Scam Tactics: How Easy It Is To Fool Experts and Review Sites, or allow them to fool you

Recently, there's an article at Vice.com, where the author decided to play a hoax on TripAdvisor... They created a FAKE restaurant, which is a picnic table in the back of the author's house, created some FAKE entrees (you'll laugh at the ingredients), got some FAKE reviews through burner phones and whatnot, and got it to be the top-rated restaurant in London... a restaurant that does NOT exist.

I won't spoil the method, let's just say, it's easier than you think.

This wasn't the first prank the author, Oobah Butler, had done. Previously he bullsh*tted his way onto Paris Fashion Week and it was absolutely brilliant. But he's hardly the first to prank experts and succeded.

But then, expert reviews are fooled all the time.  In 2008, wine critic and author Robin Goldstein created a fake restaurant, allegedly stocked with the worst wines Wine Spectator magazine had ever rated. The submitted it to the said magazine. After a while, the fake restaurant had won "award of excellence" by the same magazine.

Wine Spectator called it "publicity seeking stunt", but it exposes something deeply troubling... What sort of experts at the magazine review the candidate for "award of excellence"?  And if they let a fake restaurant get on, what can DELIBERATE manipulation do?

But the pattern ran much much deeper than that. Experts are fooled ALL THE TIME.

• TV host displayed a $15 IKEA print in an art museum, and none of the art experts spotted the problem. 
• The Wine Spectator gag had a sequel... a French scientist decided to die a white wine red and gave it to 54 wine science students. NONE could detect they are tasting a white wine.  
• Food experts cannot tell McDonalds chicken McNuggets from "organic" chicken nuggets. In fact, people cannot tell organic fruit from non-organic fruit

And the problem doesn't stop there. There are review and authority websites that secretly signs under-the-table deals with crooks to promote or write nice articles without any disclosure. And this had been a long-standing problem in network marketing.

Scam Spotting: too-good job offer, fake website, and Bitcoins

A redditor recently posted on /r/scams about a too-good-to-be-true job offer:

Hi all, I was hoping you could help me figure if this job offer is a scam. So I received an email saying that I had applied for customer service representative at another company, that was an agency they work with (note I did apply to this), and that they believe me to be better suited for a better job. The HR rep who contacted me said she's confident I stand a chance, and so she wants to forward my application to the hiring manager. The company is currently based on switzerland, and they are opening an office in my area (Toronto Canada) on May 30th. All she requested was that I fill out the employment application. There was nothing weird about the application, it asked for my usual contact info and two work references. No sin number or anything private, or that they couldn't get off my resume. The reason I'm weirded out is because the pay is substantial (for reference it's +20/hr and i'm still in school) and they mentioned the company works with bitcoin. The company name is Trimension Capital Holding. Does anybody have any experience that they'd be willing to share on if this is a scam or not?

This already has a couple red flags

• Based in Switzerland, but opening an office in Toronto
• Over $20 per hour for someone not yet out of school
• Encouraged to apply even if not certain qualified (to do what, exactly?)
• It involves "Bitcoins"

But let's track this down all the way. If you search for "Trimension Capital" on Google, you will get back a Trimension Capital GmbH at Baarerstrasse 135, 6301 Zug, Switzerland. So far, it matches. 

My first link took me to moneyhouse.ch profile fo the company, and we larned that company was founded in 2012 as "Pinewood Capital GmbH", changed name to "Trimension Capital GmbH" in 2013, and changed to "Trimension Capital Holding GmbH" in 2014. It's headed by Thomas Bieri. Under "contact" it shows website as trimension-capital.com

MoneyHouse.ch says the website should be trimension-capital.com

Next couple links goes to trimensioncapital.com   NO DASH!!!!!!!

Something is very fishy here. Let's check DNS at WHO.IS

Fiverr is the Goto Place for Shill Testimonials

Fiverr is a site where people put themselves out to do small jobs for $5.00 USD (thus the name) and recently, a LOT of scams needing "testimonials" from people decided to employ amateurs off Fiverr in hopes that people won't recognize them as shills.

Too bad, here's MyFlexJob getting caught using Fiverr folks for "realistic" testimonials.

Here's a "Mr. Alexander Herring" (Does he go by "Red"?) claiming to have realistic testimonials:

It's realistic, but not real, since she'll do it for anybody for $5!

But wait, there's more!