Episode 906 – Seminar Scams Part One
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 906 of Screw the Commute podcast. This is part of our Keep You Safe series, and this is Seminar Scams, Part one. This is going to be a three part series on how people get ripped off to sometimes losing their homes at seminars, so I don't want that to happen to you. 905 was phishing. That's when they send you fake emails and texts and things like that. 904 was catfishing, which is romance scams, which it happens. It's more than that. It can be happen to young people and they commit suicide over it. It's a really bad thing. And people are spending millions and millions of dollars or, or getting scammed for millions of millions of dollars. That's 904 and QR code scams is 903. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com ,slash, and then the episode number. 903 QR codes 904 Cat fishing 905 phishing. And this is 906 part one of seminar scams. And make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com. Also, you might want to see the entire text of this posting I made, which is in great detail and lots of examples for the seminar scams at Antion.com/top20seminarscams.htm.

[00:01:58] All right let's get to the first one. Fake applications. This is where they make an applicant make you fill out an application as if they, you know, they're making sure that they want to accept you and you have a great chance of success. That's a big joke. And here's what it's designed to do. It's designed to defeat the very common three day right of rescission, where you get into a contract and for no reason at all, you should be able to get out of it in three days. Well, what they do is they they make you sign the application, and then they wait more than three days to get back to you telling you're accepted. And you might have, like, not really wanted it now after you got out of the heat of the seminar. But to too bad they've already run your credit card. So what do you do about that? Well, put fake credit card numbers in. Because the thing is, is if you weren't accepted, they shouldn't have run your credit card, right? So if you see them calling you immediately that, hey, your credit card's bad, well, that means they either accepted you right away and you're in the three day right of rescission or they're scamming you. They you're going to take everybody and they just want to get you get your credit card charged immediately. All right. So fake applications fake marketer of the year.

[00:03:22] This is where they handpick people that will say and do anything attributing their success to the seminar leader. And it's all fake. I mean some could be legitimate, but usually it's some people that are manipulated easily and will say whatever they can so they get the good graces of the seminar leader. And so that's a fake. And, you know, I know people that refuse to go along with the program. And they got bullied and kicked out and blackballed because they were successful on their own. And the seminar leader wanted them to attribute attribute all their success to the seminar leader. Well, it was bullshit. And so those people got kicked out. So fake marketer of the year, a celebrity hype you can hire a B-list celebrity for, I don't know, $10,000. And that could be the cost of one entry fee to the coaches big coaching program. So if they sell 30 of them, you know that $10,000 was nothing to pay that celebrity to say whatever they're supposed to say. And and the celebrities are usually actors or just hipsters. They'll do anything and say anything for money. And so and here's what you have to keep in mind. Anytime you're seeing a celebrity promoting something, that celebrity is never going to be within a million miles of you. When the seminar leader screws you over, they're never going to lift a finger to help you do anything or or go back against the seminar leaders.

[00:04:59] So do not get sucked in with celebrity hype. Okay, next one is done for you programs. And for years and years and years I've been saying this should be called done to you programs. It's some ridiculously low fee. I mean, it could be thousands of dollars, but it's low compared to what really is necessary to do the things needed for you to be successful in whatever they're claiming. I mean, probably $100,000 would be reasonable to do all the things needed done for you. So when you hear done for, you think done to you, and the chances of them actually doing all the stuff and making you successful for whatever the fee is, is ridiculous, you know? Now, if they said 100,000 bucks, which I would say that to you, hey, if you want me to make you a website, do all your social media for a year, give me 100,000 bucks and sell your product and make products for you and everything. And then at the end of the year, I've used, you know, the 100,000 bucks is gone. You're going to be doing it again and you don't, and then you don't know what the heck's going on. So that's ridiculous. Nobody's going to charge you that much. Um, they're going to charge much lower, but it could be substantial. And then they're not going to do the things necessary. That's just the bottom line.

[00:06:20] Don't get sucked into those things. Our refusal to record if they don't want to ever be heard claiming things, that's a refusal to record. And you you see that at seminars all the time because they do not want to be held and heard in their own voice in a court that they said something, a certain thing. So refusal to record. Now, fortunately, there's lots of surreptitious ways to record nowadays. And so but you still have to be careful because you might get in trouble with the recording laws of that state. You know, you can get thrown in jail for stuff even if they're ripping you off, you know? So so be careful about the recording. But when people refuse to have you record, the big fireworks should go off in your head that they are they're they're they're fraudulent. Okay. Fake urgency. Now, I've taught copywriting for a thousand years and urgency to get people to move is a legitimate technique. But we're talking about real urgency, not fake urgency. So the fake urgency is the stuff. Hey, you got to do it before 5:00 today at this seminar or the price is going up. Don't try to call me when you get home and you know it's no good. You got to do it right now. And so I. Guarantee you, if it was like a $10,000 program and you called up and said, hey, if you give me the seminar price right this moment, here's my credit card.

