The Great DP Scam
August 13, 2008 by Brian Nicholson
Filed under Scams
The Big DP Scam…
Colin Crawford aka Cheap SEO Services posted a thread on a popular webmaster forum, on the 18th March 2008 offering “Cheap SEO Services/King of Kings SEO Guaranteed Service (Reports/Evidence) ($29 A Month)” read the full story here http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=757370
Cheap SEO Services stated “Compensation is 100% money back as promised.” Just about the time that refunds were due, Colin Crawford posted again telling people that King of Kings has taking over the business. Here is the link http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=915474 then King of Kings disappeared with all the money, apparently Colin Crawford sent all the cash to him.
It appears 50k was made from the scam, lots of reputable members paid into his service and lost.
It’s all well and good buying into something that offers a money back guarantee, but how do you know that it will be honoured? People sometimes offer a guarantee in order to convince you that your money is safe. As you can see by the post, the guarantee helped the scanner to reassure buyers, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Update: On 10th September Colin AKA Cheap SEO Services posted on DP that he had decided to refund all the customers that he owed money too with regards to “first page on Google” service that he offered.
The refunds will be done in order that the customers paid, you can view the post here.
A DP member nobluff has posted that he has indeed received a refund from Colin.
It is great news that Colin stayed around and faced the music; he is also trying to correct his error of judgement. I will keep following this tread in order to keep our readers updated.
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Popularity: 31% [?]
Thanks for bringing this to our attention it’s disgusting that people can get away with this kind a crime.
I fell for this scam and lost lots of money. I realised something was wrong when no reports arrived. One of my websites never got indexed. If that’s good SEO then I’m a madman. I have taking advise with regard to filing a lawsuit and I will update this post in due time.
I will respond to this.
I certainly did not scam anyone. KingofKings is a real person and was a high posting and high itrader member on DP as well as I was. I was in a partnership deal with him for over a year before he did this to me. Left me to face all clients demanding refunds. Yes, I took 5% commission for him utilising my Paypal account (He could not get a Paypal account in Lebanon/Syria). The rest of the funds were transferred to him via WU. Yes, I was foolish not to keep the receipts for the transfers. Why? He showed me results of web sites that this service was used on. He proved to me this method worked. That’s why the guarantee was in place. He guaranteed everything would work perfectly and we both would make a great deal of money from it.
But that’s not how it worked out. He wanted to take over the business 100% (because he had the office in Syria where all the employees were doing this work). I agreed and let him take it over. Yes, I stated my share of the business was sold to him. Yet, no money exchanged over it because the business was not mine to hand over in the first place.
Yes, I was foolish to trust someone that I have never met in person. Yes, I should have kept records of all the funds sent to him. Yes, I should have never taken him on as a business partner (so to speak). I regret the whole thing.
The situation is I have not got the money. Many claim that I have dreamed up this scam from the beginning. That’s a load of rubbish. Anyone can check the threads at DP for what this service was doing and how KingofKings started this of way before I got involved.
I have asked DP members for help in trying to resolve this problem. Even to try and get hold of KingofKings so he can face the flak that I have faced over the last month.
All I get is more flak, more abuse, and more attacks. My family is suffering because my home phone number was made public at DP from this. Getting phone calls all hours of the morning is really stressing members of my family out. But what can I do about it? Nothing. No one believes me and honestly, I can’t see how anyone will EVER believe me in the future.
My Paypal account is now limited. This business was my livelihood for over 2 years. Now I am back to working in a regular job. Not a permanent job either. I landed a temp job for 5 weeks. Who knows what is around the corner when that ends next week?
Not looking for sympathy or empathy. Just telling how it is.
I’m very disappointed because i can’t see Col’s efforts, actions and sincerity in settling the issue except doing verbal apologizes to us. I don’t know what he said is a truth or just another lie because i’m not his neighbor. Maybe he is just sitting in front of TV watching Olympic now.
Col is the culprit, Crazy Rob is a partner
I have 100% proof for this, crazy rob banned people who were trying to stop him…
Shawn, they are turning your DP to BS
Unfortunate. Too many scams.
Why I would EVER trust someone in Syria is beyond me though. At least in the US, the legal system would take over.
Colin, the only rubbish is what you say. This was a perfect planned scam from the beginning.
This guy clearly scammed you all. He posted the thread. So he is responsible for living up to his promises. That he did not use basic business intelligence is either a lie or it is his problem. Stop calling him and file a police complaint. Do not let him get away with $XXXXX
This is the number 1 post on Google. It’s great that people like you do your bit to inform the world about scammers.
He ripped me off by $700 what happened to the money back offer. I trusted you Collin and you let me down. As a result I have sold my car in order to feed my family.
Here’s my little tidbits on this whole situation:
If you are now having trouble feeding your family because you got ripped off by then (as Karn posted above), then you really need to look at the bigger picture. If you were stupid enough to put yourself in that sort of position then you deserve to lose it. It’s one thing to spend a few hundred bucks if you have the money, but it’s a whole other issue if you use your food money on it – how stupid are you?
