Amateur cons fall victim to an epic prank after stealing from Zen Arbitrage
What follows is the true story about how “Book Profits” (aka “Textbook Money”) stole our data, and how we royally conned them in the process.
In this article:
- How thieves tried to steal data from Zen Arbitrage.
- Exposing the culprits as Book Profits/Textbook Money.
- How we flooded Book Profits with bad data.
- Interview on this stunt with Zen Arbitrage’s developer
- Announcement on a new trade-in credit tool.
- Special offer for all Book Profits customers.
Update #1: Textbook Money has reportedly changed its name to “Book Trades.biz“, “Book Arbitrage“, and/or “Book Profits.”
Update #2: After Book Profits copied us, we copied them, made our trade-in tool better, and released it with Zen Arbitrage for 1/20 the price.
View ZenTrade here. (our tool we copied from them)
View Zen Arbitrage here. (our tool they copied from us)
10x better tools & training at less than 1/20 the price of “Book Profits.”
The story
Several months ago, the lead developer at Zen Arbitrage noticed some unusual activity among users. One of our subscribers was logging a highly unusual number of searches of our book database.
It was quickly determined the activity was the work not of a human, but a “screen scraping” bot. These bots are created by hackers to mimic human behavior, including “clicking” and “scrolling” behind website paywalls to steal data.
It was clear this unusual activity was the work of a bot that was stealing our data.
What were the hackers after?
The theory was simple: Our data. There’s money in data, and Zen Arbitrage has the best.
For the uninitiated, Zen Arbitrage is my online book sourcing tool which has a database of over 21 million books. Among it is lucrative data such as textbook trade in value, sales rank, IBSN info, and more.
Also in our database is data no one else has, including six month average sales rank, a textbook-only database, another database containing thousands of books with book arbitrage / resale value, and more.
The timing of the hack (or its second wave, as I’ll explain) coincided with a massive overhaul of our database and data harvesting. To put it simply, we expanded our database and and the rate at which we refresh the data, making our already exceptional database even more appetizing to hackers.
If your online arbitrage database is complete garbage, you’ll definitely want to copy, infiltrate, or otherwise beat down the door of Zen Arbitrage.
The counter-attack
Our lead developer is 3 parts genius and 1 part prankster, so rather than block bots, he does something even better: Feeds them a mountain of garbage data.
While the bot requesting data about books on
“Hackers get hacked.” That’s our motto.
The hackers expose themselves
After a few months of that, the thieves made two fatal mistakes.
First, they tripled their requests. This caused page load time for Zen Arbitrage to slow, triggered alarms behind the scenes, and provoked us to investigate.
Second, they pulled a move so amateur, its defies belief: They hammered us with request from an easily traceable IP address.
It was the IP for “Textbook Money”:
(Click to enlarge)
“52.87.121.99” is the IP where the Textbook Money app is hosted (their app, as distinct from their URL):
Note: “There are no other sites hosted on this IP“
(Note: All data taken by the culprits was book-related. No credit card or user data was taken.)
Before we continue with the epic prank we pulled on them, some background…
Who or what is “Book Profits” (aka “Textbook Money”)?
Just like Zen Arbitrage, Book Profits is a tool that claims to find both book arbitrage opportunity (selling books for cash) and
Sometime a few months ago, two guys no one had ever heard of started promoting this tool, touting themselves as some kind of
The price was $3,500 to join, and $197 a month after. (That price should trigger anyone’s rip-off alarm.)
Yet it gets worse…
The guys behind this went by “Lambo Luke” (aka Luke Sample) and “Jon Shugart.” (Yes, he goes by “Luke Lambo” with a straight face.)
Yet, still it gets worse…
No one (as far as I can tell) in the
(If you know of anyone in the
Instead, Book Profits (aka “Textbook Money”) focused their promotions to the “get rich on the internet” crowd (which I couldn’t be less of a fan of).
How Book Profits / Textbook Money came on my radar
When they launched their product over the summer, my inbox began blowing up with questions. Naturally if its “selling books on
Obviously Book Profits looked really scammy, but when asked, I withheld comment without any solid evidence.
So how badly did Textbook Money aka “Book Profits” clone us?
The short answer is: Not very well at all.
We have multiple developers adding new features and technologies constantly (over 20 features added in the last 9 months), whereas Book Profits is, to put it bluntly, in the dinosaur age of book arbitrage (spoiler: They don’t even show FBA offers like Zen Arbitrage does – the most important bit of data when making a purchase).
So here is “Book Profits” in two parts:
An
A Zen Arbitrage clone. I forget what they even call their Zen Arbitrage rip-off product, but it’s $297 a month (vs. $79 for Zen Arbitrage). Like other attempts to knock off Zen Arbitrage, it doesn’t do a fraction of what Zen Arbitrage does.
Textbook Money only targets sellers who don’t know Zen Arbitrage exists, or the “get rich quick” crowd, and doesn’t compare.
What are people saying about Book Profits/Textbook Money?
Soon after Textbook Money was released, Zen Arbitrage began getting a small tidal wave of their upset, former customers.
It seems that their customers became very unhappy very quickly, and found Zen Arbitrage as a much less expensive (and more robust) alternative.
The consistent grievance was that the trade in credit opportunity had dried up almost as soon as Textbook Money was released.
Here’s a sample of the emails I received:
And in the interest of fairness, this person made money with Textbook Money, “in the beginning.”
(Update: View over 50 more emails from angry ex-members here)
What else are people saying about Book Profits?
Seriously, just Google it. It’s crazy.
