When serial entrepreneur Naveen Jain left the company he founded, InfoSpace, in disgrace in late 2002, a lot of people thought he would never be trusted by the financial markets again (see this three part series from the Seattle Times that talks extensively about the rise and fall of Jain at Infospace and details his violations of insider trading laws). At its height Infospace was worth $31 billion. Today it’s worth less than 1% of that.
But memories are short, it seems. After leaving InfoSpace Jain started a new company, Intelius, across the street from his old offices in Bellevue, Washington. The company sells background information on people - they describe themselves as an “information commerce company.” They’ve grown rapidly and now claim that over four million people have purchased products from them. Revenue has grown from $18.1 million in 2004 to $88.5 million in 2007. In their most recent fiscal quarter, ending March 31, 2008 the company had $31.8 million in revenue, a nearly $130 million run rate. They are also very profitable, with $22.5 million in EBITDA in 2007.
It’s no surprise that the company’s revenue growth and profitability have led them to pursue an IPO. Well known investment banks Deutsche Bank and UBS are underwriting the deal, which was first filed with the SEC on January 10. The most recent version of their registration statement, filed on May 19, is here.
Given Jain’s history, you’d think he’d go out of his way to be squeaky clean at his most recent startup, particularly as the company is going public and under significant scrutiny. But that may not be the case.
Intelius has been on the receiving end of hundreds of consumer complaints alleging fraud, many of which are around a partnership the company has with Adaptive Marketing and a “product” they offer called Privacy Matters Identity.
Every time a customer buys a product at Intelius, they are shown a page telling them “Take our 2008 Consumer Credit Survey and claim $10.00 CASH BACK with Privacy Matters Identity.” The user is then shown two survey questions and asked to enter their email and click a large orange button. They can choose to skip the survey by clicking on a small link at the bottom of the page.
Undoubtedly a lot of consumers do the survey and move forward to the next page - it only takes a second. But what most people don’t do is read the fine print, which gives no real details on the $10 cash back (in fact, it is never mentioned again, anywhere). Instead, in light gray small text, users are told that by taking the survey they are really signing up to a $20/month subscription. Intelius forwards your personal information, including your credit card, to Adaptive Marketing. The next day a $20 charge appears on your credit card, and each month afterwards.
Here’s a screen shot of the offer. Click to see the full size version as it appears during the check out process.
Of course you never hear from Adaptive Marketing again (why take a chance that you’ll wonder who they are). Instead, the credit card charges keep coming, and the company obviously hopes you never notice.
This survey is quite literally a complete and total scam. And since users continue to pay forever (or until they try to stop it), the contribution to Intelius’ revenue grows significantly over time.
And it also appears that the scam is what’s driving most or all of Intelius’ revenue growth. It’s not clear what percentage of the $20/month is given back to Intelius (it’s been redacted from the agreement they filed with the SEC). However, the company had $17.2 million in revenue in Q1 2007, and Adaptive Marketing accounted for just 1.5% of that. In the most recent quarter they had $31.8 million in revenue, and Adaptive Marketing contributed a whopping 38.9% of that total. Revenue grew by $14.6 million/quarter in the last year. The Adaptive Marketing scam contributed $12.4 million of that gain, nearly all of it.
In other words, without the survey scam, Intelius would have nearly no revenue growth. Companies that aren’t growing don’t go public.
How did I track all this financial data down? It’s all listed in the publicly available registration statement, prepared by the company and its bankers, accountants and lawyers.
All of these parties, (Deutsche Bank, UBS, Karr Tuttle Campbell (company counsel), Fenwick & West (underwriters counsel) and BDO Seidman (accountants), have a responsibility to conduct due diligence and ferret this kind of stuff out. Apparently, no one noticed. Perhaps now they will.
Update: Naveen Jain’s son responds to this post here.
Yeah it is scammy .. but in my opinion, you’ve gotta be pretty foolish to accept the scam in the first place. I think most people have learned when they see a big flashing “Yes” and a small “No” below it, “No” is usually the way to go ;).
Welcome back, Michael.
