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Behind The "Work-At-Home" Street Spam Signs 572

Posted by Hemos from the tracking-down-the-man-with-the-plan dept.
Sabalon writes: "If you live almost anywhere in the U.S. then you have probably seen tons of the 'Make thousands working at home' signs tacked up almost everywhere. Cockeyed.com has an interesting story of one persons quest to uncover the source behind all this money just waiting to be made, the company behind it (or not behind it for legal reasons), and an oversaturated market." Spam, just another medium.
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Behind The "Work-At-Home" Street Spam Signs More

Behind The "Work-At-Home" Street Spam Signs

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  • Also (Score:3, Funny)

    by RumGunner ( 457733 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @01:53PM (#3324538) Homepage
    While you're working at home, make sure to lose those extra, unsightly pounds! Burn the fat away!

  • what mystery? (Score:5, Funny)

    by macsox ( 236590 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @01:54PM (#3324554) Journal
    here in the south bay, the 'make thousands from home' people appear to be paying people to put up thousands of 'lose 30 pounds in 30 days' signs.

    now those are a mystery.

  • ...not just in the US (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Claric ( 316725 ) <shock.r@noSPAm.freeuk.com> on Thursday April 11, 2002 @01:55PM (#3324574)
    We get these in the UK.

    "Earn £300 a day working from home! Part time or full time!"

    I always think it's either telesales or some pyramid scheme. The latter seems more obvious.

    Claric
    • Same is true for Brazil. They are everywhere. Street signs, newspapers, e-mail SPAM etc
      Looks like this is a worldwide problem.
      Looks like the article (I only managed to read the first page) draws the conclusing that it's only 1 company. It would be interesting to find out if it's this same one company that is doing it worldwide.
    • I was at the American embassy a while ago and saw a sign posted warning americans not to attempt to set up MLM scams in Europe. I asked the visa officer about it, and he said the embassy was aware of a number of americans currently in prison for setting up amway or herbalife MLM scams.

      When the fraud police see the posters going up, they track back the number and arrest the scammer. Locals are allowed to avoid prison time by cooperating fully in testifying against their recruiter. If the recruiter is a local, lather, rinse, repeat. At the top, they always catch an american or a russian, and throw them in prison.

      Americans tend to be ex-military trailer trash types who did a tour on a NATO base, and think they can come back and scam the locals, since they discover the american market is completely saturated a million times over. The russians are mafia wannabes who add physical intimidation, threats, blackmail and other nasty things to increase ROI. Its the russians the police are after, since there are other crimes than just conspiracy and finacial fraud. But they prosecute the americans just as vigorously, because they tend to make full confessions and claim that since fraud is legal in the US, it must be legal here.

      Ex-pat groups always get americans or brits trying to set up a new MLM network. But the ex-pat types tend to be intelligent enough to know it can't work, so the scammers move on.

      But I still see posters around town. Stopping these scams even with good laws on the books is like playing whak-a-mole.

      the AC
  • I always wondered about those signs myself, but I never really wanted to get involved enough to find out what the scam was. (In the same vein: Summer Jobs ($15/hr) postings of about the same level of specificity... another bit of weirdness I'd never trusted.

    You want a few more interesting things collected from around the Boston area: OBEY (www.obeygiant.com; turns out someone is making a fair amount of money off a weird Andre-the-Giant obsession), "Back the B.B." (before they actually started digging the Big Dig, someone from East Boston had a zillion of these signs on telephone poles promoting something called the Boston Bypass), and Groovasaurus (a local band with a large bumper sticker budget).

    /Brian
    • Don't forget my favorite: "Hi" a sticker with a simple cartoon drawing of
      a guy waving. They're numbered, so I supposed you can look around for
      the entire series! :-)

  • I don't know about you... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by red5 ( 51324 ) <gired5 AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday April 11, 2002 @01:58PM (#3324598) Homepage Journal
    I don't know about you,
    But every time I see these I make sure to take them all down and through them in the trash.
    I figure that if it's on public property and I'm a tax payer.
    I have a right to remove them if I see fit.
    Now if IBM got fined for the Love Peace Linux graffiti.
    I wonder what these guys get.
    • i take them down too, if anyone ever stops me and asks about it, im picking up litter
      • What's scary is that the first couple times I felt guilty like I was doing something wrong.
        Now I realize I am right and I rip them up very dramatically first so people can see.
        I haven't seen one in my area in a while I guess I scared them off.
        :)
    • There's actually proposed legislation in Toronto to ban [thestar.com] postering on utility poles. I think this legislation, along with the sentiment in the parent post, is misplaced ... these people have a right to express themselves, and postering is a reasonable and non-destructive activity. It might be unsightly, but so are SUVs, and nobody's banning those, much as they richly deserve it.
      • They have this in Ottawa.
        My dad told me about when he was a kid putting flyers on utility poles to promote his radio show.
        A cop stopped him and gave him a fine.
        I remember in Peterborough we had community boards where you could put up posters etc.
        I still think if you have the right to post it up I have the right to tear it down though and I don't mind using it either :)
    • If only we could get people doing that to the signs all the damn politicians put up around election time.
    • Someone here in Minneapolis made stickers that say "SCAM," and posts them over the last 4 digits of the phone number.

