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Melissa Johnson and Easy Money

Melissa Johnson from Paraparaumu never thought that she would work online, until curiosity got the best of her and she filled out a simple online form. Before she knew it, she discovered her secret to beating the recession, and being able to provide for her family while at home with her three children. I read Melissa's blog last month and decided to feature her story in our weekly consumer report. In our phone interview she told me her amazing story. "I actually make about NZD $8,000-$9,000 a month working from home. It's enough to comfortably replace my old jobs' income, especially considering I only work about 15-18 hours a week from home.
Melissa Johnson is a very common name I suppose, so it might be hard to verify if the story is actually real or not. The advert even has a bunch of selected comments saying how wonderful and genuine the offer is, but you scroll down to the end and get to see that "comments are closed" now that the required comments have been entered.   Furthermore, the website purports to be a company called "Career Journal Australia" which does not come up when I search the Australian Company Name Search hosted by ASIC.  The webpage is designed to look like an independent review, but all page elements click through to the sign-up page.

It seems like a total con to me, so any subsequent offer of money would also be treated with suspicion. I've seen the advert appearing off reputable sites - such as the Sydney Morning Herald, which offers "AUD 8,000 a month" using a NZ testimonial, but a little snooping quickly uncovered another Melissa Johnson advertisement, but who works and lives in New York and who also makes the same amount of money as Melissa from Paraparaumu. And they both receive the same "check" from Wells Fargo Bank. Not that you could easily deposit such a cheque, sorry, check, in New Zealand. The clincher though is that these two cheques are both made out to Melissa a year apart and yet have the same "Check Number" and the greyed out address block looks to be in USA format, not NZ format.



Maybe the scheme is legit, but using faked testimonials speaks of a company with no ethics.

Caveat Emptor.

Update at 10 January 2012: Melissa now lives in Karori! Good on her. She's obviously made so much money she could move to a better place, although every year she loses her job: Melissa Johnson from Karori is a regular mum who lost her job last year, and after an unsuccessful job hunt, she started working online. I interviewed her about her amazing story and she revealed her steps for success.


The Advert: Work From Home Special Report

Another site [Email and Internet Scams] that seems to have correlated further evidence of doctored testimonials: Is Melissa Johnson real?  Look through the whole site to see the endless variety of patently obvious scams are thrust upon unsuspecting people.



Comments

  1. Zen, I just did an image search of Ms Johnson. The image of 'Melissa' is available to buy on iStockPhoto site HERE

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  2. Great work!

    The nail in the coffin!
    The exclamation in the sentence!
    The cheque in the mail!
    The Tui on the Billboard!

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  3. Your mistaken - Melissa is from Canberra Australia!

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  4. Speak of the dirty.. these cunning folks actually got my webhost to deactivate my blog after posting screenshots of the Melissa Jung and Melissa Johnson ads to warn other netizens.

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  5. Actually Ms Johnson appears to be from London!

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  6. All that income enables Melissa to travel the world.

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  7. ahaha, now, she lives in a small Hungarian city, Szeged.
    http://webnewsweekly.com/finance/?sub1=t

    Mindless bot wanted to give me a homie, so they picked a city name near to my IP addy to make it believable but forgetting that US citizen names wouldnt work here...

    I felt like hit on the nose, it screamed scam, so i did my 1 minute search to stumble upon your blog here.
    If it were any foreign-sounding city or a local name matching to the city, one could have bought it.

    so, success story, with that income, Melissa surely could be a citizen of any given country in the world. Even can rent a space shuttle to visit Moon.

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  8. I live in South Africa and apparently Melissa Johnson is now a resident of Johannesburg. The girl really gets around - despite losing her job so often. Amazing.

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  9. hey guys... Melissa just moved again, lol , today she is here in Senekal, , , South Africa. a Lot of moving in such short time

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  10. She now lives in Pointe-Claire, Qc Canada and is a stay at home mom of 3! http://canadianjobslocal.com/FINANCE/Online-Jobs/?campaign_id=4794&adv_id=1046&source_category=International%20-%20Canada%20%28Premium%29&source_name=www.conduit.com/CA She got the same cheque, same number three years later!!!

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  11. This is my story on this SCAM. http://likesandthensome.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/stay-at-home-mum/

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  12. I had similar thoughts as what was expressed in this article. I thought it was especially dubious when all the links went to the sign up page and there seemed to be no mention of exactly what the job entailed. I even tried to find her so called blog but couldn't. Why wouldn't they provide a link to her blog in the article? Screams of scam to me.

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  13. I just read through all the comments. Hilarious. Bloggers unite!

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  14. And now she lives in Perth ...http://www.careerjournalonline.com/newsupdate/workfromhome/trifu/0eu2lm77a2/au/
    And I was this close to entering my credit card details ....
    Thank God I did some research first...

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  15. You are all wrong ! Melissa Johnson lives in Dublin, Ireland.

    http://careernewsweekly.com/ireland/finance/?sub1=t

    How brazen is that !

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  16. I saw people liking one of her Facebook page and clicked on it. Knew straight away it was a scam lmao!!! Even googled her image and it came back with a fat fraud stamped on it lmfao!!!!

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  17. A scam... search for her name and Melisa Johnson is everywhere. It's aimed at stay at home Mum's to scam them.

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  18. Looks like Melissa just moved back to NZ
    Found this today ... (being 15th Sep 2014)
    Being in NZ I became curious about it's 'vagueness'...
    http://www.careerjournalonline.com/newsupdate/workfromhome/adbl/nz-desktop/
    Still has that same cheque/check too..
    she must be very attached to it..
    updated of course to a Jun 25th version
    Clearly a very deliberate scammer site..
    Stay right away from 'Melissa Johnson'...

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  19. Just seen this and shes from Rotorua it says I think it says whatever town you live in so it hacks your gps.

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  20. And it was also a different company cash something

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