This guy Naveen is a scam artist. The banks have no incentive to do their homework and anyone stuck holding this stock will regret it.
Naveen Jain is a douchebag and needs to go to Jail where other inmates will go medieval on his ass…..
@Jim is this the first time you are reading a blog? all blog posts are opinions based on facts….if you want just facts go read wikipedia
This is actually quite common in certain circles. Most any TV ad has these types of things attached to them anymore. They get around the legal troubles by naming things a certain way. For example the name of the product is “Fun Discount Pack” and you get a free gift card.
Anyway, many people say yes to the gift card without realizing they pay monthly for it because the names of the company and the product are deceptive. Nearly any As seen on TV offer does this since most are processed by the same companies. Look up “Passport to Fun” for an example.
Nice public service you’ve provided. Anyone who invests in their IPO probably deserves what they get for not reading the SEC docs, but it’s nice to have someone call it out because not all filings are as interesting a read as the Google IPO docs.
I guess this guy has also a huge ego problem: if you go his web page (http://www.naveenjain.org/) you can see that his name appears 102 times in the home page!
No … really … his home page is worth reading: An extremely intelligent man with a commanding presence and a track record to turn heads, Naveen Jain has the kind of kinetic personality that sets fire to a room. Naveen Jain is both the wizard of ideas and the grease behind the wheels of industry.
or
Naveen Jain is a proud workaholic whose dedication to his career allows little time for rest and relaxation. However Naveen Jain prefers it this way. Naveen Jain isn’t the kind of CEO who cuts out early from the office to play golf either. His fire for work is continuous, and Naveen Jain doesn’t regret his 18 hour work days. A tireless worker with robust energy and an unquenchable thirst for innovation and progression, Naveen Jain continues to seek greater heights of excellence.
Michael Scott has a big competitot here!
I use this service 5 months ago. The service sucks and the information they provide is vague. They will not return my money even they guarantee it. So I just move on. The best way to scam people is charge small money and like $10 to $20. Most people will walk away from it. Most people will not realize there account is been charged $20 per month because it a small amount. By the time they realize it, 6 months already and there cant file charge back because it too late. So imagine you doing that to millions of people. You can make a lot of money.
Also, the bank is in it too. Why would there process all the charge back without shutting his account down. It’s conspiracy. If you are a small company and you do same thing, you will get shut down and put on black list immediately. Somebody is getting a cut under the table.
This guy is driven by money and he will do whatever it takes.
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http://www.youyap.com
Good work unwrapping this one. I can’t believe that large banks still don’t do their work when it comes to due diligence when it comes to massive transactions like an IPO. On the other hand if a graphic designer (photographer… whatever) asks for a $10K business loan to start his studio where he plans to bust his ass to pay the loan back they go with him through a six month process including an anal examination to make sure the poor dude isn’t gonna screw them.
I think in 2008 (after what happened in the .bomb period) that’s a scandal.
Whoa! Mike, I assume you are still here in Carlsbad @ D6 so please be a little more sensitive to the area while you are here. We almost lost this whole place to wildfires so if you are going to light someone up like that and incinerate them please put the body/pic in a fire pit first. PS Did you hesitate before posting the story and think of keeping it to yourself and just short the stock at the IPO?
I think I saw somewhere on the comment page that you were filing a law suit against Intelius. I too was scammed for 9 months at $19.95 a month by Inteliu through a 3rd party company called PMI. If you are filing a law suit i would like to participate. I live in Arizona and was going to file a lawsuit myself but you obviously have been doing alot more research than i have about this and I’m just not willing to let this company get away with this! Please let me know. Thank you
per my second video comment above, here’s more on valueclick:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/ftc.....9-million-
This is pretty standard stuff. A lot of companies participate in these “post conversion” offers including classmates.com, drugstore.com, ebgames.com, americangreetings.com, petco.com, broaderbund, chadwicks, and many many more. The deal’s are usually a revenue split of 50/50 or 60/40. Webloyalty.com is another company that offers this type of “post conversion” marketing to ecommerce sites.