Here’s a sample of the venom Textbook Money received:
People trash-talking Textbook Money
And then there’s the tidal wave of “rip off alerts” on the internet about Textbook Money. Don’t take my word for it. Google “Textbook Money scam” or “rip off” and you’ll get an eye full.
Who are the guys behind Textbook Money?
The guy on the left also goes by “Luke Lambo.” Yes, he actually calls himself that. Let that sink in.
We can let the name (and the “soul patch”) of Luke Lambo speak for itself, but if those don’t paint a full picture, here are a couple more links about their past endeavors:
Back to the story about how we conned Book Profits…
For months, we’d been feeding the mystery thieves mountains of garbage data. Completely inaccurate gibberish.
If a book had a rank of 100,000, we fed the attackers a rank of 3 million. If it had a trade in value of $2.31, we said it was $110. We scrambled ISBNs, titles, everything.
Anyone trying to use this data to make money with online book arbitrage would be instantly out of business. It was unusable.
The plot thickened when we figured out the infiltrators were Book Profits
This is where it got interesting.
In analyzing their motive, our only reasonable assumption was:
“Textbook Money is stealing our data, and selling it to their customers.”
Remember, the data they were getting (and selling?) was complete garbage.
That means any customers they may have sold our data to were getting…. complete garbage.
Do you see how poetic this justice is? (Justice for the culprits, not their unwitting subscribers)
(Request traffic from the bot that attacked Zen Arbitrage)
If the theory was true, Textbook Money has been selling their customers completely inaccurate garbage for months
Any data they stole from us and then sold to their customers was completely garbage, and their customers were getting sold complete garbage.
And if accurate, Textbook Money reselling the garbage data we’d been feeding them would explain the huge uptick in bad reviews, angry customers, and exodus out of Textbook Money (and over to Zen Arbitrage) around the time we started sending them garbage data.
This might be the most poetic justice in the history of poetic justice.
All of this raised a few questions
- Did Book Profits/Textbook Money build their entire Zen Arbitrage-clone off stolen data?
- Who else in the
Amazon -software world is Book Profits stealing data from? - What did Book Profits do with the tidal wave of bogus data we sent them?
- Did Book Profits turn around and sell this gibberish to its customers?
How low are these guys?
At $3,5000 and $197 a month, you’d think the Textbook Money/Book Profits guys could afford the $97 monthly charge for Zen Arbitrage to steal our data.
Ever heard the saying: “The way you do one thing, is how you do everything“?
Every credit card linked to the Book Profits/Textbook Money accounts since November 2nd (and most before) has been declined (i.e. totally fake or empty accounts).
Every time our system would boot them for declined charges, they’d sign up again under an email address that slightly deviated from “craig.maywald@gmail.com“. Here’s a sampling of email addresses associated with the fake Textbook Money hacker accounts:
Apparently they’re not above credit card fraud either.
We decide to prank them even harder
Zen Arbitrage’s lead developer had an even funnier idea: Let’s go full prankster and send them a tidal wave of data that was, let’s just say, “catered” to them.
From that point, for every request they placed with Zen Arbitrage we gave Book Profits special results like:
- Google results for “How to hire an FTC lawyer.”
- “Getting Sued for Dummies.”
- Google results for “Textbook Money scam.”
- Google results for “how to not get caught stealing data.”
- Google image results for “get rich quick scam artists.”
There’s something to be said for doing things just because they’re funny.
Before we offer the big takeaway (and a cool announcement), let’s do a little sidebar interview for a behind the scenes look…
Sidebar: Interview With Zen Arbitrage’s Lead Developer
Me: Tell us in one or two sentences what a bot is, and what it does.
Zen Arbitrage developer: In general web parlance, a “bot” is a piece of software used to simulate the behavior of a real human user interacting with a webpage, usually without the permission or knowledge of the content owner. The variety Zen typically encounters are referred to as “scrapers” – they’re custom-built and their only objective is data theft.
(Similar attack faced by an unrelated entity)
This isn’t the first time Zen Arbitrage has seen this.
ZA developer: Not at all.
In layperson terms, what would motivate someone to unleash a bot on Zen Arbitrage?
ZA developer: The Zen team has put considerable effort into building a well-oiled machine for processing and analyzing
You started to notice some unusual activity a few months ago. What did you see?
ZA developer: Every request on the internet includes certain identifying information about it’s origin. Bots built by very amateur programmers will often neglect this important detail and accidentally identify themselves as such via something called a “user agent” (nerd-talk for “the browser you’re using”). Other bots we’ve seen have been built by more skilled engineers and have required more complex analysis, but this one stood out like a sore thumb. Total amateur hour.
And you launched a counter-attack. Describe how you responded.
ZA developer: There’s already a few front-line defenses in place to protect Zen from data theft. For the most part, bots are dealt with automatically and don’t require any manual touch on our end – the stuff they request gets scrambled before it’s sent, so they’ll typically receive what appears at first glance to be real books, but with enough inaccurate data to make them worthless.
Recently they tripled their bot activity. What was significant about this timing, and what do you think provoked this?
ZA developer: The timeline syncs up with both Textbook Money recent promo campaigns, and Zen’s recent improvements. We’ve been focusing on “behind the scenes” improvements, like expanding our database, and increasing our data refresh rate – things that probably turned us from an appealing target to an irresistible one.
How and when did you trace this to Textbook Money?
ZA developer: Definitively and quickly tracing these things back to a particular person or group is usually pretty difficult. You usually find these things hosted on their own dedicated servers, anonymized or rented with bogus information. Because we have a damage control system in place and prefer to spend our time making a great product greater, its not really worth wasting it on unmasking most of them.
But right around the time of the huge traffic spike, our system flagged a new IP address. It wasn’t very long before I’d found the owner of 52.87.121.99 (easily traced, such as on this page).