      Posting the signs on utility poles is illegal in the first place, but rarely enforced.

  • SPAM (Score:2)

    by Indras ( 515472 )
    Spam, just another medium.

    Yes, but unlike other mediums, SPAM can come in many different consistencies, can be used to make sculptures of small animals, and (rumor has it) is edible.

  • WOW! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 11, 2002 @01:58PM (#3324606)
    Rob Cockerham, a very pleasant guy who is sort of everybody's favorite mad inventor in this area (midtown Sacramento) runs that page... At the risk of dooming him to eternal slashdottedness, I urge you all to spend a half hour poking around the site at his various experiments. I have been lucky enough to be present for the polarbear/ketchup-packet extermination, for instance, and saw his fake banana sculpture at the mall on many visits. What a nice fella.

  • Slashdotted, here's the text (Score:5, Informative)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @01:58PM (#3324608) Homepage
    I saw a few complaints that the site was Slashdotted, so here it is for the mega-bandwidth-impaired:

    Work from Home.
    There are about 23,958 of these signs in Sacramento. That is an exaggeration, but they really are everywhere. They are nailed to telephone poles and zip-tied to chain-link fences. There are new designs all the time. All of them have a mysterious lack of information regarding what company or scheme they are promoting.

    I was always sure they were promoting a scam, I mean, people with a real money-making opportunity don't have to post it on telephone poles. They guard it with encrypted emails, copyrights and lawyers. I never bothered calling the numbers, although I was curious. When I was working at MCI back in 1998, I learned that all toll-free numbers reveal your phone number when you call them, so I didn't want to call from my home phone.

    While taking photos for the "Why would anyone want to visit Sacramento" story, I was spending a lot of time driving around taking photos. I tore down a bunch of these signs, but it seemed like a hopeless endeavor...there were hundreds of them, and they've been around for years.

    Finally, one night on Yahoo Messenger, my friend Ross suggested that I do some investigation and report on what I find. He suggested that I call them up from a pay phone & track down what they were all about. I wasn't too excited about it, after all, I was sure it was a scam.

    The very next day, I wrote down seven of the toll-free phone numbers and called them.

    The first one was 800-326-2016.

    I was sure I would just be listening to message-machines, so I wasn't nervous about calling them. The first one was a message about how mail order is the best business in the world, how it wasn't a "get-rich-quick scheme", and about how they "need help in their business". It asked me to leave my address at the tone, so they could send me a 14-page report. The message didn't say what the company was...just that it was a Fortune 500 company, described as the "fastest growing company in the industry".

    Alright, well, I hung up without leaving a message. Then I called the next three numbers.
    800-756-8424, 800-296-7519, and 800-213-6421.

    They all had the SAME message. It was a woman's voice, and she started the message with a distinctive "Ya know". In the upcoming days of phone number investigation, I heard this message dozens of times. The next one was a wrong number, the sixth number was the "ya know" message. The seventh number had a different message, but it had some aspects of the first message, "20-year industry leader" and "tap into mail-order". This message, too, was an effort to send me a 14-page booklet.

    Well. I was stunned. These signs were all over town, in scores of different designs, and they were all the work of one company. A super-secret Fortune 500 company that never put it's name of it's ugly ever-present signs.
    I walked down to the mini-mart with my head spinning. All of these signs...all of this trash...all over Sacramento. One company was responsible. I had to track them down & I had to expose them! Also, I had to get photos of the offending signs & start keeping track of the numbers so I could build a convincing case and find the whole story. Maybe my sign-sample just happened to have one source.

    On the way back from the mini-mart, I found a little one of these dumb mini-fliers taped to a news stand. It had the tell-tale figures of my mystery company, $500-$3,000/mo pt, $3,000-$10,000/mo ft. I immediately knew...it was the same people.

    It was exciting... I was almost scared.
    This company obviously had lots of people working in all sorts of ways trying to recruit new people into the business. I figured it must be a multi-level marketing company, like Amway, but I wasn't sure what the company was yet.

    The next day I woke up early and took more photo of signs, making note of the phone numbers. This isn't hard in Sacramento...they are all over the place. I found about 15 varieties in West Sacramento and Downtown. I also photographed bunch of "lose weight now" and "I lost 30lbs. in 30 days" signs, and one "Sal's Tacos" sign.

    • Here's page 2 (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheRealFixer ( 552803 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:03PM (#3324653)
      My instincts told me that the "lose weight" signs were also a scam, but I didn't have this negative reaction to Sal's Tacos sign. It was just as illegally placed, but there were two attributes that I liked about it.
      I trusted the information. "Sal's tacos, 3 blocks" with an arrow. I bet that was the truth.
      It identified the source. If this sign was attached to your fence, you could go tell Sal to remove it.
      Some of the signs I saw in West Sacramento also had web addresses on them. This is how I eventually linked the signs and the phone messages to a single corporation.

      With about 15 new toll-free numbers, I went back to the pay phone and started calling around. I got a variety of new messages, but they all had elements of that first "ya know" message. I began transcribing the messages so I could keep track. Eventually I noted 10 "work from home" messages, and three "lose weight now" messages.
      Drizzly rain drove me inside to the warm, inviting internet. The internet sites advertised on the signs had names like homebiz4u.com and workforriches.com, and on the surface, they hid their corporate identity very well. Each site had photos of happy entrepreneurs basking in their riches. These "success stories" were their undoing.