[00:07:56] How many you think would turn you down? None of them. You know, it's fake urgency. Or I have to get on a plane. So you got to do this before I leave the building and you know that kind of crap. Uh, okay. Fake urgency, lying about results. This is. I mean, these people will say and do anything to get your money. So lying about results. So they would say, oh, I saw this big name guy who's a real estate thing. Just, I mean, and you know, this guy's name, you see him on TV all the time, his His instructor. And he got caught by one of the major networks, and he was hem hawing around saying, well, it wasn't me that said that, you know, but it was a whole thing about they had bought a big plot of land and put a mobile home park on it and raised the value 40 million. I can't remember all the details and, uh, sold it for, you know, made a, uh, $35 million profit, something outrageous like that. And then the network went out and looked, this is still just a vacant piece of land. And I don't even know if it was owned by them, you know. So it was just lying about results. And there's all kinds of ways they do that on.

[00:09:14] Hey, I sold 10,000 of these things yesterday and, you know, blah, blah, blah. So lying about results, you need to check it out and see proof before you believe that kind of crap. Okay. Misrepresentation. I was a I don't say victim because, you know, it didn't really cost me anything, but but they used my name to promote a seminar that they knew I wasn't going to be at. You know, that's misrepresentation. Uh, another really big name person known for 50 years in the business claimed this networking thing was going to happen if you came to his seminar. Never happened, not even close to it. And people were like, when's the networking thing? Uh, we canceled that. You know, that's misrepresentation. So. So you got to make sure that you get in writing what they're supposed to do, and if they don't, what are the consequences to them about it? Okay. Next thing is shills. Shills are people that pretend to not know or have anything to do with the promoter or the seminar leader, but they're either paid or they're stooges that are just, you know, idiots that'll, you know, that'll do anything and say anything to be in favor of the seminar leader. And then they pretend, oh, how great it was and how much they learned and how much money they made. That's a shill. They're put into the crowds by these people.

[00:10:41] Virtually always. They're there. All right. So you have to be careful of that and see real proof. And if you keep seeing these people just bragging. The seminar leader up to the roof okay. Next one. Now a lot of these are just civil penalties where you could probably sue for, if you were so inclined, but some of them are criminal. This particular one is criminal. It's called theft by conversion. And this, uh, I'll give you an example of this. Let's say you lent your car to somebody, and so they were legitimately allowed to use your car, but then let's say they never brought it back. In other words, they stole it. All right. Well, it started out legitimate that they were using your car, but then they stole it. Well, how's that handle in the seminar business? Well, let's say you hire one of these seminar leaders to be your coach or mentor, and you give them your idea. You legitimately gave them your idea in, and they're supposed to work on it with you to help you. Well, if they take that idea and use it to their own gain, that's theft by conversion. So they fraudulently took your idea that they were supposed to be helping you on with, and you should have had a non-disclosure agreement. I mean, I know some coaches refuse to sign those, which I. And that can be legitimate. That can be legitimate.

[00:12:16] But if they take your idea and use it for their own benefit, cut you out. That's theft by conversion. And it's a criminal offense. And I know people that have done it. Uh let's see. Okay. Bonus tip for this part one is, is make sure that you take exacting notes anytime you're making any kind of deal with anybody, you make notes. Exactly what they said at the time they said it. You need to be taking notes because the notes and I'm not giving legal advice here, but I understand it's my understanding that if you take notes at the time something happens, they're admissible in court. If you wait, wait, wait, wait, wait till your memory fades and you're trying to recreate it, it may not be admissible in court. Again, I'm not giving legal advice. I'm not sure about what I just said, but I know it's helped me enormous amounts of times dealing with Verizon and Cox Cable. And they claim things and they do things and and I write down when I called and then when they never called back and, you know, just exacting notes. And when I say exacting, I mean exacting. I mean, if it was five, if it was four minutes after ten when I talked to somebody, I'm going to say, I'm noting that I spoke to you at 10:04 a.m. on whatever date it was, because the more exacting it is, the more believable it is.

[00:13:45] So when you call back and get a supervisor and you say, hey, I talked to Josh at 10:04 a.m. on July 2nd, and this is what he said, and he agreed on the phone call that he said this. And you say you record, go back and listen to the recording. This is exactly what he said. And now he didn't do this and you didn't do this. I want my money back, you know, so that kind of stuff carries weight. But if you just say, ah, a couple of weeks ago, I talked to one of your reps. I don't remember who it was. That's, you know, they just blow you off because it doesn't sound credible and it doesn't sound like you could hold their feet to the fire because you don't know what you're talking about. So that's your bonus tip. Exacting notes all the time when you're working with people or on the phone with, uh, you know, customer service and things like that. All right. So in part two, I'm going to give you ten more ways to get scammed at a seminar. And then in part three I'm going to give you a bunch of new stuff and, and some bonus, uh, tips on how to keep from getting scammed at seminars. All right, check out my mentor program. GreatinternetmarketingTraining.com and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.