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Sunday, January 3, 2010

Goals for 2010

So it seems that everyone thinks that 2009 was a pretty bad year all around. So what are we going to do to make 2010 better? Well I have 2 major goals that I would like to accomplish professionally in 2010 and those are:

#1 I would like to get our photography business up and running.

#2 To launch my blogs and begin bringing traffic to them.

Well you are looking at one of my two blogs and you can take a look at the second one at www.rippedoffbykevinpreusse.blogspot.com

So I have begun working on my goals for 2010 already and we are 3 days into the year. I am feeling pretty good that this year is going to be more productive than last. If I accomplish nothing else from my blogs other than how to run them and monetize on them I will be very happy as I need to experience in order to launch my photography site once we get that up and running here in the near future. First we have to raise the money to get our photography equipment. If anyone would be willing to donate to this effort please feel free to make dontations to our paypal account which can be accessed by going to www.paypal.com and searching for me by my email address.

As we figure out what does and doesn't work as far as launching our business and sites we will provide feedback here via blog updates. So feel free to check back often.

Also please feel free to list any advice you might have regarding what you have already done that has or has not worked. Marketing approches that you have used in the past. Websites that have the best deals for photography supplies.

As of so far I have been able to verify that the following websites have legitimate offers and I am sure that you have all heard of them but here they are just in case.

www.blogger.com Great place to set up a free blog.

www.google.com/adsense A great site to assist in monetizing off of your own website or blog. This is a very easy program to use.

There are sure to be more sites that come up as I go through my venture and I will continue to post them as I am able to confirm that they in fact are legitimate and have something to actually offer.

Hope everyone is having a great day......

Off to work on my business plan for my photography business!

New Blog Site for The Kevin Patrick Preusse Ordeal

Well it was next to impossible for me to fiugre out how to create two separate topics on one site so that the Kevin Patrick Preusse Scam ordeal didn't get lost within my other stuff so I decided to open a separate blog specifically targeted at the ordeal with Kevin.

The link for that site is:

http://www.rippedoffbykevinpreusse.blogspot.com

Kevin Patrick Preuesse Ordeal

This section will be dedicated to our ordeal with Kevin Patrick Preusse and his scams. We will let you know what each of the scams are that we have been able to find so far that he has pulled. We will list what we know about him. We will list what we are doing legally. What our results are. Websites you can visit to do research, for your own protection. We want to be sure that people know about this guy so that he is unable to do this type of thing to yet another innocent victim. Please forgive me this posting is a little choppy and I will try to clear things up as time goes by and people ask questions. This is for real though so I really encourage everyone to be on the lookout for this guy and any others like him.

So I guess we should start at the beginning:

My husband and I were online just before Thanksgiving 2009 looking for a way to make some extra money for the holidays. We came across an add on Craigslist that stated that a start up website was paying $10.00 per post for the first 10 posts on this website. The guy that was starting the website was from here locally in the city in which we lived. So after doing some initial research on the guy and not coming up with anything bad about this guy. He had people that vouched for him. He made it seem as though he was a genuinely good guy, emailing us back quickly, providing us with local contact information, the site he set up was set up very good, he asked for our input into what should go onto the site, what should be changed. This guy just really had an answer for everything so we really thought he was legitimate. We started to post on his site www.coolchimp.com (we are by no means promoting this site to anyone, however we must list it in order to help protect others). There were a total of 5 of us posting on this site on a regular basis and we racked up quite a few postings over the short time that we were members of the sites forum group. After we posted our first 10 postings each (my husband and I). We requested our payment from Kevin as this was our agreement from the beginning so that we could each get comfortable with each other, us with his promise for payment and for him so he could be comfortable with our posting abilities. So we made arrangements to get paid for the postings via PayPal and we sent him our information so that we could receive payment from him. With it being Thanksgiving week Kevin came back and stated that it was going to take 2-3 business days so it may not happen until early the next week due to the fact that the banks were closed for the holidays. This didn’t send off any real red flags for us in the beginning but this is when Kevin became weird in all sorts of ways. He began telling us about how he had back problems that were very serious and that he was going to have to go into surgery very soon or he could lose his ability to walk. So he wanted to ensure us that if this happened someone would still make sure that this transaction went through just in case he was unable to do it himself. This is where it all began….one excuse after another as to why the money hadn’t gone through, why he was unavailable for a few days at a time, he was in the ER with his back, his father passed away, his mom was a mess because of his father, his ex girlfriend came back in his life and got him distracted….it just didn’t end with this guy!

