1) Excessive flattery.
2) Sham emotion – they pretend to be moved or hurt, but there’s nothing there, it’s just an act (they may even have themselves fooled).
3) Charming, as opposed to genuine.
4) Crave stimulation and excitement, and keen to lure you into the same destructive addiction for it. They will encourage you to take shocking risks, but in such a nonchalant way that you question your own judgement as to what is reasonable risk.
5) They will tell you that you are just like them, draw lots of comparisons between you and them. This is particularly effective if someone shows outward displays of wealth and is trying to con someone out of their money – “invest in me, and you too can have all this!” All the bling and status symbols usually are for show, they often don’t have two nickels to rub together (it’s not what you have, it’s what’s paid for…and what you paid for yourself).
6) A mile long list of supposed credentials – if anyone bothered to try to verify these, they usually don’t check out. These people are able to keep such scams going for years precisely because it doesn’t occur to most people that anyone could be so dishonest and craven as to make up such things. Question supposed authority.

These people are sick scumbags. Don’t waste your time, money, or precious gifts on them.

No, that is their actual site.

I can imagine someone falling for the face-to-face pitch, but even the quotes used are worring let alone the headline.

Looking at the twitter search at the end of the post,… did any real profile tweet about Dublin event?

There’s quiet a learning curve for newbies who are blissfully unaware of what spam is and when they get over the excitement of readily accessible porn they very often click on that get rich quick link/ad/email etc.

These schemes very often have a huge marketing machine behind them. Unless someone is blogging or tweeting regularly (which is well along the learning curve IMO) they will very rarely find out about the various networking/entrepreneurial events like the bizcamps, open coffees etc.

With less than 25% of Irish adults using social networking sites, this leaves a huge proportion of the population as easy targets. Unless those of us who know better don’t get the word out there to the ‘newbies’ about all these get rich quick schemes then several of those with ‘zero internet and computing experience’ will always fall easy victim.

The bad news is there’s not much point in telling them via blogs because at the moment, they don’t know blogs exist.

I’m sure there is big money to be made. It’s only right we have an opportunity to have some of it. Otherwise I’m going to have to spend the rest of my life working hard and not growing all that rich.

All our hopes dashed by you gang. Haven’t we the right to a bit of heaven on earth? Pat is right to post on this – at least he is spreading the message through twitter and his blog. And if it’s in his blog it must be trustworthy.

I’ve heard of lots of people getting rich without doing much. Lots of them get huge bonuses for betting with other people’s money. In Ireland there are even people who borrowed heaps of money without putting up anything and have been helped out by others who weren’t smart enough to get in on the act.

Would you please stop going on about this being a scam. If people think it’s a scam, they won’t join up and no one will make easy money. I thought all you lot were in favour of wealth creation?