverse Funnel System is the high pressure sales pitch. Especially when the dialogue goes into a rant about potential associates needing several thousand dollars to get started and then it switches into the minimal $50 fee, then back again into the principle that “it takes money to make money”. I had to take a dramamine pill for motion sickness after reading halfway through the sales pitch. For all the hullaballoo and hot air, there was still nothing I found tangible or concrete about the offer. There was no honest and open disclosure of how the system really works, just a whole lot of promising doubletalk and typical marketing fluff I’ve seen a thousand times over.

Is There Any Hope for an Average Person to Make Money With RFS?

If you haven’t been suckered into this clever little game yet and are still contemplating joining, do yourself a favor and first check out how saturated this program is in Google Adwords and realize that the pyramid has already been built several layers already by the professional hustlers and marketing players.

The Mother Theresa of Making Money

There’s one particular point that needs to be addressed whenever somebody tells you they’re going to share their “secret for success” for a price. If the secret recipe were really so lucrative, why on earth would somebody water down their business earnings by selling their ideas to others? From a business perspective that just doesn’t make sense. All great companies and corporations protect their secrets at all costs so as not to dilute their income streams. There are no “Good Samaratin’s” in the business world and anybody who would try to tell you otherwise has a vested interest in your pocketbook. While believing in dreams is a positive thing, believing in somebody else’s dreams will only cause you to lose sleep.

Trickle Down Economics and the Funnel Spill-Over

Every single one of these “systems” claims there is a “trickle down” cashflow, meaning when your upline’s referrals max out, further referrals will “spill over” into your account. As many times as I’ve heard these claims made by the system managers and promoters, I’ve never heard a single person state that they had earned from “spill over”. Considering the nature of these programs and how people get hyped, surely there would be some evidence that this trickle down theory actually exists as anything more as another marketing ploy.

Closing Comments

While at Code4Gold, we do not pretend to be an authority or a legal organization, we are here to merely offer a differing opinion to the cheerleaders and promoters. The final decision to join or not to join “The Reverse Funnel System” is yours and yours alone. I have personally submitted my email to this program for more information as promised on the homepage but all I’ve received is a daily does of spam email with different pitches all leading back to the same old marketing page. So, if you do decide to take a shot with this, one thing I do recommend is signing up a free email account with Yahoo or Gmail for this program alone, because like “Death of Adsense” or any of these marketing extravaganzas, you will receive spam for years to come if you give an email address you care about.

Feel free to discuss this topic at our forums :
Is Ty Coughlin’s Reverse Funnel System Legit or a Scam?

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, especially if it is something you read on certain forums or blogs that do not provide factual information to back up their claims. Case in point, Talkgold owner and operator, Brian Krassenstein, has previously made questionable claims that Talkgold was owned by a Pakastani Trust, but those claims were never proven to be factual and there has never been any evidence pointing to anybody but Mr. Krassenstein owning and operating Talkgold website. On October 25th, Mr. Krassenstein publicy announced on the Talkgold Blog that Talkgold.com Has been sold - Little Noticable Changes although no proof substantiating this fact has surfaced as of yet. Normally, in the business world, when a website changes hands, there is supportive evidence to back-up the claims. In fact, most transactions of this nature are widely publicized to draw interest from outside parties but in this case, Mr. Krassenstein would have the world believe the alleged sale of Talkgold.com is some sort of back-room deal in which the buyer(s) wish to remain anonymous. Why shouldn’t the “new” owners of Talkgold wish to remain anonymous? After all, purchasing the single biggest ponzi scheme and pyramid scheme promotion venue on the internet, with advertising costs running at $9000 per month for a 728×90 banner, with all payments made “tax-free” through digital e-currencies, just might not be the sort of thing a any legitimate company would want widely publicized. On the other hand, We’re not talking about Microsoft or Google buying into Facebook, we’re talking about the sale of a forum that has been home to some of the biggest multi-million dollar scams and ubiquitous fraudsters since 2003.

While many of Talkgold’s loyal members might see this alleged move on Mr. Krassenstein’s part as a legitimate business formality, the change is more than likely related to or spurned on by Mrs. Brenda (Cattysha) Bevil’s unsubstantiated threats and potentially libelous accusations at her fetid, malodorous Cattyshaq.com Forum TalkGold.com TalkGold profiting from crime?. The truth is that this is just another caldroun of deception and clever manipluation on Krassenstein’s part to allow his highly profitable clearinghouse for online scams and ponzi schemes to flourish. Mrs. Bevil does have her say, most of it reduced to childish rants about Talkgold and it’s operation, and although her intentions are clouded in personal attacks and howling madness, she is correct about the fact that Talkgold.com is the biggest purveyour of fraudulent activities on the internet since the demise of the nefarious Shadwcrew forum. For the sake of comedic relief and as an exhibit of the malignant ideology defined by the shadowy denizens of Cattyshaq “scam-buster” Forums here are a few of Mrs. Bevil’s choicest quotes from the afformentioned forum thread.

