A year ago we wrote about Naveen Jain’s current startup, Intelius. Jain left previous the company he founded, InfoSpace, in disgrace in late 2002 after violating insider trading laws and other sketchy activities. After leaving InfoSpace Jain started Intelius, across the street from his old offices in Bellevue, Washington.
In that post we outlined how Intelius, at the time in the process of becoming a public company, was growing revenue via a scam:
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.
Now, nearly a year later, Intelius is being deservedly buried in lawsuits and consumer complaints. A long Seattle Weekly expose on Jain and Intelius describes the various legal issues facing the company: 121 complaints to the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, 822 complaints to the Better Business Bureau, a lawsuit in King County Superior Court accusing Jain of inflating financial figures and a Federal Trade Commission investigation for possible violation of laws regulating how credit information is disseminated. More at TechFlash.
As an aside, all these negative stories are really piling up for Google searches on Naveen Jain. Jain has clearly been using basic SEO tacticts to try to drive those stories down. He maintains at a handful of sites, Naveenjain.com, naveenjain.org and naveenjain.us, naveenjain.info, all of which use his full name in almost every sentence and talk about his philanthropic efforts. All of the sites link to eachother, creating a small link farm. Still, the bad news is out there.
Very shameful.
“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.”
In my book, this is worse than a phishing scam. I hope there are no comments here that tries to defend such practices on the grounds that “It is the user’s fault for not reading the fine print” or “If you want privacy, don’t use the Internet” or “This is a private company, they can do whatever they want”
I am sorry. This is complete violation of user’s trust. This needs to be stopped immediately before it harms more people … especially in the time of global economic distress.
From India
Anjali Sen
The only difference between this and ‘Nigerian Scams’ is that this is perpetuated from a beautiful office by a known fellow and has a ‘business model’ based on fine prints.
This is fraud period!
It reminds me of ‘lobbying firms’ which are nothing but bribing machinery.
LIFE SENTENCE TO ALL CRIMINALS!!!
BassssTards
http://health.okguru.com
He makes Indian people look bad…
yep, shameful acts done by him.
Intelius is scam no doubt about it but the best way to fight back against their system and ther CS reps telling you they cannot refund your money is to say that you intend to dispute all the charges. Chargebacks are very costly to intelius or any business so to avoid that they will issue full refunds in a heartbeat. A friend of mine was scammed by them and when he tried to get them to refund they incessantly told him no. As soon as he threatend to dispute the charges they were suddenly VERY cooperative.
I performed a $.99 search for a phone number and the next thing I know I’m charged $19.95! This Intelius group is a huge fraud! I have already begun the process of “unauthorized charges” to my credit card with my banking institution! There so called “terms and conditions’ are so ambigiously placed in the advertisement no one ever see’s it, I’m certain of that! I will fight their charge to my card with extreme vigor!
Our law firm is Plaintiffs’ counsel in a class action lawsuit filed against Intelius and their partners in the Central District of California. If you have information you would like to share, or to assist in the prosecution of this case, you can contact me at:
William R. Restis, Esq.
Finkelstein & Krinsk LLP
501 West Broadway, Suite 1250
San Diego, CA 92101
Toll Free: (877) 493 5366
Fax: (619) 238 5425
email: wrr@classactionlaw.com
This guy is a train wreck. If memory serves his son was aggressively posting on Techcrunch blog after last years post. I’m sure he’ll return to defend his fathers honor.
Another doucebag exposed.
yeah, that was here http://www.tech...dads-character/
whole situation is sad.
You are geting better at the SEO tricks as well Michael. A very nice indented listing.
Will be interesting to see if he retails top spot once Google has done its link calcs etc.
sad story
Did this guy ever work for microsoft… crazy, what a scammer. Hope he gets sent down..
Yes, he worked for Microsoft from 1989 to 1996, according to the Forbes article.
Presumably that’s where he learned his ethics.
yes he was part of it
Rediculous comment about ethics at Microsoft. Your comment only shows that you are youself lacking in character.
fake baracko do you even know how microsoft started? if i recall gates stole everything from apple. havent you seen the movie. shows whos really the noob
“gates stole everything from apple”? So DOS was an Apple creation & Lotus notes were masterminded by Jobs? It must be a fact- it was IN A MOVIE!!! And nothing was stolen by Jobs from Xerox PARC??
So who’s the noob, noob?
In technology world, they don’t call it steal, they call it reverse engineering.
I’m just disappointed this (alleged) scam went on for so long.
I agree. How did this go on for so long if there has been lawsuit after lawsuit?
