UPDATE: YellowPage-California.com Scam Fax Ad

UPDATE: For up to the minute information about the Yellowpage-California.com scam (and yellowpage-michigan.com, yellowpage-newyork.com, etc., go to http://yellowpagescam.blogspot.com/.  There is a great deal of information there about how this scam works, who is behind it, and how to fight it. 

Check out this unsolicited fax ad we received today:

This purportedly is from the “Yellow Pages” and nefariously shows a logo which looks suspiciously like the real “Yellow Pages” logo but upside down.  The idea here is to get you to fill out your information and fax it back to them.  They encourage you by promising to actually submit your information to Google!  But beware, because if you do that you will have agreed to pay them $89.00 per month for a two year term (that’s over $2100!) with the first year payable in advance.   If you were to send this back to them, they would no doubt send you an invoice, followed by a nasty-gram that if you don’t pay they will sue you.  When you finally wake up to what you have done, they will have filed a lawsuit against you in New York. What, you don’t live in New York?  Tough, you have agreed to be sued there (it’s in the terms and conditions). And you will have to pay their attorneys’ fees as well. 

And what is it that Yellow Publishing Ltd. has agreed to do for you in exchange for paying them over $2,100?  Well hold onto your hat, because they will list your business on their website, which probably gets just about no traffic at all except for people like me researching scams  like this.  The so-called publisher, Yellow Publishing Ltd. is listed as having an address at 111 Picadilly, Manchester, M1  2HY, UK.  So you will need to hire a lawyer in England to get your money back from them. 

I feel very sorry for people who unwittingly send back a form like this.  This just underlines the importance of reading everything carefully before you sign it.  Scams like these are unfortunately becoming more and more prevalent, and with the Internet the transaction costs are practically zero for the fraudsters. 

This fax will forwarded to the California Attorney General. Maybe they will do something about these unscrupulous scoundrels.