Colin – legally you should have done your due dilligence, with KoK before jumping into business with him. You had a great reputation and really high iTrader rating, so it was inherent for people to trust you. Furthermore, what did you think would happen from joining up with somebody on the other end of the world? Did you even get his contact information? Did you have his phone number even? What legal actions did you take to fix the situations? Where’s your proof? Don’t play the ‘woe is me’ game because you fell down the hole like everybody else did – you caused the problem in the first place. The only real efforts I’ve seen from you since this whole thing went down was you claiming to be a victim rather than making things right – get off your ass and do something about it.
You guys are so stupid this guy is a conman.
1. I don’t have any money to repay you all
2. I’m not showing you any proof
3. I’m still here facing the music
The guy made close to 50k well worth sticking around for.
Karn, you should know better than to spend all your money on a Seo gamble. I do feel sorry for you but just make sure you learn your lesson. I voted yes.
Looked like a scam when it started and I wasn’t surprised to see it end that way. I cannot believe that no one has started action against this guy; the proof is on the DP thread. Get him busted.
Its the perfect scam he has convinced most ppl he is an innocent victim but dont believe that for a second no one is stupid enough to wire 50K to Syria carte-blanche without even looking into it first and if they are they deserve to be sued or go into bankruptcy and dont belong as a business person.
This is insane !!
I just stumbled on this website. I cannot stop laughing as well angry.
Look at this smart Scammer. Mate not everyone is a dumbass to hear your stupid freaky nonsense story.I wish i was somewhere close to you, seriously it would not have taken me less than a wekk to get u more than a week to get you busted.
A lot of questions which probably you wont ever be answered.
1- King has the office and numerous staffs, what was you job ? Just to
receive payment and send it back to Syria. Middleman? Money laundering?
2- You forgot to keep any receipt of any WU transfer. Bullshit. Cant you go to nearest WU office provide your own detail and ask for the last payment you have made.Is that something too hard to do .
3- If you job was just to receive payment , why did you bother to write such a sales thread. I believe your partner should have done as you had no control of the work that was needed to be carried out.
4- You back off just when you saw that sword was hanging under your neck.. smartass. But before you backed off there were many people complaining of no report or no progress in work. What the heck were you doing ???
5-It has been mentioned that you backed off as because you were busy with other bigger projects thus were not able to put enough time. What kind of project ?? I assume it must be something that was more beneficial financially what what you were earning from this seo service on DP. But then you come up you have no money ? Holyshit.
6- Kelly paid to jack …Jack said talk to Jill as he out of this business.Jill vanished and might come back someday …Ohh Sorry I sold this business to Rob “please contact Rob with all your query”. Rob’s replies… What the fuck did you pay me ? No you didnt. You have no legal rights to question. No poor kelly feels so cheated ..:( and helpess.
7- I seriously wondered what these DP moderators are doing. May i know why KingsofKing was banned ? .
Enough of serious talk ..lets have some humor.
Dp users are not allowed discuss about cookie stuffing, makes threads etc etc although the owner himself has been sued for cookie stuffing. Shame on you Digitalpoint and all the moderators.
I write more later.
Collin has posted that he intends to sell his websites in order to repay his customers, hopefully this will go some way of putting this scam to rest.
Thank you for posting this just shows you that high reputation doesn’t always mean that you should trust people. If Col starts paying clients back or does the work that he promised I for one will look at him as a victim. I voted no but it was close too yes. I truly hope people get repaid.
It is stated that Colin has taken some legal advice and he was informed that if this went to court that he could lose is assets. Wherever this is the case or not remains to be seen. I’m sure his actions will prevent a lawsuit. If I’m refunded I will be happy to give him a chance. I am happy that he is now doing the right thing by repaying us all.
What really got to me was the way people felt about me even though I was the one scammed.
Yes, I have made a promise to pay everyone back every cent. This will take some time as I still do not have a job. However, that should change shortly as I have had two good interviews with two employers and awaiting the final call from one of them to start work.
It’s amazing to me how many people jump on the bandwagon just by reading posts in a thread. The thought of judging people without knowing the real facts astounds me.
My name was/is involved with this scam and that is the reason why I decided to pay every one back out of my own pocket.
Plenty of people at DP threw their comments in and judged me on what was said but no one assisted me in trying to resolve the situation. I asked for solutions to try and resolve this. The only advice I got was to pay the money back. That just sickened me. To this day, no one has given any advice or offered help except the one person who said they will donate some of their own funds to start the pool off for refunds. Of course, I rejected that offer because that seemed to me to not be fair at all.
I have asked for people’s help to sell the web sites that I have in order to assist the refunding. But I have some other things to sell as well that is worth quite some money.
People know how to contact me to find out what sites I have to sell and what other things I have to sell as well.
What I find funny is that Col is asked for help and donations on DP
now to help him pay back the 50K. What a bunch of suckers if he ends up
getting people to subsidize his scam. Not a bad years work if you keep
the original 50K and get people to pony up for his refunds. Ya gotta love
it!!
No matter how much we discuss this problem one thing is sure that,
Collin was involved in scam and he made money. Haha what kind of other
stuff he wants to sell? now this sounds to me like another scam
ready to launch and he want people to buy the idea of that scam. Some
people never change.
Actually, Col, I attempted to help by brainstorming a little in this thread on DP.
Col never did the work he was going to do. My website was never indexed by the search engines.
Good to see you are starting to repay the people that you ripped off back.