      Before I actually tracked down the source of this company, I began to suspect it was Herbalife. I did a search for "plastic signs" on google and found a site called MLM watch. An article on their site mentioned that 60% of "work from home" offers were from Herbalife. That jibed with my findings, except for that in Sacramento, it was 97%.
      I also found Causs.org, a nationwide organization against these signs, which they call "street spam". They have members in about 35 states, including at least one guy in Sacramento. The guy in Sac had photos of the signs he had torn down, and photos of a guy putting them up! I was impressed!

      Back to my own research, I pored over the homebiz4NE1.com site, looking for a hint about what the product was.
      Eventually I found it. About halfway down on the "success stories" page, there was a happy couple identified as Kevin & Amy L. Their testimonial showed that they "aren't a slave to company relocations", and that they are now able to "enjoy the outdoors year-round". They also had a photo of their four kids with Santa hats playing in a pool with an inflatable Orca. The photo was named "lausen_kids.jpg". This was just the kind of information an internet detective needs.

      I searched Google for "Kevin Lausen" and voila! The first result was on the official Herbalife website. Kevin Lausen and his four kids were an Herbalife success story. I had found the link!

      Herbalife is the company. Their stock is traded on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, and they have been in business for about 20 years. They sell health and diet products, as well as material to start and maintain your own business. They sell their products across the nation and the world through a network of "independent distributors".
      These are the people who put up the signs. These are the people trying to make US$1500-US$5000 a month. At the time, I hated their guts, but as I learned more about what Herbalife had promised them, the hatred subsided.

      • Here's Page 3 (Score:5, Informative)

        by maddkatt78 ( 570922 ) <.moc.ocgpn. .ta. .jsrewohs.> on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:20PM (#3324794)
        All of these signs were promoting the products of one corporation, but they were being constructed and posted by regular people in my community, trying to make a buck. I knew deep inside that the people I was really after were the people that run the Herbalife Corporation itself. They had, through their actions or inaction, created a chain of events that created a rag-tag marketing steamroller. This "Work from Home" steamroller continuously plasters my town with cheap promotional signs. My solution in the past had been to tear down the signs, but I began to realize that wasn't a solution at all. I needed to do something else. I didn't know how to proceed. My mind was a like a blender for two days, whirring with guerrilla tactics and diplomatic approaches. Could I stop an entire corporation? Would they slap a big lawsuit on me? Did they make big donations to local politicians? Does anyone else care about this enough to join me? What if I just made new signs that said "herbalife" with an arrow pointing to the other signs, could I get other people involved? There are laws against these signs in West Sacramento (link) and in the City of Sacramento (link), but the Herbalife Corporation can't exactly be held responsible for what their "independent distributors" do, can they? They seem to be shielded by a layer of independence and artful camouflage. I could feel myself losing steam. I didn't know how to focus my energy, and it was all getting wasted tracking down Herbalife websites. The incredible maze of the whole operation astounded me. The Herbalife name was so hidden, it was ridiculous! At some point, I remembered that old commercial from 1971 with the crying Indian. I looked him up on Google and found, not only his photo, but a quick-time copy of the commercial! (link) This was just the kind of motivation I needed. Here is the text of the Crying Indian commercial from Keep America Beautiful. This was exactly what I needed to hear. People had been fighting big-business pollution for years, and that was what I was going to do. The first step is to link Herbalife with these signs in the minds of as many people as possible. My best connection to people is my website, so if you could please send this web address to a friend, I would appreciate it.... particularly if that friend runs CNN.com. Of course, most big-time community leaders that might be able to steer Herbalife into a change don't spend much time surfing the web, so I am also working on a letter-writing campaign to raise awareness. I organized the 65 or so sign photos I had taken so far and arranged them onto a single sheet. I added some text, "on telephone poles, mailboxes and newsstands, they litter the landscape. Can you believe they are all from one company?". I asked my sister to help me compose a letter to mayor Fargo and the next day I sent off my first envelope of anti-marketing material. I would also like to discourage new potential Herbalife customers from getting involved with this company. From what I have learned so far, it is very, very difficult to profit as an Herbalife distributor.

        • Re:Here's Page 3 (Score:5, Funny)

          by Art Tatum ( 6890 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @03:22PM (#3325230)
          What is this, a group project?
      • My mom works for a business very much like Herbalife, called Eola. Its a pyramid network marketing type thing, but it brings in around 2k$ a month, and thats just working on it 10ish hours a week. Year before last, we even won a cruise in the Bahamas for free, because so many people signed up underneath my mom in the pyramid

    • The company behind it is Herbalife (Score:5, Informative)

      by east_bay_pete ( 96651 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:15PM (#3324764) Homepage
      Which is ironic, because they recently put out a press release about street spam [yahoo.com]:

      Herbalife Names Compliance Officer to Ensure Distributors Adhere to Marketing and Sales Policies

      LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 21, 2002--Herbalife International, Inc. (Nasdaq:HERBA - news; Nasdaq:HERBB - news) today announced the appointment of Timothy J. Sweeney as senior vice president for finance and compliance.

