When Emily Roemmich of Busy-Mommy.com got an email asking about the products sent to be reviewed on her site she almost deleted the message. Thinking it was a mistake she decided to politely respond and correct the PR rep, but found that it wasn’t an error after all.
A woman named “Mary” was claiming to be a writer for her site and had promised a popular online baby store that she’d review several items including a high chair and video baby monitor for an “infant safety segment” of Busy-Mommy’s site.
After the woman received the original shipment of products she emailed the PR company asking for more products. It seems the PR company forgot to check-up to see if the reviews had been completed the first time, so in good faith they sent off another shipment – the second one included bedding and accessories.
Emily says she never would have known if the PR company hadn’t reached out to her real email address with questions about when the reviews would be going up.
The PR company forwarded the original email correspondence to Emily and that’s when she saw that the imposter had been clever enough to use her site’s real tagline and had provided a full list of products Busy-Mommy wanted to review.
Once Emily had the woman’s email address and physical address she began playing detective. She says with the help of other mom bloggers:
“We were able to obtain: a screenshot of this woman’s house and how much it was worth, an address and phone number, Facebook profile and information on relatives’ time in jail. If we searched long enough I bet we could even find out her shoe size and favorite food.”
Armed with that information, Emily says:
“I called the woman on the phone number I found associated with her address. I think I caught her off guard because she admitted that she received the products and that was her email, but denied that she contacted the baby company.”
Mary claimed that it was a family friend who conducted the con and willingly gave up her name and information. So Emily called her too.
The family friend said she got the idea from an online pamphlet entitled “How To Get Products For Free” which supposedly listed several sites that one could pretend to write for – including Busy-Mommy.com.
Emily is skeptical that the pamphlet is real but she is taking the whole situation very seriously.
Emily says:
“The [baby store] is currently sending an invoice to both women and if it is not paid, they are prepared to take legal action. At this time, I am not taking legal action, but am waiting to see if these women follow up and pay this bill… if they can’t come up with the money, I’m positive there will be legal action.”
Perhaps this is an isolated incident but it highlights the very real vulnerabilities mommy bloggers and review bloggers face if their contact information isn’t clearly stated on their site. It seems others can and potentially will impersonate for free products.
Some bloggers seem to fear having their real name and email address on their site, but for business purposes it’s incredibly important. Emily now suggests bloggers use email addresses tied to their domain names and that all writers (and email addresses) should be clearly listed on the site to help companies know if they’re corresponding with the right people.
After seeing the willingness of companies to send products Mary has apparently opened her own review blog.
{source: Busy-Mommy; photo credit: Faithful Chant}
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This is absolutely unbelievable. Although I think your last line takes the cake. I wonder if they’ll have blogging privileges in prison.
How do these people sleep at night knowing they’re a filthy thief? ewww
That’s just crazy. Crazy!
This blows me away!
Wow.
“We were able to obtain: a screenshot of this woman’s house and how much it was worth, an address and phone number, Facebook profile and information on relatives’ time in jail. If we searched long enough I bet we could even find out her shoe size and favorite food.”
Seriously? Next time one of you accuses people of being crazy stalkers, please come back here and read this.
Note that I am NOT defending the woman who lied to get swag, but the rest…WTF?
Excuse me, but we were trying to find information on whether or not this person, as her name was given, was real or using a fake name. It just so happened to be that she was stupid enough to use her real name. If you post you info online publicly, it is not stalking to do a Google search and see what pops up. All information was public record and was searched for with the sole purpose of outing her, and anyone who was working with her, and her criminal escapades. She is guilty of theft, fraud, defamation and a host of other crimes. Wouldn’t you want to know if the person who did this to you and possibly damaged your reputation had a record of other criminal activity? Wouldn’t you want as much info as possible to give to the authorities?Besides, the last line of that quote was meant to be sarcasm. Sounds like someone is a bit jealous of our detective skills.