When we began to question him about his website and the information we had found on him he started to at first get offended and threatened us with legal action and then he turned around and told us that he over reacted because the reports we found on him were untrue and he was so sick of people believing what they read. To he wanted to prove to us that he was for real and he wanted to offer us a bonus on the site. Then he had offered for us to win this contest that he had posted on the site due to the fact that not enough people had joined the site, he was hoping that when word of someone winning all of this money on his site people would flock to the site just for the chance to win the next contest. I mean by this time this guy had been dodging us for days on our payment arrangement. Now all of the sudden he was going to write us a check for $20k and he was going to hand deliver it. When he got to his parents house though the cops where there because someone decided to steal a couple of cars and drop them in one of the Mobile Home Estates that his parents owned. So he had to deal with that and wasn’t going to be able to make it to meet us that night like he had arranged. All the while that he has been dodging us keep in mind that he has been texting and emailing us keeping us up to date with whatever issue it was that he had at the time that was keeping him from meeting us. This was a huge red flag for us….this guy was so full of crap and with each and every big promise and every excuse he just made it more and more obvious that something was crooked about this guy. We decided at this point we didn’t want the $20k from his contest winnings as we were sure that somehow some way this check or this money was going to come with some sort of issue that we didn’t want to be involved in. So we asked him to just pay the money for the posting that he had promised to pay us. By this time the amount for the posting had made it up to $1,150.00 which isn’t a lot of money in the grand scheme of things but it is the principle that he had promised to pay, we were really in need of this money in order to catch up bills and to be able to get something for our children for Christmas. We are also in the process of trying to start our own photography business so we were also planning to use some of the money from the website postings to begin to purchase our DSLR Camera, Lenses, Accessories, Computer and Software that we need. So we were really looking forward to this money. It could have been a new beginning for us. So not only were we upset because of the money but it made it that much worse because of the lost opportunity. Plus the fact that our children didn’t get much for the holidays it was like throwing salt in an open wound. We made the best of it though! Anyway….and the story continues!

So as the days passed we begin to wonder what is going on with this guy and we begin to do a little more research on him with the information he had already provided to us in numerous emails, pm’s, and texts between him, me and my husband. It didn’t take us long to figure out first off that he had given us a false name in the beginning he had told us that his name was Kevin Patrick. Well you look up Kevin Patrick and you find nothing listed on Google, MSN or any of the other search engines about this guy being a fraud. When you get a little more information and find out that the guys full name is Kevin Patrick Preusse you begin to get all sorts of reports on him. The first thing when you go onto www.google.com and plug in his name the top 2 results are reports on www.ripoffreport.com listing him and his previous endeavors in scamming people in the past. This guy has been pulling scams all over the place for quite some time. I’m not going to list each of them in full detail as you can go to these sites and plug his name in the search engine and get the same results as I did. I will give you the basics of each of his scams and the information that I have been able to gather on each and from who. These are not going to be in any sort of order either as I really don’t want to spend that much time going back through all of this information to put it in date order.


