This time around I want to warn folks of a new scam that has made it to the martial arts.
If you want more, just do a search of “Perksconnect.com scam” and many examples will pop up.
The typical story goes as follows.
You get an e-mail or phone call from someone claiming to represent an organization looking for martial arts instruction for its employees, or maybe patients, etc. The key thing is, they hook you by getting you to think that they are the organization and they are going to end up have you teaching a lot more people. This is great news for a lot of people and they respond immediately.
Then there is a phone “interview” that turns out to be a sales pitch. They pressure you for a fee to help set this up between you and whatever organization they claim to want to set you up with. If you pay, you get nothing.
The thing is, it is hard to prove that this is a real scam on not just completely inept salespeople so they don’t seem to be in fear of arrest. My simple search shows that they have done this with fields as different as computer repair and yoga. The same tale is told again and again. A lucrative offer dangled before them, requirement of a fee and then nothing to show for it.
Now they seem to be branching into martial arts. I suppose that the word is out in the fields they used to work with.
I was contacted by someone that was obviously their target. There were certain things that set off alarms and a simple web search confirmed their suspicions.
First of all, when someone from New York calls someone in another state to set up a martial arts program for a hospital (?) in their area, it sounds suspicious.
But evidently, in the past they got quite a few people to sign up when they were pitching to computer repair companies.
If you look over the conversations, there is nothing at the start to indicate that they are not the organization they claim is looking for the service. They don’t claim to be the hospital straight out, but they do give that impression by saying that they are looking for instructors willing to take on many clients from the hospital.
Now, they might actually later go and talk to someone at the hospital they mentioned, knowing that they will almost certainly be shot down. In that case, it might be that they actually stay within the law. But when the person that contacted me called the hospital, they knew nothing about any martial arts program being set up. And of course, the whole idea of a hospital looking for MA instruction for its staff and/or patients seems a bit weird. I rather suspect that if they continue to target self defense/ martial arts instructors they will tailor their pitch to something more realistic. Maybe those teaching Taichi will be contacted about retirement homes, or self defense instructors will have contracts with security firms dangled in front of them.
The main thing is, if you get contacted like this be wary. If someone is claiming to drop a large amount of cash in your lap by some means, ask what the catch is. From what I can find out, the idea of a huge amount of people giving you money kind of blinds many until they are too deep to really think straight.
In general, if anyone contacts you about doing instruction for an organization, be wary. If they mention a name of a hospital or anyone else wanting the service, contact that organization directly and confirm it at the very least. And hold onto your wallet. When people ask you for a fee to set things up, that should be a huge warning sign.
Do your research, do a search of these this organization and be forewarned. There isn’t much else I can tell you except to do your homework on the internet so that if you get contacted you will recognize the scam for what it is.