      Since assuming his position in early February, Mr. Sweeney has been reviewing and strengthening Herbalife's marketing and sales policies. One of Mr. Sweeney's primary areas of responsibility is to ensure that the Company's distributors adhere to Herbalife's rules.

      ``Herbalife enjoys a valued reputation as a respected manufacturer and marketer of nutritional, weight management and personal care products, and it is important that this continue to be protected,'' said Frank X. Tirelli, president and chief executive officer of Herbalife. ``Tim is an extremely diligent and accomplished professional. We are very pleased to have him in this position.''

      As one of his first acts to protect and enhance Herbalife's good reputation, Mr. Sweeney contacted the American Association of Code Enforcement, a professional association in the United States and Canada, to discuss issues associated with the use of signs by Herbalife Distributors. As a result, Mr. Sweeney recommended and Herbalife agreed to prohibit Herbalife Distributors from posting advertising signs on any public property or on any private property without the express permission of the owner, even if such posting is allowed by state or local laws.

      ``Our new policy is good for Herbalife and for our image,'' said Mr. Sweeney. ``The proliferation of signs is simply not consistent with the excellent image of Herbalife products, the professionalism of our dedicated Herbalife Distributors and our efforts to be a good corporate citizen.''

      Rick Wolf, president of the American Association of Code Enforcement, added, ``We are all excited about Herbalife's voluntary response to our concerns, and we look forward to continuing to work with Mr. Sweeney to protect the Herbalife image by ensuring that its policies are enforced.''

      Herbalife manufactures a wide range of nutritional, weight management and personal care items and markets them in 54 countries worldwide through a network of independent Distributors who purchase the products directly from the Company. In 2001, the Company had net retail sales of $1.66 billion.
      • What this says is that the campaign is starting to have an effect. This could be a coincidental case of Herbalife attacking the same problem (and sincerely intending to address it), It could also be a legal facade. If they tell people "we don't suggest doing this" with this including detailed instructions and a wink-wink nudge-nudge, then they can claim plausable deniability if it ever goes to court (or congress).

        If it's an insincere effort on Herbalife's part, then a good deal more effort is going to be required before they feel the need to seriously address the problem.

    • All of these signs were promoting the products of one corporation, but they were being constructed and posted by regular people in my community, trying to make a buck.

      I knew deep inside that the people I was really after were the people that run the Herbalife Corporation itself. They had, through their actions or inaction, created a chain of events that created a rag-tag marketing steamroller. This "Work from Home" steamroller continuously plasters my town with cheap promotional signs.

      My solution in the past had been to tear down the signs, but I began to realize that wasn't a solution at all. I needed to do something else.
      I didn't know how to proceed.

      My mind was a like a blender for two days, whirring with guerrilla tactics and diplomatic approaches. Could I stop an entire corporation? Would they slap a big lawsuit on me? Did they make big donations to local politicians? Does anyone else care about this enough to join me? What if I just made new signs that said "herbalife" with an arrow pointing to the other signs, could I get other people involved?

      There are laws against these signs in West Sacramento (link) and in the City of Sacramento (link), but the Herbalife Corporation can't exactly be held responsible for what their "independent distributors" do, can they? They seem to be shielded by a layer of independence and artful camouflage.
      I could feel myself losing steam. I didn't know how to focus my energy, and it was all getting wasted tracking down Herbalife websites. The incredible maze of the whole operation astounded me. The Herbalife name was so hidden, it was ridiculous!

      At some point, I remembered that old commercial from 1971 with the crying Indian. I looked him up on Google and found, not only his photo, but a quick-time copy of the commercial! (link) This was just the kind of motivation I needed.

      Here is the text of the Crying Indian commercial from Keep America Beautiful.

      This was exactly what I needed to hear. People had been fighting big-business pollution for years, and that was what I was going to do.
      The first step is to link Herbalife with these signs in the minds of as many people as possible. My best connection to people is my website, so if you could please send this web address to a friend, I would appreciate it.... particularly if that friend runs CNN.com.

      Of course, most big-time community leaders that might be able to steer Herbalife into a change don't spend much time surfing the web, so I am also working on a letter-writing campaign to raise awareness.

      I organized the 65 or so sign photos I had taken so far and arranged them onto a single sheet. I added some text, "on telephone poles, mailboxes and newsstands, they litter the landscape. Can you believe they are all from one company?". I asked my sister to help me compose a letter to mayor Fargo and the next day I sent off my first envelope of anti-marketing material.
      I would also like to discourage new potential Herbalife customers from getting involved with this company.

      From what I have learned so far, it is very, very difficult to profit as an Herbalife distributor.
  • "We'll buy your home!"
    "21" Monitors for just 399!"
    and the infamous Electronic filing crap scams.

    Counties are starting to outlaw this because it's getting almost impossible to see oncomming traffic at some suburban intersections for the forrest of small neon yellow, red and orange signs.

  • Anti-spam (Score:5, Funny)

    by legLess ( 127550 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:01PM (#3324623) Journal
    Here in Portland OR many people have taken up anti-spam measures. In Southeast Portland these signs don't last long before being torn down or, even better, defaced. A group has made giant stickers saying, "I AM UGLY LITTER" and pasted them over these "work from home/lose weight now" things. Very cool.