The first one that I came across was his scam in which he convinced people to contribute anywhere from $750.00 to $2000.00 to help get a script that he wrote launched so that he could sell it off to the movie producers for a possible movie deal. He made up a website that promoted his script and asked other authors to come and post their script offerings to producers and such for book and movie deals. He offered each of them a piece of his script profits and would pay each investor back within a year. He gave each person a legitimate contract that showed them as being part of the person who would receive the proceeds of the script sale. Then as time went on and the dates he promised to pay by came and went and people began to question whether or not he was going to actually pay back his loans and such he launched yet another site stating that Michael Crichton stole his script called it his own and created a movie out of it. He has an entire site devoted to it which if you follow the links he provides and input the information he has provided you there is no information listed that actually confirms any of his stories. The links just lead you in circles and then when you input the information he gives you it tells you that the reference number is invalid. So this is the first one that I came across. It was called Preusse Productions. Which you can also look up online and I think it leads you to a MySpace page that if you read the posts and comments on the site carefully you will find people on their that are looking for him and he is obviously dodging regarding the money he promised to pay. I was able to contact one of the people on the site and get a little more information from them on his scam and what happened to them. This information will eventually be included in the lawsuit we file against him and we will try to provide as much information on that as we can after consulting our attorneys.

After researching this scam a little you find that he has pulled yet another scam in which he launched a website and asked people to post to it and he would pay them for each of their posts….wow does this sound familiar or what? Well then you keep reading and you read that he offered another person the opportunity to become a site moderator….wow he offered me the same thing. Then you keep reading and the whole post is almost exactly the same as the scam he pulled on his new site with my husband and I. From the issues with his back, surgery being a must, an ex girlfriend, PayPal issues, I mean seriously it was just crazy reading this information. There was even mention that he had offered these people the same contest scam he had offered to us. Holy crap this guy just keeps going. I was also able to get into contact with the person who created this posting and she was able to confirm what she had said and provided even more information on this guy. This information will also be included in our upcoming lawsuit against him and his site.

This guy just keeps going with his site and the more research you do and the more people you talk to, you find out that not only is he involved in his scams but so is his father. Do a little research into his father and you figure out really quick where the son learned his scamming abilities from his father and uncle. They had pulled the same types of scams years earlier. It seems however that they may have retired and lett Kevin take over the family business. There other scams that this guy is pulling out there I am sure, but I was only able to find reports on a small handful of them so far. I will continue to post updates, as they become available. I will also list more details of each of his scams as our attorney clears me to do so.

At this point we are still in the process of collecting information on him and his previous scams. Collecting more and more information from each person that I contact to add to our file. Creating a file of all of our conversations with him. We have been researching how to report him and where to report him. The answers aren’t really clear so as we get answers we will be updating that information. So far we have used the following sites to research this guy and find out the information we have been able to gather on him.

Websites:

www.google.com You would be amazed at what you can find out about someone just by entering their name into Google. You should enter your name and see what you find….I was rather surprised at what information came up about me and what other information was offered for a price. Thank goodness most of mine is all professional information with no real personal information listed on me. I have tried to keep myself off of the online search engines but I tell you what I think that may be impossible anymore unless you just don’t use the Internet at all and even then I guarantee that there is still some sort of information on you out there.

www.ripoffreport.com On this site there are a lot of reports out there on exactly what it says people ripping other people off. This website is great because it provides reports on people and businesses that becomes part of a permanent online database that is searchable by anyone. These reports aren’t deleted so they are out there forever. I encourage you to research people and businesses on this site before you do any sort of business in which you are transferring money for goods, services or for any other reason for that matter. It is better to be safe than sorry.

www.ic3.gov This is a government based website for the Internet Crimes Division of the FBI in which you can report internet crimes, fraudulent schemes and websites, spoofing scams, phishing websites and much more. It however does not provide any way to search previous reports, it is simply a tool to report internet crimes in which you may have knowledge of.

www.myspace.com I tell you what just about everyone is on MySpace these days so if you are looking to do business with someone you can always take a look at their MySpace and do a search to see what type of person you might be dealing with. Quite a few businesses are beginning to create MySpace profiles as well in an attempt to promote their businesses. So I encourage you to look on these sites.

www.facebook.com For all the same reasons that I mentioned to look onto MySpace, you should also look on facebook. You would be amazed at what you can find out about someone on these sites. They also have business promotion sites on here as well. So check both individuals as well as companies.