Based on this revelation, you began sending them some more “specially catered” data. Tell us what you fed their bot towards the end.
ZA developer: I dug a little bit deeper into their background/founders and decided to generate a dataset of “books” that felt especially relevant to them:
- “The Lonely Planet guide to Atlanta FTC Attorneys”
- “Harry Potter and the Art of Deception”
- “Ghost in the Wires”
- “Anthony Bourdain’s Cooking With Snake Oil”
… and more.
Most of these aren’t real books, but if you’re on the other end of the Textbook Money bot you might be convinced otherwise.
Say a few words about the culprit’s hacking ability and technical skill.
ZA developer: I’m stunned they couldn’t track down someone with at least entry-level programming skills to operate this thing for them. Seriously. I don’t think I’m allowed to discuss everything we found, but I’ll leave it at this: I could walk on any college campus and find first-month computer science freshmen to build less clumsy software. It’s almost like they wanted to get caught.
Just to recap: You fed all requests associated with the Textbook Money IP a mountain of worthless data over several months. Generally speaking, if someone was flagged as a bot, received the garbage data we sent them, and sold it to their customers, what would they be receiving?
ZA developer: I feel bad for any customers caught in the crossfire, but we have to keep these bots in a sandbox where we can limit their access to real data. And if someone using a bot sold the data we gave them, and you were their customer, your heart might skip a beat when you see the $10,000 trade-in value for a textbook called “Soul Patches, Illiteracy, and Adult Virginity: Causal Relationships Examined.”
If that happened to you, I’m truly sorry.
Any more pranks prepared if they attempt to strike again?
ZA developer: No comment.
***End Interview***
The takeaway
If our theory is correct that the only reason to sick hack-bots on Zen Arbitrage is to sell our data to their users, then the only logical conclusion is:
Book Profits/Textbook Money has been selling completely inaccurate, fake data to its subscribers
And that’s how you con a con artist.
Announcing: How its about to get worse for Book Profits/Textbook Money
As soon as we figured out Book Profits were stealing our data, we asked ourselves an important question:
“How do we turn this into something good?”
The answer was obvious and instant:
Creating our own textbook trade-in arbitrage tool & bundle it with Zen Arbitrage
ZenTrade is now live.
Everything Book Profits has. A lot it doesn’t. Together with Zen Arbitrage. 1/20 the price.
War on con artists
I can’t stand to see
That $47 still stings. I can’t imagine spending $3,500 (and $197 a month) for something that didn’t work. I would never forgive anyone who did that to me.
In conclusion
If you’re one of those people (like me) who likes to skip to the end of articles, here’s the timeline of this epic saga:
- Textbook Money/Book Profits gets released.
- Around this time, strange hack bots are detected infiltrating Zen Arbitrage.
- We feed them mountains of inaccurate, garbage data.
- We exposed the culprits as Textbook Money, stealing our data.
- We fed them mountains of additional data on finding an FTC lawyer, how to not be terrible at hacking, etc.
- We’ve released an
Amazon trade in arbitrage tool that is cheaper & better than Book Profits/Textbook Money (by far), and bundled it with Zen Arbitrage for 1/20 the cost: View the package here.
And that is how Book Profits got massively conned.
-Peter Valley & Team Zen
PS: Have experience with Book Profits/Textbook Money? Leave a comment below.
PPS: Current Book Profits/Textbook Money (or other Zen Arbitrage knockoff) subscriber? Email a screenshot of your TM account info (or forward a TM confirmation email) to peter [at] fbamastery.com and we’ll set you up with your first month of Zen Arbitrage for 50% off.
PPPS: Curious how we are superior to Textbook Money aka Book Profits? Here are the highlights:
![](<iframe src="//rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?o=1&p=42&l=ur1&category=amazonhomepage&f=ifr&linkID=581ff15955029b80d81e053ef046aa1e&t=fbamastery-20&tracking_id=fbamastery-20" width="234" height="60" scrolling="no" border="0" marginwidth="0" style="border:none;" frameborder="0"></iframe>)
Brilliant. Thanks for exposing the cretins among us and continuing to confirm that ZA is by far the most superior arbitrage tool out there. By far.
(This is not a sponsored post!) Thanks Matt!
Great job on giving these guys what they deserve. It’s great to see the “good guys” win now and then.
Hi Peter,
Kudos on such an epic prank! Way to teach them not to mess with the best.
If only there was a legitimate endeavor for Soul Patch and Used Car Salesman to pour their energy into…….but I racked my brain and I can’t think of anything. /sarcasm/
Here’s my personal experience with Zen Arbitrage: I just learned about flipping in the beginning of December. I didn’t start sourcing until 2 weeks before Christmas. And I’ve been at home with pneumonia for the past week.
It’s January 6th and I’m already selling books. I’m staring at 11 boxes of books ready to be shipped to Amazon. Using Zan Arbitrage, I’ve been able to source books at night when I can’t sleep, during the day when my kids are in school, during a long wait in line at a store, and any other time it strikes my fancy. Hell, I’ve even sourced books during this past week when I haven’t had the energy to get off the couch, but I could buy books online!! ZA is worth its weight in gold.
And Peter, no more jokes like ‘Google results for “How to hire an FTC lawyer”‘ when I’m sick. I laughed myself into an impressive coughing fit. (Well done.)
-Leigha
I wasn’t entirely sure Amazon sellers had a sense of humor. Thanks for putting my concern to rest (and for using Zen Arbitrage).
I laughed so hard at that line, my kids came running to see what was so funny.
Love it!!!
