This is why I don’t do rebills
Con artist took in $359 million with bogus ‘free-trial’ offers
By Herb Weisbaum, The ConsumerMan
A Canadian con artist who made hundreds of millions of dollars selling worthless products on the Internet will need to look for a new line of work.
Jesse Willms of Alberta, Canada agreed today to settle a variety of false and deceptive marketing charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC alleges Willms and his business partners used “Free Trial Offers” to get people’s credit or debit card numbers in order to bill them for products and services they did not want and did not agree to purchase.
Willms sold dozens of products via the “free trial offer” come-on, including:
He also marketed work-at-home-schemes, free credit reports, access to government grants, online consumer research services and penny auction sites (SwipeBids.com and SwipeAuctions.com).
In its complaint, the government says these “illegal practices” raked in more than $359 million dollars since 2007 from nearly four million consumers in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
In settling with the FTC, Willms and his 11 companies are permanently barred from using negative-option marketing, a practice where the seller considers the lack of a r ...