He made $28 mil. off Ebay with a Simple Scam...
REALITY : The fact is there are some people who like to take shortcuts in this World to get ahead and to benefit in some way .
I think we all have probably been guilty of this to a degree. Some more than others.
But I would venture to guess many have not taken shortcuts to the extent of this fellow.
Founder of Digital Pointe Goes to the Dark Side
So who is this Dirty Affiliate Marketer? Shawn Hogan is the Founder of Digital Point, one of the biggest make money forums in the Universe.
Over a period of 5 years or so ,Shawn made $28 million as an Ebay affiliate.
Pretty damn impressive, huh ?
Here is what is even more interesting.....
Stuffing Cookies to Steal Millions
Shawn made this tremendous amount of money by stuffing cookies into every single person who visited any of his websites.
So if you or I went to Shawn's Site ,unbeknownst to us ,Shawn would automatically assign an Ebay Cookie onto our ID.
So when we left his Site and anytime down the road went and bought something at Ebay........well Shawn would get an Affiliate commission.
The implications of this were HUGE.
Shawn would get these astronomical Ebay Commission checks without sending them to Ebay through an Affiliate Link.
We are talking about hundreds and thousands of people going to Ebay , and Shawn got credit for them.
Ebay Encouraged Him to Do This ??
Mr. Hogan even had the gall to post on his blog that Ebay knew of this "covert" operation and actually encouraged him to keep on sending the Traffic to their website with his method.
Well, the FBI got whiff of this and in conjunction with Ebay set up a Sting and nailed Mr. Hogan and another accomplice.
Hogan could spend up to 20 years in federal Prison for this fraud. ( EDIT : he actually ended up spending 5 months in federal prison)
Just Don't Do It !!!
It goes to show that taking Shortcuts cannot only cost you money., but it can also cost you your freedom.
I have found that as an Internet and Affiliate Marketer myself, that in the long run
standing by your Product and your Name is so important.
There is no question there are some "dirty players" out there.
So pick and choose the one's you want to align yourself with.
The best,
Robert Andrew
(Disclosure : Original content from my blog)
Wow that is a pretty intense operation and crazy he landed in club FED
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yeah, Iam trying to find the Thread at Digital Point ( the internet marketing forum he Founded) where he actually is posting to the Forum from his prison cell and talking about his dilemma. Pretty interesting. Give me a second to find it. Okay, here is the URL https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/shawn-hogan-sentenced-ebays-1-affiliate-gets-5-months-in-federal-prison-ouch.2718377/ Actually he is posting this in May, which is 2 months before he was actually going to prison. He knew it and people on the Forum were asking him questions.,.if he was stressed out , if he was scared of having "bubba" as a cell mate, whether he would get internet access etc..etc..His avatar is the girl in the bikini in the doorway ( NOT the two girls in thongs avatar) ;)
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It was kinda funny, when I read this story before I really fully understood what he was doing I was like this dude is a genius, how do you do this, and then once I continued reading I realized it was just click fraud. None the less kinda surprised the FBI got involved. There's so much fraud going on online and the FBI seems to not give a shit about most of it. I had an instance where I was defraued thousands by a customer and the police basically told me FBI as a policy won't even mess with anything less than like 25 million, it's not worth their time although I guess this was a large amount of money and it involves a company with some pull like eBay.
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Yeah that is pretty insane. Like you said it seems like there is so much fraud and it just keeps happening. I am suprised that guy went to club FED for sure.
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Hey @robertandrew thanks for posting, that's a very interesting story. How did he give users cookies without them having to click an ad?
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Thanks @rulesforrebels ,
Not sure exactly how he did it but when they visited his Site somehow every visitor he tagged their account stuffing it with ebay cookies. And if they ever bought anything from Ebay at anytime later on he would earn a commission. Here is a link to the internet marketing forum he Founded and a Thread where Members discussed Shawn's troubles back then. https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/shawn-hogan-owner-of-dp-is-getting-sued-for-cooking-stuffing.1000740/
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Well you can't actually stop guys like that. Nothing you could do.
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