Peter,
Yes! I, too have been scammed b Textbook Money! What they did in the beginning should have been a red flag for me, but I took the bait anyway. Their program was $997 and $97/Month. However, the crooks managed to set up the payment as $997+the next 5 months= $1,482.
During any of their “Help” sessions, they would not allow the chat box to be seen by anyone but them. The subscribers could chat, but not see what others were saying. Someone asked why they didn’t have a Textbook Money Facebook Group. They had some lame excuse, but I now believe it as because they did not want anyone to see how many unhappy customers hey had. I am hoping someone starts a class-action lawsuit. I would LOVE to be a part of that. I am going to open a complaint with PayPal and see where that goes. Thanks, Peter. I love your program! I have recently sent more than 1,000 books to Amazon and have sold about 25 already. Your advice is spot on. I would be interested in your ideas for a trade-in program.
Hi Gary & Peter, I also fell prey to the Textbook Money scam. After I realized it wasn’t going to work I asked for a refund. No refunds allowed. I went directly to PayPal & got the refund. So glad I figured it out early on.
Hi Brenda. Gad you got your refund. “Lambo Luke” and his cronies make the rules nearly impossible to get a refund. I just requested my refund through PayPal. If hat doesn’t work, I will go directly to my credit card company. They have been very good about keeping unhappy customers happy. I have had a couple of refunds through them that did not work with he original vendor or PayPal. Obvious to me that Peter has a hugely better program, a better price and good support.
did you purchase the TBM scam through PayPal? I really would like to hear about the procedure. I’m feeling duped and certainly, can not afford it. I would really appreciate
any advice you have for a refund thanks im only 1 month into it but still thats one payment
of 297 or so and the monthly too.
Always be concerned when someone won’t let attendees view the chat box on webinars (another Zen Arbitrage knockoff does the same thing). MAJOR red flag, always.
Would not be surprised if Textbook Money got sued. Ambulence chasing lawyers, get in touch.
Peter,
I would be totally surprised (like Trump winning surprised) if they aren’t sued. I’m sure the information you have about them would weigh heavily in a courtroom. I spent MANY hours looking for book trade-ins through Textbook Money. Very little results. After signing up with Zen Arbitrage, I have sent over 1,000 books to Amazon. Not all purchased through Zen Arbitrage, but the sourcing ideas came from there. THANK YOU!
Textbookmoney.com price and the monthly fees are ridiculous. I wish to read some review before I signed up. So much time with little dime here and there. Maybe this worked great when there was only a handful of people doing it, but now that there are dozens or hundreds, the competition has made it nearly impossible!!!! DON’T WAIST YOUR TIME! They did weasle out from the 365 days $2000 guarantee.
Thanks for a fun read first thing this morning! Some people are just lazy, unoriginal, POSS. Excited for the new tool.
Looking at their website they must feel they have stolen a lot of good data. The up front cost has tripled to $2997. Better hurry before the next price increase!!!
Nicely played. I love it when con artists are put in their place.
This is great! Thanks for sharing the story. I love how you scammed the scammers. Brilliant!
Nice work Peter! Never heard of these guys, but sounds like typical scammy behavior. There’s no end to those guys out there, unfortunately.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been on Zen for about a year now and it’s been worth every penny, especially now as we did more textbook buying than ever in the last few months.
Awesome, Wayne. Thanks for being a Zen Arbitrage subscriber. Love hearing success stories.
Should you report this hacking to the appropriate authorities?
Count me among the ones who were suckered by TextBookMoney. They’re great salesmen, just keep leading you on, saying this is going to make it better, then in a few more weeks, we’ve come up with something new that will make it better. Unfortunately I fell for their hype too many times.
Also their book prep company was a nightmare to work with. I spent far, far too much time trying to figure out what was going on there.
I’m so glad that I found Zen Arbitrage. I’m just getting started. And the book prep company you recommended is a dream to work with!. They directly communicate with me in a timely manner (unlike testbookmoney book prep) and have a great system for letting me know where my books are.
Thanks. This article has been very revealing because I had my suspicions.
Jo
A recipe to part even the smartest person from their money is a compelling pitch + no / hard-to-get refunds.
Don’t feel bad about this.
Elephant in the Room #1: I’m putting on pink boxers so Peter can’t see me.
Elephant in the Room #2: HUSH! I’m trying to write about our caper so everyone can follow along, live!
Peter (as if you don’t need the help), this story is going viral via facebook and twitter very soon, and I’m sending it out to my 16,000 unique subscribers of my HonestOnlineSelling.com newsletter.
Bravo and I bet a producer job is waiting for you at CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
Jordan, I took a cue from you with this one because you’ve always been at the top of the game in enforcing honesty in the Amazon selling space.
I don’t know how many people realize how much money you’ve walked away from because you refuse to promote low-quality (or no-quality) products.
You were a primary inspiration in outing these clowns, because you’ve always put integrity ahead of $$$.
Thanks man!
No need to thank me, man! You’re a big inspiration to me too! Now let’s move away from the screen before our slobber fries our CPU!
Jordan,
I hope the con artists get taken to court. When I signed up, they charged my PayPal account for the $997 PLUS the next 5 months (total $1,492.00). I have asked for a refund and they replied “refunds are only made in the first 30 days…..NOT TRUE! They have a “refund” policy that is impossible to fulfill. They have changed the policy since I joined in April,2016. Now, they are caught stealing data! Damn criminals!
Peter! If you look up the word “irony” in the dictionary, this Google Map appears:
http://screencast.com/t/LwnexiO2r1g
(Although I don’t see a “Lambo” in the parking lot picture.)