I love how he has four different websites boasting about how wonderful he is. Now since this information is out, I highly doubt these sites will be in existence any longer.
speaking of scams it reminds me of Blue Hippo http://www.bluehippo.com/ CEO Joeseph Rensin.
Same background as Jain. Formerly CEO of a public company that imploded. Of course not before he made a few hundred million for himself. Then he launched Blue Hippo to rip off the public
this rascal is a rogue and a thief. he should be locked up in guantanmo and the key thrown away.
That’s a pretty big scam. I wonder how many companies get away with a minor scam that only slightly irritates the consumers.
Is this guy really worth 2.2 billion? Why does he need to scam people at this point?
No, he’s a worthless scumbag. He’s worth nothing.
He owns $2.2 billion. Only foolish people measure a person’s “worth” by the amount of money he owns. The amount of money he owns is temporary, and might well be diminished as a result of lawsuits.
Your use of the phrase “need to scam people” suggests to me that you do not understand the concepts of honesty and integrity. Nobody, no matter how poor, “needs” to scam anybody.
Mee-ow.
Take a nap, buddy. You’re awfully catty this morning.
it is amazing that in a country like the USA where privacy is valued, these companies capture the info from publicly available databases and sell it easily. Whereas in a country like India, though privacy is not as much of a value, hardly any information is available.
the US has to change how the government databases and public records of individuals like driver’s license info etc. are made available for free to such commercial entities which shamefully exploit and trouble citizens. I am sure the old laws didn’t anticipate the internet and worldwide easy access to such info.
People in India have bigger problems to worry about than privacy, like food and shelter and (occasionally) Pakistan.
Privacy is something that rich people care about.
point taken but that isn’t the point here is it? People not worrying about privacy could have led to a situation where more data is avaialble freely/easily. But that isn’t the case currently. But maybe the situation could manifest there a few years down the line… hope not!
Another one from India eventually after the Satyam
Laughing at your idiocy.
By your logic, all people of Italian heritage are gangsters. Idiotic.
Also by your logic – you are either a terrorist or a suicide bomber. Idiotic.
Although clearly a generalization, many people from India have learned to do whatever it takes to survive and eventually prosper. It also appears to be pretty common business in India to have to pay government officials to “grease the skids.” People are a by-product of their environment.
I do not see the same tendencies from Indians born in the US. I have worked with tons of Indians and it is what it is.
Jain has always been known for doing WHATEVER it takes for him and his family to prosper.
It is really unfortunate that this is being treated as an Indian cultural issue. This seems to be an exploitation of the fine print use that has been created and perfected by Americans, not Indians. When I was in the US, I was aghast at banks charging me all kinds of fees, completely legal because it was in the long fine print, but totally unethical from my perspective. I learned quickly to read it. Naveen seems to have just learned the American way of doing this kind of business.
While I agree corruption is a menace in India, America is not completely bereft of it either (I know there is no comparison given the orders of magnitude difference but I want to make a small point here; so, excuse me). What we call bribery in India has been legalized in America and is called lobbying. In many cases, what would be considered a tip in US is considered bribery in India.
Again, Naveen learned his business acumen in US, not in India, not to say that such things don’t happen in India. But, then, they happen everywhere. Just check the Wikipedia article on Accounting Scandals. You will see a list of 43 scams in the last three decades. 34 of them are from the US. The list doesn’t include scamsters like Madoff or Stanford, who will probably have the Naveens and the Satyams for breakfast.
And don’t you think US executives pocketing the bailout money as bonuses is a scandal itself? Why are you so accepting of your hard-earned money paid as taxes being doled out to them when people are losing jobs? From whatever angle you look at it, I can’t find any ethics there.
There is good and bad everywhere and in all cultures. Please stop making this an Indian issue.
Madoff, Enron, blah…blah…blah… This doesn’t make American business practices unethical and all Americans cultural misfits, as a general rule. Likewise, a Naveen Jain doesn’t make crookedness an Indian habit.
Please focus on the issue at hand and what is legally or illegally done in this case, and how many such other things are commonplace in every other organization that you deal with. Going off on a tangent is waste of time; unfortunately, how much ever I wanted to not get embroiled into this, I had to answer it… and, waste my time.
I have no words for such people.
I did get into a similar scam once where I was charged $20 for getting a free ringtone. It was actually signing up for $20/month service for getting a free ringtone and everything was in fine prints.
I think this fineprint should be made illegal when it is related to money in any case.
this is a long term bug which can be fixed only by someone like FSF or commercially like Google. Maybe Obama or Lawrence Lessig. If you can’t make the courts make sane laws, you should make them irrelevant, by circumventing their jurisdiction totally, by new technology and then watch carefulyl when new laws are passed for the new technology. This needs to be told to and understood by everyone because manipulating the first move of the game is the standard practice. The courts must change their language in technology law.