Actually, no. I would give the little data I had been given to the authorities and let them do their job. That’s what they are there for. You are making a shitload of assumptions about guilt and fraud and defamation; I’d leave that to the people who do it for a living.
I’m really commenting because this: “Sounds like someone is a bit jealous of our detective skills.” is the funniest thing I have read this year. Jealous has now jumped the shark. There are other reasons to object to things, lie just thinking it’s kind of creepy and wrong.
“Actually, no. I would give the little data I had been given to the authorities and let them do their job. That’s what they are there for. You are making a shitload of assumptions about guilt and fraud and defamation; I’d leave that to the people who do it for a living.”Guilt is defined as: 1) the fact of having committed a breach of conduct especially violating law and involving a penalty; broadly; guilty conduct2) the state of one who has committed an offense especially consciouslyFraud is defined as: an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage. To constitute fraud, a misrepresentation or omission must also relate to an ‘existing fact’, not a promise to do something in the future, unless the person who made the promise did so without any present intent to perform it or with a positive intent not to perform it.Defamation is defined as: Making of false, derogatory statement(s) in private or public about a person’s business practices, character, financial status, morals, or reputation. Oral defamation is a slander whereas printed or published defamation is a libel. The plaintiff must prove that the defamation was communicated to someone other than him or her. And, if the statement is not obviously defamatory, it must be shown that it carries a defamatory meaning (see innuendo) and that reasonable people would think that it refers to the plaintiff. Defamation with malicious intent (see malice) invalidates the defense of fair comment and qualified privilege. Defamation that imputes a criminal offense punishable with imprisonment, is usually a sufficient ground for a court action even in the absence of a proof of special damages.Malice is defined as: Deep seated desire to see someone suffer, expressed in commission of a wrongful act without just cause or excuse (legal justification) and with the intent of inflicting injury or harm.Considering this con artist ADMITTED to committing the crimes, KNOWING it was wrong but doing it anyway constitutes GUILT, FRAUD and DEFAMATION of Emily’s reputation as an honest review blogger since the posts that were promised in exchange for the product never appeared on her blog and never will. This woman purported herself to be an employee of Busy Mom, she was not. That is FRAUD. She received merchandise under false pretenses…FRAUD. The PR rep believed that there would be a review of the product on Emily’s blog. It never appeared and Emily’s reputation was DEFAMED because she is the owner of Busy Mom and ultimately responsible for what representatives of her blog say and do in regards to it. But she has no other representatives of her blog, so this woman committed FRAUD and DEFAMED Emily’s reputation and integrity. The scammer ADMITTED to the crime and said she knew what she was doing….CONFESSION and GUILT.Are we seeing a pattern here? Before you go on about how I am making a “shitload of assumptions”, you might want to stop and think that I might just have a background in criminal law and know what I’m talking about.You might also want to rethink calling me or anyone else who researched information on this con artist a stalker. Stalkers have malicious intent, we did not. It was research, plain and simple.Stalking is defined as: A person who intentionally and repeatedly follows or harasses another person and who makes a credible threat, either expressed or implied, with the intent to place that person in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily harmAs for leaving this completely up to “the people who do this for a living”?Umm, yeah, sure, every police department has the time, man power, resources & diligent officers who will go on a search for all the necessary info in an internet fraud/identity theft case…sure. Without an abundance of info to make it a whole lot easier for the police to do their “investigation”, this case would go cold. Local authorities are not real keen on pursuing internet fraud cases. I should know, I was the victim of identity theft a few years ago. It was all done online and I am still trying to untangle my identity, credit and tax info from this fraud EIGHT years later. And without all the digging I did to get IP addresses, aliases, and print outs from the companies this person defrauded using my identity, credit card and social security number, the cops would have done NOTHING. In actuality, they really practically did nothing at all. I had to prove MY innocence when I had done nothing wrong. And I am still suffering the consequences of this scammer’s crimes.So no, you do not always leave this to the ones who are supposed to take care of it because they usually do not. Internet crimes such as this and cyber stalking are such new areas that law enforcement still does not know how to handle them properly.Just curious as to why a post about a blogger being VICTIMIZED by a con artist turned into “we hate MomDot and must slam them all” in the comment section? Hmm, interesting, no?
