State Sues Unclaimed Money Site After Finding It Told Wile E. Coyote He Had Unclaimed Money
from the batman-too dept
Pennsylvania is suing a website that promised to help people get access to unclaimed money they were owed after investigators determined that the site was convincing people to pay $24.95 for a membership by telling them they had unclaimed money, no matter who they were. Investigators used the scientific method of testing whether Spiderman, Batman and Wile E. Coyote had unclaimed money. After discovering that all three were told they did (on a free search, details only available if you paid), they decided that the site was perhaps being less than honest with users.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: scam, unclaimed money, wile e. coyote
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Scary thought...
Personally, I don't know what's worse...that the thought was one of my first when I saw the names used in the search or that I may not be wrong.
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Me Too!
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google ads for this article...
"Want unclaimed money? Just by clicking buttons. Today only 4.95"
I think there ought to be a stack of lawsuits insad of just this one in PA.
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Damn... I am a victim of identity theft...
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Re: Damn... I am a victim of identity theft...
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On-Going Scam
It would be nice if these dubious hits could be filtered out. When I search for a product, I would like to see a real review, not a phony review that is a disguised sales pitch. But then we get into the slippery slope issue of what constitutes "good" versus "bad" information. Oh well!
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Should this be a lawsuit though or a federal fraud case?
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Somewhere...
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It is a scam
I did a search on that site and it did not return my grandfathers entry.
It did however return a listing for my uncle (same whole name, and my family is one of two in so cal with my last name, and for sure the only ones in Chula Vista).
I am thinking it just does a public records search.
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State Sites
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Re: State Sites
And, there are sites that charge for tax forms that anyone can download for free by going to irs.gov.
Circuit City's website has lower prices for many items than you'll find in store.
It's like a tax for being stupid.
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I'm thinking how funny would it be that some drug dealer set up several dummy accounts with just those names used and there is several thousands dollars sitting there unclaimed......
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While your at it...
hmmm... 24.95 doesn't seem so bad anymore
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spiderman--spider-man
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Not a bad scam.
Hell, if they could *guarantee* that I actually had unclaimed money, I'd probably pay em. But more than likey they just found my name in the public record somewhere and threw it in there.
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Actually trust the Government for once
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Of course, he could probably just check with the State of Arizona for free...
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Of course, he could probably just check with the State of Arizona for free...
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The REAL Wile E. Coyote
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Not a scam, but a real problem!
You should not limit yourself to searching strictly by last name. The databases have some interesting quirks, which is a result of the proverbial “garbage in – garbage out” phenomenon. Try searching by first name, middle name, titles (i.e. Mr, Mr., (note period) Mrs, Mrs., (note period) Estate, Est, ITF (stands for In Trust For), FBO (for benefits of), EXEC, EXECUTRIX, THE, DECD, DECEASED, TRUST, TTEE, TRUSTEE, JR, JR., (note period) SR, MISS, PSFS, (don’t know what that stands for but it’s some legal abbreviation), ESCROW, II, III, IV, PHD, DMD, DDS, DR, DR., (note period), ETAL, AND, ATTY, ATTY., (note period) ASSOC, ASSOC., (note period) CR, (CR is legal term for Creditor). If you are a “Mc” something, try searching by the “MC” only in the last name field, or if you are a “MCC” something (i.e. “McCool”) you might try searching by “MCC”. I would suggest only using the last name box in your search quest unless you are searching a name that comes up with over 400 hits in the database.
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There is a free game with Spiderman in it called Mugen
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