Instead of herewithunder and thenceforthafter, it should be told in language like this:
Situation 1: Solution 1,2,3
No fees for a,b,c. Fees for d and e if f and j happen.
And a diagrammatic representation of if-then-else decision paths.
Pictures speak a thousand words. People can see and understand pictures much easier than words.
You also don’t need more intellectual training to understand a flowchart. Use the openclipart library that comes with openoffice to make common, standard pictures instead of programming flowchart symbols.
This idea is up for grabs – no patents, no intellectual property rights, no shit, no law.
Public domain comment.
Someone please make this – each land has different laws. That means as many sites as there are countries and law books within the countries. Each of these, MIGHTY HUGE, in terms of traffic and economic utility.
Employ unemployed lawyers to do ethical argument (difficult, but USSR is no more, Obama is in the *White* house and USA is the biggest debtor in the world) and Windows is still free because of a superior ocean of freedom software.
Lawyers can actually make the graphs using the user-friendly web2.0/web3.0 UI – and someone can pay them to do that work – the quintillion lines of herewithunder and therefromafter that they have massively flatulated over the past 300 years
Decentralized payment is the best mechanism, with the resultant work going to Public Domain, not even CC licensed. I think it would be good to take advice from Jimbo Wales and Larry Lessig for thsi project – and of course the EFF and FSF.
Make the engine GPLed (”version 2 or above, at your option”), integrate it with openSocial, Facebook, Yahoo BOSS, GData, make iPhone and openMoko clients, Eclipse and J2ME clients and also a yubnub and ubiquity interface.
So there, something good for the macho RealMen(TM) coders out there in Silicon Valley with no jobs but great ideas and talents and decent savings to buy cloud space.
For what it’s worth, this project of converting legalese into pictures and decision graphs which can be navigated by mouse gestures, could be called f_ckthefineprint.com
As horrifying as this may seem, there are far worse crooks out there on the ‘net. Mike – can TC start running a weekly column on con men/women? 20/20 just did a great piece on work-from-home scams, but they have no idea how the Internet works. I wish someone with actual knowledge of SEO would take on some of these frauds.
This. ScamCrunch?
this isn’t /b/
I like the idea…
This guy has nothing on LeapFish / ePerks CEO former disgraced Reply.com founder, Ben Behrouzi…… $20 is nothing, LeapFish will take you for $5k in a heartbeat.
Met the guy once in late 95. He wasn’t at Microsoft anymore and was starting Infospace. He was a scam artist back then and he’s one now too. It’s not hard to make money illegally, hell just run some coke from DR to FL. 1/2 mill in a couple of weeks. Now go ahead and try to do it legally. MUCH harder.
“All of the sites link to eachother, creating a small link farm. Still, the bad news is out there.”
Obviously the people he hired to do the SEO have no idea what they are doing if they just linked the sites to each other. Google would just see them as one.
Tickets, music and now this asshole – your on fire Mike, TC is not the same without you.
He looks like a pedophile.
hahaha… yea right. I upvote you
FYI, this sentence near the end has some typos:
“Jain has clearly been using basic SEO **tacticts** to try to drive those stories down. He maintains **at** a handful of sites”
Mike,
You are on the roll. Your past few posts have been excellent … keep them coming.
Anjali Sen
yeah his vacation sure has him coming back more fiery
FINE PRINT:
All users should read this carefully. Its there and its visible. If you do not read, it is indeed YOUR fault.
How many times have you read the fine print in your insurance documents? Do you even know where they are.
Jealousy nothing else. Dont be jealous.
“He was a crook then. He is a crook now”. Looks like, he never learnt his lesson.
Well, this is all becoming too embarrasing. First Satyam and now this numbskull. His surname, Jain, means he is from the Jain Community like myself (Jainism religion is based on environment and ethics) . No doubt that he was praying to a Hindu or Jain idol every morning to help him better exploit customers out of even more money. He is not a real Jain. This guy and his stooges do not represent Jains and business ethics.
It’s not the religion, it’s the genes and the ecology-inspired mutation of the genes. Coupled with “tradition”. Most crooked groups of people have seen bad times only, never known kindness becaue they’ve never seen it, not used their emotion because their traditions and location prevent them from that. Economically many regions of the world are survival zones – some deliberately created economic survival zones, sustained for centuries (yes, Africa, Afghanistan, middle America, Desert regions all over the world, like the Middle East). When you live in survival mode with no education and no exposure to ethics and civil behaviour, “whatever it takes” is the result. This problem can be fixed by education and citizenship (which means more education) but corporations don’t like it that way. They want a jungle, with no rules or rules which they control, and so they actively support maintenance of such survival traditions.
