Mankato, Minnesota: Google scam capital of the known universe?

Who knew there were so many people trying to help me out?

by Tim Krohn
Mankato Free Press
Sunday, May 10, 2009

It appeared things were going to get a whole lot brighter for me.

My colleague, Dan Linehan, stumbled across a Web site and passed it on to me. It was MatthewsMoney.com — run by a nice young man named Matthew Jales.

It asked, “ Would you like to make $7,000 a month posting links on Google?” I did some quick math: $7,000 times 12 months is, uh, more than I make now I’m pretty sure, but math isn’t my strong suit, which is why I’m a reporter.

Besides, Matthew tells me I wouldn’t even need to quit this job. I could just spend 10 hours a week on my computer helping Google out.

While I am skeptical of get-rich-­quick scams, I trusted this one more because Matthew Jales is from right here in Mankato, according to his Web site. He tells about his wife and two kids and how they lost jobs and had to move into a small apartment and watched debt pile up until he sent in money to get his Making Cash on Google kit.

He has a nice picture of his family, cute kids, lovely wife.

Before sending off for my kit I thought I’d better check a little further, so I typed “Google cash” in my Google search engine and found a bunch of Web sites. I went to one called KevinCashesOut.com, which belonged to a nice young man named Kevin Hoeffer. He also got rich. He also has a beautiful wife. And — what are the odds? — he’s also from Mankato.

There were more Web sites — at least a half dozen I found — run by young men with pretty wives who make a lot of money on Google and who all live right here in Mankato.

Either young men from Mankato are uncannily suc­cessful at business and in love, or this whole Google cash thing is a swindle.

It makes sense, I guess. Some scammer looked at a map, plopped his finger in the middle of the hardworking, trustworthy Midwest and figured Mankato, Minnesota, as a reputable place to be from.

It turns out the Web sites are one of the big new scams on the Internet. People send in a pittance via their credit card, maybe $2.75, to get information about making cash on Google. But if they don’t read the small print and cancel within a few days they are auto­matically billed $78 a month for a “membership” fee. Despite widespread warnings of Internet scams and the obvious illogic of making truckloads of money by doing virtually nothing, deceits flourish more than ever on the Web and in e-mails. With a recession in full bloom, the scams work even more often as desperate people set aside disbelief in hopes of success.

As with most things, the tested oldies are still the most successful. The No. 1 fraud remains the Nigerian scam, in which people get an e-mail from a Nigerian who supposedly needs to get tens of millions of dollars out of the coun­try and will pay you a few million if you help, including you paying some “up front” costs.

As common and long-lived as this scam is, it is still incredibly lucrative, according to law enforce­ment, who say Americans contin­ue to send hundreds of millions of dollars off never to be seen again.

The scam is actually one of the oldest — originally called the Spanish Prisoner Con. It started in the 1920s when scammers sent letters to people telling them they were a wealthy family trying to get a family member out of a Spanish prison but needed some help.

Between the Nigerians and the young guys pushing Google cash are an array of cheats from fake foreign lotteries to phony bank Web sites trying to remove you from your money.

However creative the new scam, the age-old advice is still best: If it sounds to good to be true....