It’s even better than that, Jordan! In almost exactly the opposite direction and distance, they can find the county courthouse. 🙂
Jordan, you are a mad genius. Maybe they won’t need the map and will just get “escorted.”
Do handcuffs come in different sizes? I wish there was a size that fit around the neck!
It’s funny you mention Textbook Money. Just yesterday I got done watching a webinar for them. In which they explained all about how you could find profitable textbooks on Amazon (merchant fulfilled mostly, but sometimes FBA) that you could trade in to Amazon and other book buying sites for credit (gift card) that you could later turn into cash. They said that they had developed a Google Chrome extension that works on Amazon (for textbooks only I presume) that would show profitable books to trade or sell outright. They said you could make money, ($100000+) almost instantly but disclaimed there were no guarantees. Initially the service cost $2997+$97 per month, but for the webinar they were offering a special price of $997+$97 per month. Since some attendees said that price was too high. They also offered an installment plan of 4 payments of $297+$97 per month. Of course they had video testimonials from supposed users. It was all really polished and slick. Needless to say I was skeptical about the whole thing when they announced the price for what was essentially just a browser extension. I did not buy into it. It reminded me to much like Zen Arbitrage, which costs less.
Curious to know who is promoting these guys (if you care to share). I wasn’t able to find anyone outside the “get rich quick” space who would touch them.
Dan Hollings is where I first heard of the guys.
Dan Hollings is where I heard of them too.
Heard about them from Joel Peterson. A guy I thought I could trust..smh
Many of their members are promoting them because of the $400 affiliate pay for each sign-up. Before Christmas, it was $500
I contacted Textbook Money support again today requesting a refund. The reply was I only had the first 30 days to request a refund. That is not true. They had stringent rules about refunds that were impossible to meet. I will continue my refund saga until I receive a full refund.If it requires some kind of legal action, then so be it. It’s not just the money, it’s their arrogant “can’t touch me” attitude. They think they have thought of everything to keep from having to refund many, many unsatisfied customers.
Kevin Thompson – of the Automated Income System
I just watched their webinar from an email from Kevin Thomson too !
It was very convincing and the fees was $2997+ 97 mthly which they dropped to $997 + 97 mthly and 4 payments + 97 mthly .
Jason Fladlien promoted Lambo Luke.
Please join this FB group – Book Arbitrage Results
https://www.facebook.com/groups/744642969027290/
I received a link to the webinar a few days ago from Jimmy Sweeny of CareerJimmy LLC who provides help with job résumés and has his own Cover Letter app to sell. I watched the webinar which was about 2 hours long and then went right to the web to search for scams.
Sorry to say Dan Raine, I really thought he was legit. referred them to me. They offer subscribers up first access to their “beta” improvements to the software if you make a youtube video talking about how good the program etc. Criteria you only need to make $1 and do the video.
Dan Raines information.
Copyright © 2017 Raine Ventures LLC, All rights reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Raine Ventures LLC
397514 34, Rue Gabriel Lippmann,
Munsbach L-5365
Luxembourg
Mike Dillard and the Elevation Group is promoting TextBook Money.
Wow, this is pretty crazy.
I would have just blocked them, but it sounds like you guys did a good job of tracing them and outing them.
You should fix your login system. Gmail ignores all dots before the @, so all of Craig Maywald’s email addresses belong to the same inbox and account.
Good call. We found plugging holes in the form of blocking email addresses isn’t very helpful, as burner addresses are so easy to create.
I have started an investigation with PayPal for my $1,482 payment for Textbook Money. If all of us who have been ripped off and used PayPal do the same, I think PayPal may realize something is wrong.
I have deleted the Textbook Money Chrome Extension from my computer.
I hate to see this happen. I can only think of one instance in which I didn’t grant someone a refund. It’s not only the right thing to do, not giving refunds is just bad business – unless you’re playing the “short game” of taking the money and running.
I told Textbook Money support not to bill me for any future payments. Here is their reply:
Textbook Money Support | Mike – Support Team Today at 1:07 PM
To
Gary Young
Message body
Hello Gary,
From Luke:
I think I understand your situation here. We have found the only real reason someone asks to cancel their membership is because they simply can’t afford it or they can’t justify paying another month because they haven’t been able to implement and earn to the system’s potential. As you know there is no doubt the method works and works very well in the long-run as you can see by our Top Earners Club and by checking out the 200+ testimonial videos on our youtube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdYVe5rIWov4-ry7LZfhpPw/videos?sort=dd&view=0&shelf_id=0
Would it help if I paid for your next month’s membership? This program means far more to us than just money and we don’t ever
want people to be forced to cancel because they can’t afford it. It just simply works and changes far too many lives and incomes to not ensure everyone has the opportunity to use the system.
I believe so strongly that this method and system is the key for you to start achieving rapid, permanent results and so I’d be more than happy to take care of your next payment for you. Use it for another full month absolutely free and earn all the money you need to get yourself in a position to really ramp this up and use it long-term. This is far too much and too easy income to pass up.
How does that sound?
Kind regards,
Mike – Support Team
Will your new trade-in tool allow for trading in to other sites besides Amazon? Sites like textbookrush and chegg buy used textbooks as well.
We’re working out the finer points, so get on the early bird list and stay tuned.
Awesome! Already signed up.
I joined Textbook Money’s Trade-in program, but found very few profitable trade-in opportunities. Although I was aware that they were developing a book arbitrage system whereby people would do what Zen does, I decided to put in for a refund. And they gave it to me without question, which I appreciated. Then I did a google search for book arbitrage and found Zen, which, thankfully, is much less expensive. My income is Social Security – $900/mo. That’s it. I’m in desperate financial trouble and saving money is important. I realize that book arbitrage is not the pathway to great riches, but I am losing over $1,000/mo, because my bare bones expenses are $2100/mo, and, as I said, my income is $900. I haven’t gone through all the tutorials yet and haven’t begun my Zen journey yet.