I agree that what’s being offered is generally a scam. I mean if you can give away 60% of the revenues of a product or service you probably aren’t delivering any value to the poor saps “opting in”. I would think that a good way to stop this is for visa and MasterCard to prohibit the passing of credit cards from one company to another under almost any circumstance. And especially for recurring fees.
Good work Michael!
You are right michael. I had the same experience 5 months ago.
I filled that $10 survey form myself too and never get anything. I am too concern about finding what I was looking for.
I use the service to look for my name and address also and it gave me crap. It did not work. So I use their reverse phone number and it sucks too. Also, the company has many different domain names or partners. So you think you are going to another company but it same company running the whole People Search Show.
Like I said, it is easy to scam people from $10 to $20. Most people will not fight it. So you multiple that by 4 million people for 6 months. That’s a lot of money my friend. People do the same thing on ebay all day long but this guy is just doing it on a massive scale. Corporate version
I am sure the bank and who ever processing all that money know about it and never shut him down. There is not much you can do but blog.
I hope I don’t run into him because I will ask for my money back otherwise it’s on.
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http://www.youyap.com
@11 - Ringtones
Michael, I believe you don’t put in your CC # for the ringtones. They basically ask you to enter your cell # for your “Free” Ringtone and all you need to do for them to charge you is to reply with their SMS notification with a YES.
It is in the fine prints that they tell you that by saying YES you’d be authorizing the cell provider to bill you 9.99/mo.
So Ringtones are probably the same level as Intelius.
However, this guy Jain gives me the creeps. He has a huge ego complex - comparing himself to Gates? Hello Dude? How many people outside the tech circle even know who you are?
I just think the Intelius service itself is unethical. They claim they publish information that is available through public records, but that’s not always the case. Some of the information is private or court-sealed and has no business being sold by a third party like Intelius. Trying to remove the information is next to, if not downright impossible.
I did some further investigation and it appears that not only the post purchasing survey is scam but the site itself is a scam too. Here is why:
I’ve searched for a random person by entereing 123-45-6789 and last name ‘Bullshit’ (Search by social security tab). The site displayed “Search in Progress” tab and then offered me to buy a background report on “BUY AN INSTANT REPORT FOR SSN XXX-XX-6789 & LAST NAME BULLSHIT”. At this point you know that there is no such person in their database but they will not tell you this and ask for credit card information if you will click on buy button. And their refund policy (or non existant refund policy) states:
“All purchases are final with no refunds. Furthermore, Intelius accesses and is charged for information controlled by third parties and cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information.” So it this point you know that you are out of $50 which you paid for report that they don’t have. Forget5 about follow up survey. Their main search is scam….. Great investigative reporting Michael!
Comment on TechCrunch: Naveen Jains Latest Scam: Intelius
Nice article, well written. Hope this catches some attention.
Other companies have maintained their merchant accounts by charging small amounts daily to a ton of credit cards (often the company’s employees.) By doing this they are reducing their chargeback ratio and thus able to keep their MA under the radar.
Sorry, the point of the above post was: they don’t need an insider at the bank/merchant processor and I doubt they have one.
Peter - good thoughts in your video comment.
Used to work near Infospace during their boom. Even then Naveen’s reputation was that of a P.O.S.
“But memories are short, it seems.” That, or greed is greater.
BTW, that photo of him makes me want to slap the taste out his mouth.
Sometimes you just get sucked in by a site that may interest you but there always comes that moment of truth when most of us get that feeling that the next indulgence (i.e. click) could cause a lot more pain than its worth. It’s really just Darwinism, I think.
We all forgive and forget, but this man has made a difference as I am still chasing a nut.
Everywhere a Scam Scam!
This reminds me of offers for FREE IPOD, LAPTOP, etc. I heard a tag line the other day that said, “All I have to do is try and buy things I already wanted.” My mother thought she was going to get a free laptop. What she got was three inquiries on her credit report, and seven vaguely named companies charging her bank account $5-$20 per month (one of which was Experian).
Naveen Jain deserves to have his nuts cracked, and so do all the people who do this kind of stuff.