Jains come from arid regions in western India, so this is attributed as a primary cause. Same with interior India where feudal structures still have their stranglehold on society. It is not a problem limited to Indian alone. Middle America has done the same. Many African suffer from the same. Surprisingly, non-desert Europe was full of this kind of behaviour for the last millenium!
It’s a mixture of ecology, genes, culture, tradition, customs, beliefs and much more. But, education changes things radically quickly. And that is precisely why democracies run on fiercely capitalist traditions are not as competitive in education as they are in business. We have evolved from animals and that shows. It is upto us to undo the animal programming. Blaming one section of the immigrant population is not going to help the situation.
I am not obscuring the immediate cause or defending the rogue, I’m merely stating the scientific fact that it is not just him or his race or community and not just any one country or a set of countries. It’s global, and more political, economic, ecological and genetic than you think.
And education can change that. And that is where the focus must be. Not education that gets you rich quickly, but education that makes you a responsible Earthling.
Any relation to Sam Jain? Another guy involved with various internet scams
http://en.wikip...g/wiki/Sam_Jain
no, the name is just a theonym. they’re not likely related.
I have mentioned before that leaving credit card information with intermediaries is bound to have an effect. We at KanataIT are proposing the total elimination of disclosing credit / debit / checking information using the PayTC.
See our video of how the PayTC works at:
http://www.kana...aytc_video.html
Regards,
HM
From what I’ve heard about this guy, he’s already wealthy beyond belief. Its amazing that he has not lost his appetitie for making more money.
Saw this at his linkedin profile.
“I have worked with Naveen for several years. I have found him to be among the brightest business minds I have encountered. Further, his ethics and honesty are above reproach. I would recommend Naveen to anyone looking for a good business partner or associate.” August 28, 2008
Paul Cook, CFO, Intelius”
Uhm.. Paul, do you want to rethink that?
You sure that wasn’t Paul CROOK?
Jain is a front man for an Indian / international organized crime syndicate. He is not operating as a rogue. He couldn’t get this far if he were not kicking back proceeds to the agency.
yes and he’s a reptilian humanoid too
Wow what a fucking scumbag. He’s a piece of shit.
I said it then, I’ll say it again, this is one of the best stories TC has done. Now we just need you guys to investigate CDS’s and CDO’s.
Can’t believe UBS and Deutsche were signing off on the IPO. Oh wait, no that’s about right. They’re scammers too in a way…
Its not about him. Its about so many idiots on the Web. Lets face it: Web users have to be educated. Not the ones joining the web early – but people rushing into it right now. Its all about transparency and security these days
a*
This Indian immigration should never been given his green card and should be hauled by the INS to some prison. Then see how well he does scamming other prisoners? My guess is that he will not come out of prison alive. Shameful scum back!
We have enough scammers like Madoff in this country. We do not need scammer Aliens. GITMO has just been emptied. This is a good time to put all these scammers in there and buried them.
This guy is a disaster. It just never stopped once the scam started. He should have been prosecuted during the first violation and sent back to India. He would be able to do such activities there easily. Bastard !!
From India
the real question is why did it take the courts and the rest of the public to figure out his scam? TC had it a year ago.
Thta this guy isn’t in jail is amazing. He ripped off the stockholders of INSP. Essentially a pump and dump, with short term revenues booked because of barter transactions, then dumped the stock at peaks. He also was insider trading in his kids accounts. His new company is nothing new…just a different scam. That the SEC would even consider letting the company go public and that any investor would ever give him money is amazing.
I think the FBI must get a full list of people he has dealt with, got funding from and funded in the past two decades. And their current work and investments must be investigated too. That would produce a much more useful set of data for a better analysis of the modus operandi of his group.
Mike,
Yes, good memory.. i remember you writing and getting lot of comments from his family members as well..
Wow! Never knew we can use SEO like this..
tks, Nag
Mr. Naveen was nice man to me. He opened his house and heart to me. I am very much disappointment with this inauspicious event turn only.
“Pishabh Badmaash” means “piss crook” in Urdu-Hindi.
This person is probably an India hater, and definitely a troll. Maybe from someone supporting Pakistan, maybe not. But this sounds too sick. One thing TC must not do is to censor out comments on this post. There are many ways in which these hate-filled people can be made to reflect on what they do. For that however, the comments must stay. Hope nothing gets deleted from here.
Vishalji, why you are not having my good name liked?
