A long read, but nonetheless an interesting look into the online scams of one of the top Internet fraudsters, Jesse Willms of Edmonton, Ontario. Portland writer Taylor Clark quite obviously invested a lot of time and effort into assembling and producing this piece, which may make you wonder if he may have suffered personal experience with one of Willms' many ScamSites.
By age 26, Willms had amassed and then lost substantial fortunes, twice - and he persists to this day. Sued by Microsoft, Norton Antivirus, and others, his first enterprise, eDirect, was forced to close. His fortune went to the companies as part of a settlement deal, and he was enjoined from ever selling copies of the software of the respective companies again. Perhaps you've heard of eDirect; the name was familiar to me, anyway.
But Willms was not convicted of any crime, and before the dust from his settlements had cleared, he was already generating new ads - and you've seen them a few hundred times: "Portland mom angers doctors with this one weird trick!" That, and countless others, originated from his networks. As an FTC lawyer explained, the idea wasn't to actually sell anything; the idea was to rack up as many credit-card charges as possible.
In April 2011, he threw himself a huge 24th birthday party. A month later, the FTC filed suit against him. Again, no criminality was alleged; these were civil charges which Willms eventually agreed to settle - while admitting no wrongdoing - to the tune of $359 million.
Despite the publicized $359 million settlement with the FTC, Jesse Willms is doing just fine financially—and he has a new yellow Lamborghini to prove it.
He's already back in business; this time his "product" is information services. Why spend $35 on a CarFax report, when he can get you one for only a buck? Of course, you'll ultimately end up spending hundreds of dollars - likely not even realizing it until after the fact - but that's just how Jesse rolls.