This is my favorite TechCrunch post ever. Nice sleuthwork, Michael. With the millions they spend on bankers and lawyers, it’s “some guy with a blog” who reads the public documents, follows the trail, and uncovers a sham.
Of course this is a PR nightmare for Jain, and it doesn’t speak well of Deutsche Bank or UBS either.
Good work, Scoop.
And no surprise that the leadership team is a who’s-who of former Infospace execs. Perhaps the others on the team knew nothing of Naveen’s past and what they might be getting into…
http://www.intelius.com/corp/leadership.html
Agreed that this company is probably shady. Agreed that people shouldn’t consider being part of the IPO.
However, someone would have to be an idiot to fill out that survey and hand over their email addressess without reading the fine print.
It is all there in the fine print, which actually isn’t all that ‘fine’. How is this any different than Girls Gone Wild videos or things like that?
Again, shady company & shady guy, but this isn’t that unusual.
Lets not forget that Henry Blodget was a big part of the Infospace promotion, and deserves to be lumped into this rogues gallery.
Shame!!!!
Great story, hate the video comments (which I didn’t watch.)
VistaPrint (NASDAQ: VPRT) is just as bad and they get away with it. Why pick on this guy then if there is money to be made?
I spent over 10 years on Wall Street before moving into technology I find it beyond puzzling how these investment banks did NOT do their due diligence. Just mind blowing. As a matter of fact I have an account at one of those investment firms that i will be closing next week.
More importantly I believe it is crucial to expose all the senior executives and directors associated with this scam/company. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to the engineers. But, ALL the board members, CEO, CCO, EVP Biz Dev, CFO, SVP Product and Counsel should be put in front of a firing squad.
William A. Owens - Chairman
Naveen K. Jain - Chief Executive Officer
William R. Kerr - Chief Corporate Officer
John K. Arnold - Executive Vice President of Business Development
Paul T. Cook - Chief Financial Officer
Edward O. Petersen - Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing
Kevin R. Marcus - Chief Technology Officer
Niraj A. Shah - Executive Vice President of Engineering
Chandan S. Chauhan - Senior Vice President of Product Marketing
William H. Beaver - General Counsel
Arthur W. Harrigan - Director
Peter W. Currie - Director
Chris Kitze - Director
BTW- I’ve made this list so in the future these names pop up under any type of GOOG search. One of the benefits os TechCrunch is that you get indexed very quickly.
Great story Michael!
Johny w/o the engineers this scam wouldn’t be created in the first place. They decided to pick money and do something unethical. Actually its the engineers who should be blamed the most, because they are doing the most damage for the least amount of money.
This guy will make millions from the scam, the engineer will make the same $$$ he would have made elsewhere.
Hey Naveen,
Gogaddy called and they want their M.O. back.
Seriously, ever tried to buy a domain from those douchebags? They try every trick in book to shovel unwanted add-ons down your throat. It’s sickening.
Mike,
Nice work. Hopefully this IPO gets derailed.
Good work Michael. Your post was very informative. Hopefully, your sleuthing will save someone from losing a pile of money in what most likely is a worthless Intelius IPO. Naveen Jain shouldn’t be allowed to run any company after what happened at InfoSpace. As you stated, one would think Jain would adhere to the straight and narrow this time around. Go figure…
naveen is a criminal, plain and simple. back in 1996 my company contracted to write some code for him, and once he took delivery of the code he refused to pay.
we would call his office and his secretary would say “he’s not in, sorry”
but then i’d call back 5 minutes later and say I was a reporter from XYZ newspaper or magazine wanting to do a story on him, and i would instantly get put through to him. as soon as he heard my voice he would hang up.
let me put this clearly- he is a criminal. he had about 50 lawsuits from people at infospace who he ripped off and he barely avoided going to jail by giving out hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements to those folks.. he made over 1 billion dollars by unloading infospace shares 2 weeks before the stock collapsed, so he still has a ton of cash even after paying those settlements.
but wall street doesnt care about crime, all they care about is a hot IPO they can make money on.