I think Brian has gotten away with profiting from the online scam industry for far too long. As the owner of TalkGold, he has a responsibility for the advertisements on his website.

As seen in the quote above, obviously this is a personal issue between Mrs. Bevil and Mr. Krassenstein. The truth in the matter is that Google Adwords has been displaying advertisments for the exact same sites as advertised at Talkgold, however, the intrepid Mrs. Bevil, when questioned about Google’s liabilities launches into a scathing rant like a cornered animal. Below you will marvel at Mrs. Bevil’s true legal expertise and inimitable wisdom when responding to one of her forum members who had stated Talkgold is/was owned by a Pakistani Trust. Please be aware, tounge in cheek responses are not the catty Mrs. Bevil’s strong suit but mordacious sarcasm is her weapon of choice.

We did it! We found a way to get out of obeying US laws!!! You can sit behind your computer screen in your American home and commit all the crime you want!!!! All you have to do is set up a foreign account to hide all your ill-gotten gains!!! Sure, they can put my ass in jail, but they can’t touch my money!!! The supporters go wild with excitement.

Now, the statement above is hardly worthy of real journalism and does not call to mind a genuine, concerted effort to reduce fraud on the internet which is her self-professed goal. In fact, it sounds more like a scorned little debutante who didn’t get her dance card punched at the charity ball. Which brings up the next tawdry statement by the illustrious Mrs. Bevil (I’m serious folks, you have to read her forum thread to believe this childish rubbish and nonsense this unemployed, disgruntled housewife is throwing around as useful information to her less than rational forum members who writhe in glee with each unsubstantiated threat and unfactual retort this vindictive person makes).

As much as I hate MMG, Jason has at least cleaned up the ad banners. Brian should do the same.

In the world of journalism, “hate” is an inappropriate word that is to be avoided at all costs as with making a point based on personal interest in a particular case. Quite possibly the libel lawsuit Katz Golbal and Gordon Hayes brought against Mrs. Bevil and her husband James Bevil (which the Bevils won on a technicality although it reduced them to pleaing for Paypal donations to pay their court costs) has not yet taught her that exposing truth and facts from an objective standpoint is considered “journalism” but hurling personal insults can be considered libel and is generally frowned upon in all social circles. Below is yet another example of more unsubstantiated threats disguised as well intentioned rhetoric, spewed forth from the nimble fingers of Mrs. Bevil.

TalkGold.com is like a breading ground for the whole vicious cycle of scamming. They attract newbies ripe for scamming… They sell ads that suck people into scams They sell sticky threads to scammers to talk to newbies so they can suck them in to a false sense of security. They sell ebooks to teach people who to run their own scams They sell advertising for HYIP scripts so people can start their own scams They sell advertising for web hosts who allow scam sites to host with them They sell advertising for paid traffic to the new scam They sell advertising for DDOS protection when they get too much traffic But Brian knows nothing… Friday will be here before you know it, Brian. The FTC and Florida AG aren’t blind…or stupid…

Well, Friday came and went. Prior to Mrs. Bevil’s dubiously intended D-Day iniative, the news was released on Talkgold’s blog regarding the website being sold to an anonymous third party. After nearly two weeks of childish banter in the unpropitious thread at Cattyshaq Forum, it seems that Mrs. Bevil’s and her cohorts objective was not to rid the internet of scam related websites, but it was merely an attempt at grandstanding, a feeble cry for attention devoid of any real substance and a personal vendetta against Mr. Krassenstein and Talkgold Forums. Could it be that Mrs. Bevil was banned for life from Talkgold Forums (not to mention Moneymakergroup Forums and our own Code4Gold Forums) that is the reason why she feels the need to shoot the messenger while cleverly side-stepping the real issues?

In closing, I’d like to say that while I disagree with both Talkgold and Cattyshaq forums and find them to be polar opposites, I do believe that the internet is based on Freedom of Speech and if you dislike a particular website, forum or blog, you have the right to go somewhere else. Making meaningless threats and false accusations is deplorable and it’s high time certain people started acting like adults instead of behaving like spoiled step-children.