Making 2010 Better Than 2009

Making 2010 Better Than 2009

Well I sit here on the first day of January 2010 looking back at what 2009 had to offer. It seems that I was not the only one grateful that 2009 has come to an end. You look at the posting on MySpace, Facebook and just about any other Social Network site and the common posting it seems for 2009 was “Thank God it’s Over”! People commenting that they hope that 2010 is better than 2009. Quite a few people spent the majority of 2009 unemployed but are hopeful that 2010 has more to offer. So with all of this in mind I decided to try to figure out every way that I can to make 2010 better than 2009 was and I am hoping that each person can share their knowledge and we can all help each other to achieve this goal.

So my first thoughts are to learn from the mistakes I made in 2009. One of the biggest ones that I have learned from is that no matter how trustworthy someone may seem or how legitimate they might seem always dig a little further. After I lost my job at the end of August I began looking for work just to find that everyone else is looking as well. There are very few employment opportunities out there and there are even more qualified candidates for each opening. I am by no means an entry level employee having more than 7 years of experience in my field of expertise working at varied levels of responsibility within my field working with high level management, within small to medium to large corporations. Yet with all this in mind I have had not a single request for an interview, a call back I mean I have heard from no one. So when the holidays began to creep upon us in November and we still didn’t have enough money for Christmas for the kids. We had really wanted to give them something special this year as they had really given up a lot over the last several years due to financial difficulties. Hoping that this year would be different for them we set out to find a way to try to make some money online. I have never seen so many scam sights, swearing you can make loads of money if you just sign up for this program and provide them with a little bit of information (which if you read the fine print and research these sites online you find out right away that they or another site with the same basic theme and function are using this information to steal people’s identities, clean out their bank accounts and ruin their lives)……

Any ways the point of all of this is that when we became desperate and set out to make some extra cash for the holidays we came across several sites that were obvious scams. However, then there was one in which the site and the opportunity seemed legitimate in every which way. We were on Craigslist looking at the Gigs, Free Items and Community to see if there were any offers that we could offer our services on. Other than some postings for things we weren’t able to do there really wasn’t a lot offered until we came across this ad for a new website that was launching here locally and the website designer was offering $10.00 per post for the first 10 posting to his site to be paid via Cash, Check or Paypal whichever you chose. So we did some research on this guy and his website and at first glance everything seemed very much in order. He was from right here local in our own city, he had a few friends that vouched for him, he was very good at his scam. The site was designed at several levels, had a lot of options offered, didn’t have a lot of members so you could tell it was as the guy had said a new site. The list just goes on and on. Then the website owner offered us the opportunity to continue with our postings and continue to receive the $10.00 per post to continue to post to the site as he did not get as much response as he had originally hoped for. So we agreed to continue to post. After our first batch of posts we spoke to him about pay for our posts and he was very eager to pay us so that he could show us that he was legitimate and he could be trusted. So we sent him the information so that he could make the payment via PayPal. He came back right away with a stating that he got a confirmation back from the bank and PayPal that the money transfer was being processed and would take 2-3 business days for the transfer to complete. It being the week of Thanksgiving this 2-3 business days for the banks and because of the busiest shopping day of the year we get another excuse that the transfer would go through early the next week. So by this time it had already been a total of 7 days and we were still being told that it should be any day now. Working in retail and financial during this time of the year I could see how it might be remotely possible for it to take a few extra days because of Thanksgiving. So we didn’t begin to really worry about it until almost a full 2 weeks had passed. Once that happened though we knew something wasn’t right here.