You can also look at garage sales and thrifts. That’s a good way to get started with less capital.
I bought textbook money last year. I made a little bit of money. I realized quickly that I didn’t have time to dedicate to finding books. So I requested a refund. They sent me an email saying I shouldn’t quit, but to think it over before I really request a refund. I really requested a refund and they complied. But they didn’t completely close my account because I was still being charged the $97/month. So I requested a 2nd refund for all the $97 they charged for the past couple of months.
Peter, here’s the thing, their chrome extension tool was pretty mediocre. The biggest problem I had was that the tool could not filter out rental or digital copies of the textbook which would always show the lowest price. So I said this is bogus. The tool isn’t that great.
But on a positive note, I did learn that you can make money trading textbooks!
PS. I bought this course through Dan Hollings. James Jones also promoted this course at one point in time.
Steve, this is James Jones. I did NOT promote the Textbook Money course. I reviewed it and got access to the plugin and training. I spend several hours running the plugin and I logged all the books I found in a spreadsheet and then checked the tradein prices each day for a week. The tradein prices for all but a couple of books kept dropping. After a week I realized I would have lost money if had purchased the books and traded them in to Amazon.
But even without reviewing it I think its just a dumb idea. Its like finding a gold coin on the sidewalk, scrapping a few pieces off for yourself then throwing the coin away.
Thanks,
James
We seemed to have a week of so of ordering quite good trade-in books, then it went flat. Then the ‘big money’ teaser came along and the $297/mth – now its a master program or something. Always the big price tag. I didn’t follow them for long – watch out for Mr big talker and Mr smoothie – still getting emails from them, still in business I guess.
Brilliant. I love that on one of the get rich forums that their previous scam “founders” were – Mathew, Mark, Luke and Jon – remind you of any book in particular? ha ha ha
OK Textbook Money buyers……….I trashed the Chrome App and when I did so, I noticed Chrome had a bit of a “warning” that the App traces your internet movements. REMOVE THAT THING IMMEDIATELY! They knew I was in contact with ZEN ARBITRAGE! I even heard a veiled comment on one of their “Help” sessions about some of their members “chasing everything that glitters”.
I am a member and to be honest I have made some decent money using the system – I am going to look into Zen though for sure as it seems to be a better option. Looking forward to it!!!!
I am greatly amused! It was a real smart act on your and your developer’s part. 🙂
By the way, why do we need a different tool for trade-in offers when we already have them in Zen Arbitrage under the heading “Trade”? It’s way more than sufficient I feel.
In my opinion, Trade-in is not such a big or such an important or else such a consistent business as book arbitrage is and as requires more data than we already have in Zen Arbitrage. At least that’s what I feel.
What’s your opinion, Peter?
While we do offer trade in value for all books and lots of Zen Arbitrage members use us for that purpose, it is not our core function.
What we’re working on is a tool that will more elegantly hone in on just trade in value, for those who are only interested in capitalizing on that.
Same trade in data, just organized more elegantly.
And which developer did this splendid job of conning the cons, the present one or the former one? 🙂
Hi Peter! I see you used my quote in this post. And yes, sadly I was conned. It seems to be order of the day anymore on the internet. This game is not for the faint of heart. I however choose to be positive and chalk it up to experience. Had I not fallen victim to LAMBO LUKE I never would have known about the REAL DEAL; you. You have proven to be a very rare breed in this industry. Because of your integrity I will always be a loyal supporter and because of Luke’s avarice at all cost he has lost a really good customer for life. We all have choices, right?
Thank you again, Peter for your integrity that has proven to be above reproach.
I agree 1,000%
Peter, are sure the Russians had nothing to do with it?
Steven, I am a Russian victim of Lambo Luke marketing skills.
I lost 30 000 USD since December 22, 2016 using Book Arbitrage system by Luke Sampla and Jon Shugart.
Feel free to join this open group.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/744642969027290/v
this Facebook group or page isnt available now – I see an error. I searched on FB for ‘book arbitrage’ and found 2 small groups to join and have. Awaiting acceptance.
and Thanks Peter for this article and thanks to all the commenters (I read the comments FIRST) . I have been saved from this scam (I just saw the webinar replay today and was temped).
I have singed up for the early notice list for the new trade in tool too. I am now on your list Peter.
this is total bullshit, and your scamming slandering ass is about to be schooled BIG TIME. Get yourself a VERY good San Diego lawyer as fast as you can, asshat ..
Bring it. Literally nothing I would love more right now than subpoena powers.
Draw your sword.
Brilliant comeback, Peter.
I’ve dealt with this kind of law in a tertial way and can second your statement that subpoena powers would be the most dangerous (and stupid) thing they could grant you right now.
I’m not a lawyer, I know that there are a couple things that spell MAJOR federal crime: One is scraping data and then selling it (the *selling* is where the prison time comes in), and the other is bringing down a site / affecting page load time (sabotaging a competitor and so on).
That doesn’t mention all the aspects of this story I’m sure you couldn’t talk about publicly.
A lawsuit would be fun for us voyeurs admittedly because you would have access to view ALL activity on their servers, email accounts, and so on and on. And once it is public record, it would be available for all of us to see. Now THAT would be a good article!
Yeah these guys would be majorly foolish to give you subpoena power right now!
Peter, not sure if you and your team are pure geniuses or they are just complete idiots. You continue to amaze me!
Its the second one.
It seems there’s mostly bad reviews for TM and then there’s some good ones.