    Off-topic, billboard defacing is quite a sport here. You may have seen a March of Dimes billboard feature Daisy Fuentes and the tagline, "Daisy takes folic acid. Do you?" The "folic" has been blacked out on many of these :)

    Off-off-topic, Kate Moss was featured on a billboard for milk some years ago, when she was doing the Calvin Klein "Obsession" ads. There was a huge photo of her with a white milk "moustache" and the tagline, "Calcium. It's my obsession." The following letters were paint-bombed out on several of them - "Cal" & "i" - needless to say, they were replaced pretty fast.
    • I've always wanted to put 'Cli' stickers in front of Taurus on those ugly, ugly Fords.

    • Re:Anti-spam (Score:4, Funny)

      by ArsonSmith ( 13997 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:09PM (#3324703) Journal
      in Mesa Arizona there is a huge "Bank of America" building (well huge compared to the rest of the buildings around it) for about a month the sign visable from 10-12 miles around the city had "Bank o" lights burned out. So the highest sign in all the city at night light up bright as "f America"

      I thought it was funny anyway.

      • Re:Anti-spam (Score:2, Funny)

        by dmr ( 22497 )
        Two summers back, there were a few lights out at the Somerville hospital (semi-urban Boston), and their large sign read

        "Somerville Ho"

        No wonder the snooty locals call the town Slummerville.

        • Re:Anti-spam (Score:4, Funny)

          by WinDoze ( 52234 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @03:15PM (#3325180)
          Shell Station, Route 1 southbound, Peabody (next to what used to be the Towne Line House, it's something esle now, I forget what). I swear for almost a year in the early 90's the "S" was burned out. Big giant glowing "HELL" hanging over the highway. We used to sing "Highway to Hell" every time we drove past.
    • Here in Portland OR many people have taken up anti-spam measures. In Southeast Portland these signs don't last long before being torn down or, even better, defaced. A group has made giant stickers saying, "I AM UGLY LITTER" and pasted them over these "work from home/lose weight now" things. Very cool.

      They have a site, uglylitter.com [uglylitter.com] with PDFs for you to print on sticker paper so you can deface the signs yourself.

      Me, I just carry a couple of cans of spray paint in the trunk and paint big red "NO" circles over them, making sure that the phone/URL gets obscured.

    • Re:Anti-spam (Score:2, Interesting)

      by toothless joe ( 555389 )
      Off-topic, billboard defacing is quite a sport here. You may have seen a March of Dimes billboard feature Daisy Fuentes and the tagline, "Daisy takes folic acid. Do you?" The "folic" has been blacked out on many of these :)

      In New York, they don't have to do that kind of thing. The billboards are already like that [yahoo.com].

    • On the side of a building in Austin (across the parking lot from the West Campus 711) was an ad for the Marines - a head shot of a tough looking guy in his blues, with "The change is forever" underneath. Someone had colored the eyes in white, so he looked like some sort of zombie. It was beautiful.
    • A while ago, Pizza hut did a big campaign where they had a billboard with _ _ _ _ _ Hut. Somebody climbed up and spraypainted PORNO in there. That was cool. I'd probably eat at a place called Porno Hut. Reminds me of Fellatio Barn [spacemoose.com].
    • A few years back there was a sign in Victoria, BC, Canada going towards the ferry in Sydney back to Tsawassen. Big "garden sign" on a slope with "TRAVEL BC" in white letters, with woodchips around the letters and flowers all around. Nice touristy Victoria.

      Someone had used the woodchips and covered up the T and the L and left:

      RAVE BC
  • There's also causs.org [causs.org], the Citizens Against Ugly Street Spam, which is pretty out of date.

    I own streetspam.com, but haven't put anything up on it yet.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:06PM (#3324676)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Now you can take out websites from home/work in your spare time! DDoS small webservers with interesting content! Post a story and make 20,000 hits/hour!

    Go to slashdot.org for more details.

  • Herbalife meets X10 (Score:5, Funny)

    by jhines0042 ( 184217 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:09PM (#3324697) Journal
    I know what we can do... we can put up a wireless X10 camera on each and every one of these sign posts and catch the sign placers red handed...

    ...maybe some of them are hot babes who wear skimpy outfits.

  • Where I used to live, the local sheriff's deputies used to take the signs and use them for sun shades when they parked the cars near the police substation. They said they finally found a good use for them!

  • My thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KingKupa ( 569768 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:11PM (#3324720)
    Although I haven't read the article because I can't get to it, I thought I'd give my 2 cents anyway. I've tried a couple of these work at home things. Basically, here's how they work:
    1. They lure you in with the promise of making thousands in your first week without lifting a finger.
    2. You buy in to it and purchase whatever kit, or set of instructions that are going to unlock all of the hidden secrets.
    3. You read through the materials and find out that it's just like any other start up business. A SHITLOAD OF WORK and hidden expenses!
    4. You end up hanging up signs on telephone poles because you don't want to pay for 'real' advertising.
    5. Nobody calls.
    6. You get frustrated and give up.

  • Mirrored Here (Score:5, Informative)

    by ttyp0 ( 33384 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:11PM (#3324722) Homepage
    Cockeyed.com Story [gtlogistics.com]

  • if only (Score:5, Funny)

    by cetan ( 61150 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:12PM (#3324732) Journal
    If only the signs were more like this:

    http://www.bovine.net/~jlawson/gallery/distributed -net/dnet_sign1 [bovine.net].

