General Category > FAQ on games, gaming & IT

SCAM WARNING: Illusion Mage, 3D Magix Pro, Mirage Wizard - do NOT buy

<< < (6/9) > >>

kat:
Was doing a bit more research on this last night when it occurred to me that the name "3D Magix Pro" is probably a deliberate choice of confuse the scam bundle with products from Magix; whilst Magix don't have a "3D Magix Pro", they do have a "3D Maker" and various "Pro" packages - "Video Pro X", "Movie Edit Pro" and "Xara Designer Pro".

This conclusion is highly circumstantially speculative of course, but I'd bet a hot-dog with everything on it that that assessment (based on my "Real Life[TM]" job) is pretty much 99.999% accurate due to 'his' use of the same tried and testing patterns of strategic placement all black box web marketeers use to funnel traffic to the pay-dirt, ones that are easily recognisable and is very deliberate.

What this means is that when a person searches using "3D", "Magix" and "Pro", Magix products pop up in the results because the search engine latches on to those words as they appear legitimately in their products, thus lending 'Seth Averys' scam an additional layer or apparent legitimacy to the unsuspecting. All in all this whole thing is a very calculated scam the Blender Foundation is woefully remiss in not tackling beyond posting a notice on a site that you won't know existed if you didn't already know what "Blender 3D" was.

kat:
A couple more domains associated with propagating the scam. And as a sign of just how desperate 'he' is to push this junk all over the internet, take note of the domains being registered, spam personified. Wouldn't even be surprised if 'he' is using the same software forum spammers use to generate names by sandwiching a 'legit' name (one that reads as a proper name) between different letters of the alphabet.

Don't click the links below by the way, they don't go anywhere by the way, they're 'active' to make them visible to bots.


* illusionmagev.com
* illusionmagez.com
* softwarefor3d.com
* eillusionmagereview.com
* 3danimatingsoftware.com
* softwarefor3d.wikispaces.com
* sofwarefor3d.webs.com
* illusionmagereviewsite.com
* illusionmagereviews.com
* illusionmageanimationsoftware.com
* illusionmagereview.net
* bestanimationsoftwares.com
* logitechlasermouse.com (yes, you read that right, misappropriating Logitech to associate 'value' to the scam. Looks like this one has been 'corrected' (as of 10th Apr))
* easy3dsoftware.com
* forumimage.info
* illusionmagerreview.net
* best-animation-software.net
* best-animation-software-review.com
* 2011bestanimationsoftware.com
* animationsoftware3d.net
* illusionmage.co
As an aside here. It's interesting that most of the review sites pushing this junk for their 12 pieces of silver turn off community comments, have a 'moderation' policy in place the means the truth about the scam never gets posted (that puts the admin's of such places culpable in scams like this, irrespective of their rather broad reaching terms of service - if comments are actively blocked it means someone has made a judgment call in favour of allowing the scam to be continued), or have no way to get in touch with them to bring the issue to their attention - the usual way is to send a message to "abuse@[domain name]"; much of that gets bounced. Some even go so far as to have links to the FBI's Internet Crime Bureau, the Internet Crime Complaints Centre and a host of other law enforcement departments. All for the sake of adding to an already false impressions that plays with people perceptions. Sheesssh on a stick!

And by the way... what happened to Googles recent algorithm change that was supposed to hit article farms and content spammers hard?

mikshaw:
[sarcasm]No, this is no scam.  It's capitalism at its finest[/sarcasm]
This guy has uploaded a number of promotional videos to YouTube as well, and regularly deletes any comments that mention Blender.

kat:
According to one of many, many fake video reviews of Illusion Mage posted to YouTube (remove square brackets - http[:]//www[.]youtube[.].com/watch?v=dR2zgRLaEvI [1:12 mark]), "Seth" has had a lot of plastic surgery recently to change his appearance (see attachment), he'd make Nicolas Cage and John Travolta proud!.

[sarcasm]After notifying the FBI he was about to change his appearance he was told him to remain out of sight so people wouldn't make a connection to his previous appearance. However, his desire to gorge on his ill-gotten gains meant his not being able to resist showing 'his' smirking mug in yet more Illusion Mage videos[/sarcasm]

[EDIT]image removed at the request of the real Seth

kat:
Word is coming in that more and more store fronts are pulling this product as soon as they find out it's a scam. So if you're on any mailing lists and/or members of various stores and shops that sell software, let the owners know as soon as you see anything to do with this scam pop up on their networks. Spreading the word works and is a more effective way of shutting down this kind of shenanigans.

[EDIT] Speaking of business resellers... Although IllusionMage now appears to be removed from ClickBank.com's searchable catalogue (it doesn't turn up in product search results), they still appear to be acting as a payment gateway for Messrs Avery's when clicking through from the IM web site. This probably means that affiliates can't sign-up directly on ClickBank any more, but they might still able to earn their ill-gotten gains using the gateway.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page