I’ve had contact with 2 that said if you work it consistently then you’ll make money.
However that leads me to ask you … if you’re messing with their data how are people making money still?
Is it that some of the data is still accurate?
Also, Elevation Group … a solid group for financial learning, heavily promoted TM over the past 3 weeks or so.
Let me know on the above please, thanks.
That surprises me Mike Dillard would be involved with them.
It was sold to a new owner. They are standing behind TM.
Though this article makes it look obvious that TM is a scam or whatever … to most people this doesn’t look like a scam.
I’d like some answers to my original questions above by Peter, if possible.
Ha those clowns sure do deserve that, what a bunch of scammy garbage they always try to sucker people into buying. i would think you should also sue them for what they did, it sure seems like the logical thing to do so maybe you can shut them down permanently.
I bought the Textbook Money course back around August but saw that it was going to take to much time and hassle using their prep center. But they have another course called Book Arbitrage that seems to be on the up an up. I have been using it for about 3 weeks and have had no problems. I only spend about 30-45 minutes a day and find 5-10 books pretty easily in that time frame. But yes if they were doing what you say with Textbook Money we all should try to get our money back. I really need to look into this now. Thanks for the heads up.
Mike
One note: That book arbitrage product is a shameless copy of Zen Arbitrage. And if it was populated with legitimate data they wouldn’t need to steal ours.
Unfortunately I was scammed too – didn’t realise it was “too good to be true” until I realised it was “too good to be true”!
I signed up from an email from Keith Baxter – not sure if he’s on the radar too but never had any scam stuff from him in the past?
EPIC HA! I am a new reader and subscriber. Obviously we have all been burned or almost burned by companys like textbook money in our pasts, so I am even wary of you. But from what I can tell you are honest, have a sense of humor, and get straight to the point!
I hopped on a webinar last night by “ReallySuccessful” selling their product “big red gold finder” and it was $997… I wonder if there is an affiliation between them and textbook money. I could tell it was scammy… They kept telling people “type ‘O-M-G’ into the chat box if you are amazed at these figures” etc… so the chat box would light up with omg and no one could talk or ask real questions, Plus it was prerecorded which is no big deal really but man is it hard to find integrity these days!
Anyway, I am a newbie amazon FBA seller and looking to learn as I just graduated college and don’t feel like working in corporate America. Like doing my own thing too much. Thanks for your helpful info!
Peter
I am one of those who bought into Textbook Money with the hope of earning a couple of hundred dollars a month as I am retired and could certainly use the extra cash. So far it cost me $997 to “get in” plus $97 per month thereafter. I joined in August 2016. I have so far made about $200 for my efforts. As someone else mentioned, the actual net profit from each book I purchase is sometimes as low as 2 or 3 dollars, this after paying $120 for the book. Yes Amazon will take it in trade but at a very strict profit margin. Luke and John refer to this as ROI and they constantly rave at how great this amount is. Then in November or so Luke and John insisted ALL “customers” listening to a live training session get on-board with Book Arbitrage–even if we didn’t want to. They would shame the opt-outs during the live session. The first month was free and $97 per month after that. I wrote a very nice letter stating I wanted out after the first 3 weeks but it took several weeks before I got my next month’s refund. I continue to get emails informing me of live training sessions for Book Arbitrage every week. I’m afraid I’m going to get hit one day with what they think I owe them. I want to get out of the Textbook money scheme. I’m not looking for a total refund like some others I know of, I just want out with no further monthly payments. Can I send a copy of your article to them when I send my opt-out request?
Thank you
Trusting Ricky (NOT Lambo Ricky)
Richard Guilbault
I have asked repeatedly for a full refund of my $1,482.00 for Textbook Money ($997+5 months payments). After hearing how they have stolen data from Zen Arbitrage, I have asked PayPal to step in for a refund. I believe if enough people who purchased that program through PayPal complained, they (PayPal) might look into this problem further.
I am answering my own post. I made 1 request to PayPal for a refund of my $1,482 Textbook Money purchase……VOILA!
I received a text today: FULL REFUND! Please pass along to anyone wanting a Textbook Money refund. I think Pay Pal has gotten wind of the fraudsters. ASK FOR A REFUND THROUGH PAY PAL.
Hey Gary,
What exactly did you have to say to PayPal to get them to refund it for you? I’m in the same boat and just want to know what they needed to know before agreeing to do it.
Thanks!
Just to add that Jessica J (dating-relationship niche) was promoting Textbook Money offer I think last summer (or so),in her newsletters.
People like the $400 affiliate fee with Textbook Money. They don’t give a rat’s behind whether it works. Affiliates were getting $500 just before Christmas!
Hello – has anyone had any luck getting a refund direct from the merchant, TB Money? Since I purchased on 8/25 AMEX giving me a tough time with the refund because it was several months ago. A guy by the name of Bill McIntosh was pitching this ….
Where you able to get your refund? I was trying to get but no luck. The customer service representative Kevin is rude when answering my email. Thanks
Where you able to get your refund? I was trying to get but no luck. The customer service representative Kevin is rude when answering my email. Thanks
I too purchased textbook money and after what happened nobody will trust these guys anymore. . i will definitely cancel my subscription with them.
Hello all
I got involve with TM after being swamp with email from IM gurus like Brittany Lynch and Dan Dasilva. I got on payment plan for 4 months (TM course($297) + $97/mo). Yes their refund policy was hard to meet. You have to show due diligence by buying X number of books per a week. I was surprise by the poaching of data from another company. The upsell for their Book Arbitrage was $297/mo and another $997 for the coaching program. Definitely go to a cheaper option like Zen Arbitrage. They were selling lists of books that they source in December 2016. They promote the lists as a Christmas gift to TM customers for $250 per list of books they allegedly sourced. Odd this is around the same time that they were poaching data from Zen Arbitrage. 🙂
Get ready for another round. Just had a webinar today promoting TM.