  • Ork from Home (Score:4, Funny)

    by ArsSineArtificio ( 150115 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:13PM (#3324749) Homepage
    Here in Columbus, somebody has methodically gone to every one of these signs and cut away the 'W' in 'WORK FROM HOME'.

    I figure maybe Saruman's hiring, or they have some vacancies in those endless Warhammer armies.

  • MLM companies (Score:5, Informative)

    by TheRealFixer ( 552803 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:15PM (#3324762)
    There are good Multi-Level Marketing companies out there (or is it called Network Marketing now?). I used to work for a magazine that profiled and reviewed MLM companies. There's one key thing to look for to see of a MLM will actually work and last: What do they actually try to sell? If an MLM focuses 98% on signing up more people, and completely ignores the product, or discourages ever actually selling the product to consumers, it generally won't last. The companies that actually focus on their product, and only use the multi-level aspect of it to really market and distrubute, those are the ones that tend to last, and people actually can make a business out of.
    • True, but you do have to remember that even companies that do make money do NOT, as a rule, let you quit your job to do MLM. There will be a few people who manage to get in at the right time, with the right connections, who make quite a lot of cash, and a bunch of sucks.

      And the products are generally with an order-of-magnatude markup, so you are getting cheap crap at inflated prices, not a deal.

      • Re:MLM companies (Score:2, Insightful)

        by TheRealFixer ( 552803 )
        True, but that's the real scam with most MLMs. Unless you get in on the ground floor, or have a LOT of friends that have never been burned by an MLM before, you're wasting your time. The vast majority of people in poor-quality MLMs barely break even, because they quickly run out of people to sign up, or the people they did sign up quit. I forget what the actual statistics were, but I seem to recall something like 1 in 6 would stick with it past 6 months. It might have been less.

        I went to a "recruiting" meeting for a company called Equinox a few years back. They set these things up like a revival from the turn of the century. They play upon emotions and excitement to get you to not think rationally, and just sign the paper. The ENTIRE lecture was about how much money you could make, how to sign up more people, and how the whole marketing structure works. There was almost nothing about the products themselves. All I remember was some vague talk about mineral suppliments.

        My friend, who went to it too, got them all flustered when he proceded to point out that the diagram the gentleman was drawing on the board looked strangely similiar to a pyramid. They proceded to inform him that it was NOT a pyramid, because that would be illegal. He simply refered them to the diagram again, which was -- without question -- pyramid-shaped.

        They didn't spend a whole lot of time trying to "convert" him after that.

  • Sold for $685 million (Score:5, Informative)

    by Phil Wilkins ( 5921 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:17PM (#3324773)
    The pyramid scheme, err, company responsible, has just been sold for $685 million, after the head shyster OD'd on alcohol and anti-depressants.

    http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/dow jones/20020411/bs_dowjones/venture_group_to_buy_he rbalife_for__685_million [yahoo.com]

  • It's a tax break! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jabber01 ( 225154 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:21PM (#3324805)
    If you run your own business, such as drumming up business for someone else, you can claim milage, gasoline, and a 1/4th of your living space expenses as a business expense..

    If your business consists of putting up ugly signage, but you get thousands of dollars back from the Fed in taxes, wouldn't you do it?

    What if you really needed the money.. I mean, so badly that you would be willing to walk around at 3am, tacking paper to signs.. You'd do it.
    • Nonsense.

      You actually have to MAKE MONEY from your home business to claim those expenses.

      To judge from the article, most of the sign posting / pamphlet placing activity is a symptom of desperately shoving more money down the rat-hole in order to make back that initial investment.

  • Alternatively... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Angerson ( 121904 )
    He could have just searched Google for "Who put up all those work from home signs?". The answer was in the second result.

  • Just thought of a way to potentially fight this... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gleep ( 1840 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:29PM (#3324850) Homepage Journal
    If a business has a 1-800 number, it costs them money each time you call right? it's like long distance in reverse right?

    i'd be willing to get an extra phone line (different number) and have my computer call and listen to the message all day. i could have it call them over and over again.

    eventually maybe they would be forced to shut it down because they owed the phone company too much money? just a crazy idea....
    • If a business has a 1-800 number, it costs them money each time you call right? it's like long distance in reverse right

      There's lot of the 800 numbers that pay a monthly "flat-fee" now, but YMMV.

      i'd be willing to get an extra phone line (different number) and have my computer call and listen to the message all day. i could have it call them over and over again.

      I wouldn't suggest war-dialing. Guaranteed to get you trouble. A Long Time Ago, this [phrack.com] was done and was well logged by Southern Bell.

  • work at home the distributed.net way... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nugget ( 7382 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:35PM (#3324893) Homepage
    BovineOne came up with this sign [bovine.net] and this sign [bovine.net] as a more modern alternative for all the work-at-home types out there.

    Work at home the distributed.net way.

  • Long story short. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Its all herbalife. Every single sign he found was herbalife. Different phone numbers all went back to the same place. In fact they don't even tell you until you pony up some dough.