Michael
Here’s one of his new sites: isearch.com
There was a video with Naveen but they have now taken down it. From memory, Naveen was talking about how social networks were full of pedo’s and that isearch could help you find out the ‘real people’ behind the social network profiles. I remember thinking at the time that it sounded like an attempt to play on parent’s fears to sell a service that I couldn’t see working very well.
Here’s the original YouTube link in case someone can find a cache!
http://www.yout...h?v=mnaG5qWv4Ms
Other sites that are skeleton fronts for intellius:
lookupanyone.com
allfolks.com
Am sure there are more. Both of these are registered to intellius in the whois records, but don’t add any value other than funneling people to the intellius site.
Intellius is a scam. They have 2 sets of books. One that shows them profiting, and the other thats reality and shows them losing money.
Someone internally really needs to be the whistle blower on this disgraceful company.
From his own website:
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.
lol
Well, Kodak Gallery just changed its Terms of Service. Unless you pay up $4.99 or $19.99 per year depending on your storage space used, you could LOSE all your uploaded pictures. Sounds like a very similar tactic to me.
Of course, they have a right to do business. So, if FREE wasn’t working for them, they have a right to survive by introducing this.
But I still feel it is completely unethical. It would have been honorable of them to do this by also allowing users to download their albums (with original quality pictures) in an easy way. Currently, you cannot download your high resolution pictures at all except by asking them for an archives CD, for which, of course, you must pay.
I don’t think it is asking for too much if I want to download my original high-res pictures, especially if they are changing their terms.
THAT IS AN UNETHICAL PRACTICE, IF NOT DOWNRIGHT SCAM.
What gives them a right to disseminate personal information?
For free on the internet, or for pay, it’s not their property.
If you go to their site to look up how to opt out
of their database, they presume that you
are a signed customer bound by their contract.
I have never been a signed customer and
so I REJECT their contract obligations.
For example: Bound by WA law?
Only if you are a contract customer does this
contract stipulation hold.
To opt out they require you to FAX them a
photocopy of your drivers license with the
photo and ID number blocked out.
To anybody who is NOT bound by their
“”contract”" I suspect that a nice cease and
desist letter would obligate them to stop
giving out your information.
When I word mine, I will also declare that
I also DO NOT want them SELLING any
information on me, either.
I would suspect that while many people
might get their info taken out of free searches,
the company would continue to give it
out to PAYING customers.
Does anybody have any recommendations
on the best wording for a cease and desist
letter to send to Intelius?
Don’t forget the part about stopping your
information from being given out to
PAYING customers.
Don’t forget every family member.
I recently noticed on a free search on
myself that within the last year, somehow
the name of my ex-wife from FIFTEEN years
ago got added onto the records. WTF?
I read their details and found out that they
accept information from your “associates”.
Herein read harassers and stalkers.
I never authorized them to make my information
public in the first place, nor to SELL it.\
I sure as heck am not going to feel obligated to
give them more detailed or more accurate
information in order to stop them from
disseminating the information for money or not.
WHY DO THESE COMPANIES DO THIS?
So many companies have this business model where they rip people off with the fine print…. and then you check back and they’re dinging your credit card each month for $20.00.
Companies like Big Fish Games do this to little old grandmothers… I think older women are their primary customer base so they’re easy to steal from…
All of these companies do this. Like the poster above says, they will absolutely refuse to give your money back … unless you bring up contesting and BBB.
It’s sad.
Just filed my complaint against Intellius with the Federal Trade Commission today. Hopefully, with enough of us doing that someone will take action against this slimeball. Thanks, Michael Arrington, for your information.
Great article. The screening buisness is full of higly ethical and proeessional firms. There is no reason to use rip-off artists like Intelius. What is very interesting is that on these sites, there are very few defenders of Intelius. Even thier own employees msut knwo its a rip-off and will not get involved. Lets hope the FTC shuts them show. It would be interesting to know what Jain think when he reads these comments. I wonder if he cares that so many people think he is dirt.
more than dirt
uska ladka uski g*** thota hei
Thanks for this site TC.
As soon as I got my confirmation of intelius order and notification of a free 7 day trial for Identity protection, I realized this was a scam and googled intelius.
A quick call to my credit card company put a stop to his rip-off before he could nail me.
You’re in a jungle . . be vigilant.
I was just scammed 100.00 by this jerk. Supposedly I will get my money back after threatening ot go to the Attorney general. We will see…
SCAMMER. DISGRACEFUL, THEIVES…over all pigs!!!!
(appologies to the pigs
How would I voice my compalint to assist in shutting them down?
I was conned for the $19.95 subscription charge too. Unfortunately I have only just noticed. It’s interesting because the company has a reasonable board of directors. Peter Currie is a good board member. I can only assume the management team kept this practice close to their chests.