Scams- Beware.

Did you know we can all get rich because of the down market? Today I probably passed the thousand per week mark in email solicitations for websites I have never heard of, who will immediately

• Send me short sale leads
• Send me loan modification leads
• Get me REO business
• Send me fully qualified, “ready to buy now” buyers

and about 30 other bullet points. All I need to do is give them anything from 40 bucks to over $1,000 and I’m in. One pitch was so well done I actually registered on their website for $40 per year (although for a little more I could have had a “lifetime” membership). The same parent company sent me another solicitation, and it prompted me to go to their website and attempt to log in. I was unsuccessful, so I emailed them about the mistake. No mistake, was the reply. Same company, different family of websites. So they aren’t in the business of generating business, I replied, they are in the business of registering agents on their websites for future spam. No reply.

That outfit is getting fat on registrations for utterly nothing. They send a first class letter to bank asset managers asking them to use their directory for BPO and REO agents. Yeah, like that will happen. Can you imagine an asset manager acting like my 6-year old son and saying “Oh! I got a letter!” insead of tossing the junk mail?

Here’s the lesson: Some scheisters out there know that agents are often struggling. So they cyber panhandle these agents, promising to get them out of the doldrums for $50 or $20 per month, or in some cases (such as the now infamous REExperts, who are reduced to a Facebook page after scamming over 1000 agents out of $3500 each), lots more. These are sirens on the rocks. Don’t bite, or you’ll get bitten.

If something were truly worthwhile, as I have told some of the phone scammers, I’d be willing to pay a referral fee from the closed business. That’s far better than $80 per month, I told the guy. But they wouldn’t go for that, because they know it won’t work on their end.

Truly worthwhile endeavors don’t need to solicit you. Be suspicious and keep your money.