  • Killing Street Spam (Score:5, Interesting)

    by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Thursday April 11, 2002 @02:48PM (#3324986) Homepage Journal
    1. Tearing them down is not the answer. It'll just come back tomorrow posted by another fool. It is far better to tear off or deface 1/2 of the ad and leave the rest. This defeats the ad and serves as warning to the next spammer to come by this is not a good location.
    2. Use the right tools. A utility knife is excellent for these. Wire cutters are perfect for snipping through their ties. Duct-taping a utility knife to a pole is perfect for slicing those high-up signs in half.
    3. Try and catch the spammers in the act. If you see them photograph them. Get pictures of them posting signs. Get their license plates. Get their faces. Call the cops and tell them what you're doing & where you are. Also call your local paper or radio station and tell them you've got some of these folks in front of you, would they like the story?
    4. Removing signs is not illegal, defacing them can be. Yes weird as it may be cops don't like it when you simply compound the problem, in effect you're putting up another illegal sign. Some cops will harass you, others will run you off, be wise and don't get caught.
    5. Get you local AG to pursue these folks. Yes it isn't a high-priority crime and there are always more dupes but it isn't all that hard to follow the money trail, shut down these vermin, there is a quality of life issue here.
    • Try and catch the spammers in the act. If you see them photograph them. Get pictures of them posting signs. Get their license plates. Get their faces. Call the cops and tell them what you're doing & where you are. Also call your local paper or radio station and tell them you've got some of these folks in front of you, would they like the story?

      So you propose getting all Church of Scientology on their asses? :)
  • I see a lot of those "work at home" signs in my town. They are posted on telephone poles, street lights and signs which is illegal in my town.

    I've always wanted to turn them in, but I'm too lazy.

  • Mom tried this. (herbalife) (Score:5, Informative)

    by slide-rule ( 153968 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @03:06PM (#3325120)
    Since the /.'ed page appears to be posted in multiple copies already, how about a couple viewpoints from someone whose mom actually tried this?

    This definitely has to be involved in the whole Herbalife Independent Distributor scheme. Just to satisfy your curiosity, yes it is a MLM. You sign up under another distributor (the person that lets you in on what the product actually is, etc.) and they get a small cut off of your sales. Quite pyramid-like, since the best profits come not by selling the product itself, but by recruiting other independent distributors underneath you. (Otherwise, you probably *could* make money, but not the amounts you hear glamorized).

    Now, the rest of my information is, to be fair, several years out of date. I can only relay how it was all seemingly setup in the early-mid '90s. Basically, the top-level Herbalife company (corporation? I wasn't too sure exactly) works very hard to keep a legally viable separation distance from all the indenpendent distributors. (This is perhaps why the company doesn't get in trouble for the street spam, since, as another poster pointed out, the ID's are the ones putting them up.) This went so far as prohibiting ID's from using any sort of Herbalife company logo on business cards to maintain a clear separation. (IN fact, the letter of law at the time was that you were only allowed to say "Independent Herbalife Distributor" in a plain font face. Nothing else.)

    The signs you see all over creation that make no reference to the product or company arise from this same seeming need to maintain separation. You, as an ID, are not allowed to advertise what the product is or might be; you have to entice interest in the customer, and after *they* make the initial contact can you explain what it all is.

    They even went so far as laying down policy on accepted forms of advertisement with respect to various media. Mom, trying to play fair and honest with them, inquired about constructing a store-front web site. They gave consistent, repeated, flat "No"s when she described it. They only saw a web site as a means to advertise for potential business, not as a possible means to *DO* business. (Remember the time frame involved here: early-mid '90s.) The company's own site was the only place permitted to have logo's, product information, etc., and even *they* themselves didn't have a mechanism to take money. (Since, I guess, only the ID's were allowed to move merchandise and collect cash directly.) It was weird.

    Now, it got interesting to see that the only people making cash were the select few people at the top of the pyramid. The dominant exceptions are people that are providing these signs for ID's to put up. (Wonder why they all look the same in every city? There's a place that an ID order's them from.) In store product demo's and the like were also something for and ID to spend money on. (Physical stores. You could have the product displayed all over the counter, but don't you dare have any mention of Herbalife in your store window for passer-by's to see.)

    Needless to say, it is in fact quite hard to actually set this up as a lucrative business. You really need a big downstream pyramid of ID's underneath you, but then they are competing against each other (and you, perhaps) to get the same thing, so any normal size town (or sub-section thereof) can get saturated by various ID's competing for either customers or other ID's). Mom worked at this for over a year, and I don't think she ever really turned a dime over in her favor.

    (Oh, and if any company Nazi's start looking for her as a result of this post, she has a different last name than me. :P )

  • These spam signs are hideous!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by cporter ( 61382 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @03:07PM (#3325130)
    I hate these street signs! They're everywhere! Telling you what to do! "Yield" and "Stop" and "Do Not Enter" and "No Left Turn"!

    When is someone going to do something about this plague of spam?

  • Its scary how much this mirrors Scientology. You pay more and more each time to get deeper into the system, and it seems you get more and more useless crap the deeper you go and the more you pay.
  • That's right, these goonies of herbalife/quixtar/amway are out in full force trying to sign up as many unwitting subjects as they can. Here's my personal story:

    I started my own website, tigerslash.com, and in an effort to promote it I made my own bumpersticker and put it on my car. One day when I was getting gas, a "successful" looking "businessman" across from me asked about tigerslash.com. I told him what it was, briefly how I made it, and things like that. He then proceeded to ask me if I was willing to work on other internet projects, and I said "if I have the time, maybe."