@32 and some others, innocent until proven guilty. A lesson in life, don’t read acquisitions on blogs as law. If you do, you are as gullible as the people who fell for the scam.
Also, there is a difference between being lawfully wrong and being morally wrong. What they did is dishonest, but not unlawful. They did not cook their books nor did they make up lies about his company (ie, he did not mislead investors by making up a phantom buyer with a $1.3 billion dollars deal). This happens all the time in business. If you don’t see that, you are not only gullible but also delusional.
What bother me the most about Mr. Jaim is his picture. It makes me want to bash his face in.
Nice work Mr. Arrington, both with your investigative article and finding that very instigating picture. And I do prefer you breaking up a long blog up over having video comments…
Good stuff. If the information provided on this article is true, this IPO has the imprint of class action suit all over it.
http://www.visionwebhosting.net/ is another such dubious company. They claim that they support all the latest versions of the software but when you sign up you will find out that its not what they promised.
And even worse is you sign up for monthly payment and they charge for the whole year and even though they guarantee 21 day money back I certainly did not any of the cents back.
It such a shitty company!! Nobody ever host your stuff there
Another one of these Indian Gurus! Unfortunately these type of Gurus only know how to scam people! Shame! Shame!
Apparently a lot of people here never studied economics in college. I feel the stupidity of the mob, or rather “group thinking”. When someone offers a service, you agree to pay for the service, that’s a sale contract. If they offer the service in a deceptive manner than what it’s advertised, then you have the right to get part or all your money back. Otherwise, no.
Based on some of the people’s logic here, if I agree to the service provided, and I don’t like at the end of the provided service, I can get my refund? If that’s the case, Google would need to give back good part of their advertisement money because I spent $50 buying Google ads but never got a customer from it!!! That’s $50, you know that Google scammed me out of because I thought from the service they offered, I should expect customer to buy my product.
I hope Michael doesn’t get his money back.
I never fell a victim for Intelius.. I knew it was sketchy.
http://mikesmoneyclub.blogspot.com/
first clue i got about what a fraud naveen was when i read “showstoppers” by a former wsj reporter. the book is about the windows nt project. i’d never heard of naveen at that point but actually felt sorry for the guy he was ripped so badly in that book. other than the personal sacrifices people made, it was generally very glowing of people involved in that project.
then i was down the hall from the guy when he was at msn at its inception. he was a junior-mid level marketer. it became a running joke about the titles he came up with for press interviews. at first you just thought the reporter got it wrong but then time after time he’d have some title like “global managing director” when he was just a product manager. at that point, you knew he was the source for those bs titles (which he’d deny). everyone knew he was a fraud and were happy when he left to start infospace.
for awhile they were the hot company in seattle and i’d warn friends away from them even though it seemed like the path to riches. i simply said that you couldn’t trust the guy farther than you could throw him. they later thanked me when the house of cards came down.
the list goes on about his list of deceptions from mega commitments he’d make to non-profits so he could be listed at the “bill gates” level of giving and he’d never deliver on the pledge. my 1st grader could do due diligence on him and know he’s a “bad guy”. those bozos on wall st better get their $hit together or they are going to be left holding the bag.
#43, what you wrote has nothing to do with economics.
Get ‘em Mike, get ‘em good.
Not to play devil’s advocate, but regarding the actual service, I have used it before with success. This is no way says anything about the integrity of the company, but I thought I’d chime in nonetheless.
Mike,
excellent piece. these are the kinds of stories that are usually broken by the WSJ - congrats.
As a side note, feels like the comments on this blog are getting worse / less informed - any thoughts about adding some kind of reputation system (e.g., digg style) that use reputation to filter comments?
@Johnny Law
If you really worked on Wall Street, you wouldn’t mistake “due diligence” with not giving a sh*t.
I was a SVP in the underwriting division of a bulge bracket i-bank in a former life and we make money when companies go public. Period.
If Intelius wants to go public and can, it will be taken public.
Why should anybody at underwriting i-banks care about where the company’s revenue comes from? When it goes public, it’ll pay for new Maseratis.
I can see why you went from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Better move.