So that is when we began to question what was going on? Why wasn’t payment going through? So we asked him….his answer was that this was why he hated dealing with PayPal there was always issues with it. Well this being our first time using it we really didn’t have any experience with it. So he at this point offers to pay us cash and begins talking to me about working for him at the headquarters for his site making $80k + a year. Being unemployed I must admit that this offers sounded great. I was going to help him promote the site, which is something that I have done in the past for other things so I thought I could totally do it. Promoting business is something I love to do. This however was also where I became very concerned that something just wasn’t right about this guy. He did everything he could to try to put our minds at ease, he gave us his cell phone # (however he never answered it but he used it for a lot of text correspondence), offered to meet us and pay us cash because of the payment glitch with PayPal. It was just one thing after another. So by this time we really began to wonder if this guy was part of something else. We started to research him online and by the information he had listed in his profiles and in other various places we were able to find out what his name was. Then we mentioned to him something about another business that we had found that it looked as though he was at least partial owner in and during a conversation this was mentioned and that was when things went bad. He had asked what we were talking about and my husband had mentioned that I had been doing some research on him online as this is what I do, I want to know about the people that I am doing business with. That was when he made the statement that made it very obvious to us that something wasn’t right with this whole situation. He said, “You can’t always believe what you read online about a person and that in the past one of his ex girlfriends got upset about a business deal she lost out on with him and began to post bad things on the web about him” Well I hadn’t found anything like that at all at that point but once he made that statement you can be damn sure that I was going to go and look for it.

After finding out what his real name was as he had told us that it was Kevin Patrick when in fast his full name was Kevin Patrick Preusse. Well when you input that name into Google the first thing that pops up is a link to www.ripoffreport.com . This guy had been pulling different variations of this website scam for quite sometime now. He gets people to help him launch his sites usually it seems right before the holidays each year or two. He has had several different sites that range from him being a talent agent of sorts that can help actors, actresses, writes and such get public recognition either to get their work out their or to get their face or talent out there. He promises that you will get all sorts of results and he has some good websites that make it look as though he is on the up and up. Preusse Productions is the name of this scam. Then he has another scam in which he swears that he has a script that is going to make millions of dollars but he can’t get it launched without some investors and he then asks individuals to contribute amounts of money ranging from $750.00 to $2000.00 from what I have read and been able to gather from other reports that I have read on this guy. Then it seems that he is stating that he has a copyright lawsuit in the works against Michael Crichton regarding a script that he had written earlier. He states that a movie is made up of 90% of his script that was stolen from him. Well this site has been up for several years and I haven’t heard anything about this nor could I find any other proof that the information that he has listed on yet another scam website is true! Then it seems from there he moved on to creating sites and approaching people about posting on his site and helping promote it for varied amounts of money to each person. Then people start to get traffic coming to his site from their address books, their blogs, their friends all the while he sits back and comes up with one good excuse after another why he can’t pay you today or why PayPal is his worst enemy and so on and so forth. Why exactly he is using this scam at this point and what he is really gaining from it is beyond me unless somehow he is getting affiliate marketing payments from it somehow on the content posted within each of the posting of the members of the sites and forums. I am really not sure how much money he could have been making from the site that we were posting too however as there were only 4 members and himself that were posting anything to the site. We posted quite a bit however seeing how it was just the 5 of us. But it really couldn’t have been a huge moneymaker for him. I think that is in part however because we caught him in his scam much quicker than others had in the past.

Since I found out just how many people this guy has screwed over and what type of damage he has done in the past I have decided that I am going to do everything in my power to make it so that this guy is unable to continue to do this to people in the future. So not only will I continue to go after this guy for what he has done both legally and financially. I am also going to continue to research the best ways to research ways to detect fraud within websites, mail and other forms of contact from the outside world. I am going to research where to go if you think you have been a victim of this type of crime. I am going to do whatever it takes to help myself and others prevent this from happening to them in the future. So watch this site for new ways to protect yourself and watch for the launch of a new site set specifically at what has happened, what is happening and what is planned for the future of Kevin Patrick Preusse and his scamming ways!

So check out the different sections of my blog to see what’s going on with each thing. Making 2009 Better than 2010, this section will highlight the things that we do this year marking which ventures worked for us and which ones didn’t and the lessons we learned along the way. Please feel free to submit your stories and advice for others. Then the other section will focus on our adventure in dealing with Kevin Patrick Preusse and his different scams and what we are doing in moving forward with bringing him to justice. Also we will list information as we come across it that will help you to keep yourself safe, where to report fraud, what laws we come across that might help if you have been a victim. So please check back as we will update information as we obtain it.

We wish you all a very Safe, Happy and Prosperous 2010!