    Well, I thought I was going to make some extra bucks on the side for a little web design, and Mr. X made me think the same thing when he followed up with "I run a website and I need some extra help with some of it." Then he proceeded to give me his business card, and I gave him mine, and he said he'd call once he'd consulted his associates...

    Well he did call, so I thought I was going to make some quick cash for a little web work. We set up a meeting for that thursday and when it came around, I was interested in seeing what needed to be done. Well, I show up at the office and he presents me with this flyer about Britt Worldwide and all this information about their web strategy and "e commerce infrastructure." This is when the bells started going off in my head.

    Mr. X then proceeded to elaborate on the whole mission, online sale of products combined with multilevel marketing. It was called Quixtar, the next big thing, and it sounded like a great scheme... if you were an idiot. I didn't beleive one word of it. I sat through about 30 minutes of this and took the brochure politely and left.

    When I got home, I went to the website and started shopping. Amazingly, everything was overpriced. I thought "how in the world would they get people to buy this?" The fact is, the only people who do are the ones coerced into joining, so that they earn "points" with their purchases. If you're at the top of the pyramid, this is great, but if you're the average Joe, all you're doing is paying their salaries and getting $5 a month in return (after spending hundreds on "great products.")

    I did some more digging and low and behold Quixtar is nothing more than Amway with a new name. It's the same owners, same company, but they don't say a damn thing about it when you ask them face to face. What a scam.

    Needless to say, I was pissed. This form of Spam had approached me with a technical need in my field of work, then proceeded to waste my personal time travelling to, meeting, and researching these people. All that effort to find out I had been recruited for Amway. That's the worst type of spam ever.

  • Citizens Against Ugly Street Spam (Score:3, Informative)

    by Elkman ( 198705 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @04:17PM (#3325647) Homepage
    I'm a member of an organization called CAUSS [causs.org], or Citizens Against Ugly Street Spam. This group started in Dallas a few years ago to fight the growing tide of street spam -- not just "work from home" signs, but signs for other products and services. Some of the other people putting up signs include independent insurance salespeople, a computer store which put up hundreds of signs (and who got sued for it), and a guy named the "Dirt Jerk" who puts up signs saying "We Level Lawns". The organization has since spread to other areas across the U.S., including Denver, California, New England, and Minnesota.

    One thing the report didn't mention is that people have lost thousands of dollars in these schemes. Newest Way to Wealth, one of the Herbalife offshoots which is responsible for this scheme, encourages people to put up as many signs as possible in order to get more recruits. They sell their "training materials" for hundreds of dollars, and they tell their new recruits to buy enough Herbalife products to achieve the supervisor level. They promise that people will make thousands of dollars doing this, but I've heard reports that when people run out of money or patience and try to quit, their uplines get abusive and tell the poor, misled distributors that they hadn't been working hard enough.

    And, since Herbalife is finally changing their policy to disallow signs, Newest Way to Wealth is cooking up new advertising ideas. One idea is to toss a bag filled with "Work From Home" business cards onto people's driveways, along with a few rocks to keep them from blowing away. (Of course, if they throw these little presents onto the lawn by mistake, and you don't see the baggie when you're mowing the lawn, you could end up running over it. That's a good way to put someone's eye out.) Another advertising method is to put packets of cards onto pay phones, ATM's, and every other flat surface.

    As far as the signs are concerned, most states and cities have ordinances saying that it's illegal to put signs on utility poles or in the right of way.

  • WorkFromHome: Yahoo and Not 4 U! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by darkstar2a ( 546635 ) on Thursday April 11, 2002 @04:38PM (#3325842) Homepage
    Just yesterday I was the lucky recipient of a H.F.O.B. (Huge F***cking Obnoxious Block) advertisement while reading a yahoo mail message. I bookmarked it and researched it after I finished the rest of my work for the day.

    After hacking through the initial 'contact' page which goes to GREAT lengths to make sure you didn't enter a dummy email address or phone number (pattern matching, predicted strings, etc) I was sent to the following link [216.89.161.203][Distributor ID removed to make sure he can't profit from it] page. It's a server that they pay for (one way or another) to have a tracking link.

    The result, for $39.95, you get sent to you 'free shipping' your Information Decision Package (Gee, sound familiar) that contains 'EVERYTHING' you need to know. (yeah right)

    I also immediately began receiving emails to the single-register email address I setup. In 24 hours, I've received 4 messages so far.

    My FAVORITE part is on their contact page [216.89.161.203]. Throughout the whole site they tell you that you can't contact them before you order your $39.95 IDP, however on the contact page they have this to say:

    After reviewing our website, if you still feel you need "more information" before you purchase a guaranteed decision and training package, then chances are that this is not for you and you wouldn't meet our qualifications.
    Meaning, if your not stupid enough to pay $40 for something you know absolutely nothing about, your smarter than we are and you'll see what kind of financial idiots your looking at.

    How fun, how timely!

    I'm just getting to this, so it's probably going to be buried in deep. If you get this far, I hope you enjoy the information!

    Garth

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