If you personally went and posted your home address or phone # on that net and someone got it, that’s one thing. But the white pages, google, bing etc post this information for you. Just because you can get that information doesn’t mean you have to use it. I would have given it to the police, and let them handle it.
You came across pretty stalkerish, not Colombo or even the scooby doo gang like.
I’m in NO way saying what this woman did was right. But ya all, that was creepy.
The information was obtained to give to the authorities, period. It was not plastered across the web. Emily didn’t even use the woman’s real name in her post. I personally did not find the screenshot of the woman’s home, but with an address, you can get a Google Earth image of it. It’s not illegal and it’s not stalkerish when you are only doing it to give to the authorities. The woman’s address was provided to Emily by the PR rep. How do you think anything was able to be found? There had to be a starting point.
And if you don’t want someone to be able to find your personal info online, make sure you don’t post it anywhere, have your phone number unlisted and do regular checks of the online white pages and yahoo to make sure your private info isn’t being made public.
Haha calm down everyone. This really isn’t a big deal now that things are being taken care of.
Yeah seriously- all is said & done. I love how you’re focusing on whether or not they’re “stalkery” when this woman has a list a mile long of illegal activities. Sheesh!
So glad the situation is getting rectified. I can’t imagine how you felt, it’s like identity theft!
That is just INSANE! And a really good reason to set up Google alerts for your name, your domain name, and your email address.
That is so crazy!! What is this world coming to?? Did she really need the stuff that bad to go through all this??
Now I’m wondering if “Mary” is the same person who started the blog “Table for Five Reviews and Giveaways” and when I emailed her to politely suggest she change the name so her readers wouldn’t confuse her blog for mine, said NO. She created the blog and a Facebook page and has a giveaway running every single day of the week. What ever happened to QUALITY over quantity?
I think part of the problem is the article is unclear. Mary’s e-mail was used, all of Mary’s information was tracked online, Mary was called, Mary received the products allegedly via the actions of an un-named family member who, ”conducted the con” and ”contacted the company”. Was Mary aware it was a con? Was Mary aware the products were apparently twice received under false pretenses?
Lacking a clear representation of Mary’s actions and presumed culpability, reading about the value of her home (which, I know those estimates are automatically generated using Google maps & I assume it wasn’t purposefully sought out) and her relatives arrest record seems disjointed at best and salacious at worst, regardless of if it’s public record.
The article wasn’t written to divulge all of the details. I simply wrote it for others (companies and bloggers) to be aware that this could potentially be a problem for others. Here is an update to your concerns:
http://busy-mommy.com/2010/05/is-someone-using-your-blog-name-to-get-free-products.html
Not that I’m defending someone who would (allegedly) use someone else’s name to get a few things, what happened to presumed innocent? How is this balanced reporting? A sensationalist headline and then one person’s side of the story?
I would be mightily pissed to discover that someone was hijacking my hard-earned reputation, but it seems a little excessive to screenshot a picture of her HOUSE.
There’s a recent trend in China called the “people’s search engine,” in which the populace at large hunts down people who have committed various online sins and makes their lives highly unpleasant. The cyber-detecting that Emily and co. did reminds me of that sort of vigilantism.
http://www.pri.org/science/technology/the-rise-of-online-vigilante-justice1901.html
Uncover the basics, hand over to police, let them do their job.
unbelievable, people just blow my mind…I mean who thinks this way…
Wow…just wow. Not only at the article but at all the back and forth melodrama in the comments.
This is a great post with some very useful info. thanks for sharing.
This is so crazy! Just recently, I was contacted asking if I received product that ‘I requested’. It seems that someone was using my name too, completely across the country. I am waiting to hear updates on it.
lol, be careful regarding who you affiliate with. smh