Scam Alert: New Samantha Kobs Scam
Today I got yet another spam email from Mrs. Samantha Kobs. This time she’s crossed a very large line.
If selling advertising for insane prices on new sites wasn’t bad enough, she’s now offering a “business opportunity” that may or may not exist. The cost could very well bankrupt many WAHMs. Fortunately the website is not that well put together, so it’s unlikely that people will fall for it.
For $3,000 she’s offering a few free magazines (which we have yet to see exist and was to be released just last month), and a weak set up to sell these magazines. In return they get 30% commission on advertising they sell.
Here’s the major red flags that go up for us:
- No examples of the magazine and no proof it exists
While it was suppose to be released in June 2008, there is no real proof this magazine exists. Actually, I’ve now seen two different dates – June and July. In fact, I saw these two dates on the same page! There’s also no details on how it’s published, where it’s printed, and so on.
- Poorly designed and organized site
It’s hard to follow anything on the site, and it really is very poorly organized. Scattered general content is just stuffed here and there, and the home page is nothing but one big ad space. A professional, serious magazine’s website does NOT look like this.
- Too many ad spaces
In addition to selling ad space in this “magazine” and selling copies of it, she’s also selling ad space. There is NO reason for this many ad spaces since the magazine can’t be viewed online – unless of course your trying to swindle every dollar you can from wahms (see publications like “Parents” – even they use advertising sparely because their goal is subscriptions). Not to mention this site is very new, so to charge what she’s charging is a true rip-off, in my opinion.
- Known spammer
This person has used some pretty unethical (and illegal) tactics for building her mailing lists. I ended up with just 2 email addresses on her list, but others had several more. The addresses were made up or harvested from groups, message boards, and websites. What’s worse she KNEW what she was doing. She was TOLD this was illegal and unethical, but continued to spam people anyway. She still has yet to take one of my email addresses (one that was only used to accept payments and had to be harvested off a website). BIG mistake on her part, since I now know about her latest scam.
People, don’t fall for this. $3,000 is a lot of money to most WAHMs, and I can tell you right now you probably won’t get anything in return. Since everything is so poorly put together, I doubt many would fall for it, but I wanted to put this warning out there anyway. Do NOT give money to Samantha Kobs, KobsMedia, WahmWahm Magazine, or any of her other websites. In my opinion, she is a true scam artist and needs to learn how to be a professional, honest business woman.
Your fellow WAHM in success,
Kara
Topics: Unprofessional Business Acts | 7 Comments »
July 15th, 2008 at 10:18 am
[...] 2wahms.com wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptToday I got yet another spam email from Mrs. Samantha Kobs. This time she’s crossed a very large line. If selling advertising for insane prices on new sites wasn’t bad enough, she’s… Ramblings of 2 WAHMs – Anita DeFrank and Kara Kelso. Please feel free to post your comments as we post what we are up to and how we manage successful websites and young children at home. This is a content summary only. Visit MyWebsite.com for full links, other content, and more! [...]
July 17th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Yeah – here’s the last time we had to deal with her: Unprofessional Business Acts – Spamming & Email Harvesting
August 27th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Thank you for posting this! Back in July I sent an urgent email to our members of MomPack.com about Samantha Kobs and her harvesting of email addresses to send an insane amount of spam to me and my members. I warned them all to not visit her site and pity those that paid her a dime.
Even after a cease and desist to her from me, she continues to spam me personally as well as many of my members.
As of August 26, 2008 she continuously fills out the pre-sales contact form on my web hosting site with various names like: elizabeth and jarod all with the same email address as: admin@directsalesmommy.com
Another cease and desist went out to her today to stop spamming. Anyone that is suckered into paying astronomical prices on her site is very unfortunate. HThe site is an absolute mess and lists advertisers email addresses live on the site which will bring them nothing but more and more spam. Her traffic is not what she’s stating at over 100k unique visitors. That can be verified through many sources online. Her newly created yahoogroup of ‘wahmd’ has only 1 member so hopefully her antics are working against her.
I’ve contacted the owner of http://www.bustedscammers.com to get her added as a warning to anyone who may come across her. In reality we do not even know who this really is – could be a man in another country. So let this serve as an awareness of how shady people can be online.
December 17th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Hi,
Its me Samantha Kobs, back over the summer I sold the sites: DirectSalesMommy.com, PartyRep.net and PartyMommy.net to Elizabeth and Jarrod Indik. I do not own a Yahoo Group, I have not made the ad prices go up, we have been focusing on our website wahmwahm.com. Launching our magazine that is in print here in New Hampshire and I would love to send a copy over to you.
Thank you
Samantha
December 23rd, 2008 at 10:05 am
Samantha, did you actually READ the posts and replies? My guess is NO. We said nothing about “raising the prices” or you owning a Yahoo group. We said you were SPAMMING groups and we have yet to see proof of your magazine. By saying you are “launching” your magazine now, you have just admitted to being a scammer since this magazine was suppose to be out for months.
I do believe it’s time for you to get a real job and stop scamming everyone.
January 7th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Wow – I’m amazed this is still going on. Are we still just the innocent mom, wife and teacher with a love for the industry? The innocent who is being ruined by our constant warnings to the wahm community?
Do you realize if you spent half the energy on coming up with your own legitimate websites, business ideas, etc – you’d be doing pretty dang good by now. Instead of following all over the internet trying to clean up your name while in the background – you’re just working on harrassing yet another unsuspecting industry.
Sorry to our readers – I don’t usually get this vocal and this rude on my posts however, after some recent information I’ve come across about Samantha, I’m seeing that even though this looks like a very large scam, believe it or not there’s a LOT we’re not seeing.
There’s a lot more thieving, scamming and lieing going on than what most of us know about.
Please all – steer clear of anything and all that has anything to do with Samantha Kobs or any of her aliases. This is not just a warning so you’re not scammed but just trust me in the fact that you’re not going to want your name associated with Samantha Kobs in any way.
Samantha – Really, take Kara’s advice and move on.
January 7th, 2009 at 11:56 am
One more quick note to all reading and anyone who happens to have come across our post while researching the fact that they were scammed by Samantha Kobs:
If you were scammed yourself or you have any proof of issues/scams, etc … Please contact me ASAP here:
http://www.mommyshelperonline.com/contact.html