Today I just wanted to take a minute and highlight a new up & coming scammer in our industry. His name is Pete Maughan and he owns a company called Prolero Inc. Pete and his company over the last few months has been highlighted quite a few times.  A few of the places you can read more about Pete & his company is a Facebook group called “The Deadbeat Club – Internet Advertising – People Who Don’t Pay” the group was established to bring awareness to the industry as a whole. This is where networks and affiliates can read up on all the scamming advertisers in the industry trying to play, but not pay their bills when it’s time to pay up. Many of these shady fellows will hop from network to network trying to get their offers listed with the network and  run up a bill small or large and when it’s time to pay up they can’t be reached. You wouldn’t think that this goes on much and these guys don’t have much success. But they do, creating a very lucrative business model for themselves, but leaving the network to foot their bill because typically a network will pay its affiliates as they should.  If you’re not a member of this group I recommend that you join it right away and post up any situations that are appropriate.

Another place that Pete was recently highlighted was on the C2M Blog - Ruck the one who posts there is known for calling slimy fraud affiliates out & bringing awareness to what really goes on, but not talked about so much. You can also read about him calling out Pete and his company Prolero.

I probably wouldn’t be addressing this issue publicly on the ECM blog, but we’ve had a personal experience with Pete ourselves. Somehow we let Pete & his offer Google Corkboard make its way onto our network and while we were out in Vegas recently had a bit of volume roll to it, running up a 12k bill. And when it was time to get paid, well let’s just say we’ve haven’t & don’t expect too, judging by Pete’s track record.  The funny thing is I frequently read up on the Facebook group The Deadbeat Club – Internet Advertising – People Who Don’t Pay” , but somehow I missed this one. So that’s why I wanted to give Pete a standing ovation for being able to once again have a successful, profitable experience with scamming a CPA network. I’m sure that now since  Pete’s name and company name is being smeared across the industry for being a scamming thief he’ll just roll away back under his rock and develop a new identity  to start the whole scamming process all over again.

Comments are welcome. Tell Pete and the rest of the industry how you really feel about him. Let’s make him feel welcome and invite him to make an appearance at an industry show so we can all learn what kind of person not to be like. Good luck to you Pete you’re going to need it buddy. Its people like you that really give our industry a bad name. I hope you’re proud of yourself, it must feel good to be a thief and have everyone in the whole industry think you’re a scammer.  “NOT – I don’t think so.”

Below is a picture of Pete in all his glory!

If you want to reach Pete, I’ve posted some of his details below.

Peter J Maughan

Business Address;

223 W. 1230 N. Unit #215

Provo, UT 84604

Pete@Prolero.com

FaceBook Account

Linkedin Account

I’m very excited to announce that my friend Mark Roth CEO of OfferVault has created a new and much needed program for our industry called AffiliCert. Mark’s AffiliCert is an Affiliate Certification Program designed to weed out the trusted publishers from the slimy, shady, dirtball affiliates that call themselves affiliates, but are nothing more than fraudsters stealing money from advertisers & CPA networks. These impostors make things tougher on all the legitimate publishers doing things the right way. I hope that everyone in our industry that would like to see a measurable change for the better gets behind Mark and his new program. All networks and affiliates alike need to embrace this new program so we can make it just a little bit harder for them to steal our hard earned money. Below is Mark’s overview of his new program AffiliCert .

STATUS

We are now in the final stages of development on the AffiliCert platform and expect to go live on February 22^nd. We have partnered with Payoneer a registered MasterCard Merchant Service Provider, which allows us to provide the most rigorous screening procedure in the Industry, including KYC (Know Your Customer), BSA (Bank Secrecy Act), AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) and many other stringent checks to assure that only legitimate affiliates obtain an AffiliCert Certification. Additional checks include, phone verification, email and physical address verification, website verifications and many other checks. With the extensive and sophisticated fraud identification procedures we are employing, we are able to certify both US based and international affiliates.

Participating networks (there are over 50 networks so far) will receive an AffiliCert network login and gain access to certification data on our approved affiliates. Networks will be able to look up affiliates by name or ID# to check certification status and will also have access to daily/weekly lists of newly certified affiliates. This list may be used as a prospecting pool from which to recruit new affiliates

OUR VALUE

As the situation exists now, each network spends an enormous amount of time screening affiliate applications, only to turn away the vast majority as potentially fraudulent and not worth the risk to do business with. Affiliate managers’ time would be far better spent helping their existing affiliates to become more successful, therefore increasing the income of all parties involved.

AffiliCert aims to take the burden of screening largely off the hands of the networks, thus freeing up the affiliate managers time for more valuable tasks.

From the legitimate affiliates’ perspective, there are great benefits as well. Any affiliate getting started in the business knows all too well the frustrations of having their applications denied by one network after another. It’s really not their fault, but they are getting caught in the cross fire, collateral damage in the fight against fraud. Now with the emergence of AffiliCert, the legitimate affiliate will have a much easier time getting approved into any of our participating networks. There will be a nominal application fee, and of course they must pass the screening process, but once issued an AffiliCert ID, it will be smooth sailing. As an added benefit, each affiliate that becomes certified, will receive an AffiliateCert debit card, issued by Payoneer. If affiliates choose to recieve commission payments this way, the CPA networks can issue payments directly to their Affilicert debit card which can be used as a credit card or to take out cash at ATM’s at thousands of locations worldwide. US residents can even transfer their funds from their card, directly into their bank account. For international affiliates, this is hands down the quickest and easiest method to get paid.

Among the many networks participating in the AffiliCert program are MediaTrust, Unique Leads, Market Leverage, Neverblue, Rextopia, Revenue Street, Elite Clicks Media, Affiliateer and Affiliate venture Group.

We are excited to be launching on February 22^nd when we will begin taking affiliate applications. Fraudsters need not apply.