I got this again from a couple of guys, notably Fred Barton and Stephen Gilbert. Funny how they were promoting this as “not Shareify, but still an opportunity.”
$997 + $97 monthly for a browser extension? I nearly coughed up the donut I was eating!
James Sides and Sam Finlay were also promoting this. I was surprised that Jeremy Schoemaker was also affiliated with these guys!
I’m signing up with ZA – I’ll pay for quality any day of the week!
Hey, Came across your article here concerning Textbook Money. I signed up with them in December of 2016 and did pretty well the first month with it in sales. In February there weren’t as many books available to buy and sell, in March it was even worse. We gave it an honest try and decided to contact them and cash out of our Amazon Gift card and get out. They offered us a free month to keep going. We found a few books but ended up sending back 75% of the books we bought because they were not acceptable. This cost even more money because of the shipping fees to third party sellers. I then contacted them to see about cashing out of the gift card money at the 6% fee. They emailed back and told me they were putting a new policy together concerning it. This new policy stated that you could only cash out $500 per month and had to use their book arbitrage system to do so. This is when I found your article and decided to just let my month expire and let them know I wasn’t going to do this. I’d be better off donating my Amazon card money to charity rather than give them anymore of my time. I appreciate you letting me know what was really going on here. Thank you.
I just watched the webinar tonight and I ALMOST bought this…I had all of my credit card info filled out! I decided to Google for reviews and found this and a few others. Soooo happy I didn’t go through with the purchase! Thank you all so much for saving me from losing all that money!
Oh….I forgot to add that I heard of TM through Travis Sago.
I listened to the webinar this morning. I heard about it from: Mitchell P. Wallace
I had a good think on whether I would purchase this program, but decided to do a little searching around before I obligated myself. In my opinion, the come on board price was very expensive. What bothered me most about the program, which Lambo didn’t talk about in the webinar, is how much someone would be paying for books per day or per week in order to make the big money. I could only imagine that I might be spending $300 to $600 or more weekly. Needless to say, my better judgement told me to say no.
Nice read here. I’m glad I found this entertaining read.
I just sat throught the webinar today July 20, 2017 that was pitched by by email Greg Wells very enthusiastically. I just had to watch when the claims went so far as to label this a $100k opportunity and “We have shown a 10 year old girl that is using the method to build her college fund”. I just assumed that was Greg pitching in the video but maybe not – maybe it was Lambo. I was not paying total attention. I was looking for sites like this.
There was no answer to how much time it take a person to invest daily to get the 2 book sales a day and 2 web searches a day, for 60 days to quality for the 2x money back guarantee. I guess they skipped that because they know they’ve gotcha there. You may not be able to make two arbitrage text book deals a day for 60 days if the comments on this site about how hard it is to find opportunities are right. (Their demo show hundereds of dollars of opportunities on each search page of course.)
Also, they had testimonials. I was paying attention to those to see if people said how much time they invested. None mentioned time. Also, the webinar started off, and Greg’s emails touted over an over, this was a $100k a year opportunity. Just $300 a day in deals needed was emphazied by the presenter. But the common testimonial amount was that the people were making about $50 per day ($1,100-$1,600 total) in stretches of 21-30 days. And I would guess these are the early birds on the textbook for money program when more deals may have been around. But after reading what they did with Zen data though, who know if those testimonials are real.
How do i get your product
I received an email from Greig Wells on this today. I was just about hooked, until i saw the price, and started searching around.
Does anybody got a refund to textbook money? The customer service was rude. And my discover credit card said its a valid charges and cant dispute it. Does someone filling a class action suit to this people? Thanks
I thought you might like to know that they are still selling their “Business in a Box” (Textbook Money). I just watched a webinar replay recorded on Wednesday 20th Dec. It was being promoted by a Sam England. I did a bit of research and found your report here – so glad I did.
Thanks for sharing. Are they still calling it “Textbook Money”? I’m getting emails they have rebranded as “Book Trades.”
They are still at it. Currently being promoted by Chris Winter.
Here is the current checkout under BookTrades. The video was a recording of TextBook Money from 2016/17. https://booktrades.biz/purchase/order.php
Ingenious pranks.
I almost bought into the the damn program but was put off by 2 things, 1. the price & 2. the hype with some guy presenting the webinar with a lambogini at the background..and of course all the “it even gets better’ slogan.
Somehow, something told me this isn’t right.
LOL I just happened to run into the webinar at random as I do this with a pretty simple extension that definitely works with minimal time & effort, but not as extensive as this or Zen. So I was interested to see the (ridiculously long and there’s more) pitch & then some quick searching led me over here. (July 2018)
Still promoting it as Textbook Money. Still the whatever 2997 + 297 asinine out of control price.
Still the Double Your Money Guarantee If you don’t make 100% back in 60 days. But hey use the Booktrades link above & save $1500 now instead plus no monthly fee! You get the idea…
I don’t know what data is being still used but I DO know from briefly watching that it was still on the old book layout page and a lot of books were being promoted with very high trade-in profits. I’d say keep flooding them with junk data if you are (or whatever you’re doing), but maybe a nice cease & desist order is due up next.
I forgot how I got on his list (was very recent), but I’m off. But, I got the ideas at least to look around and see the additional methods to use instead of just working Amazon AND I’m bookmarking Zen Trade for later up-scaling. That’s how you use those cheap marketers.
I have major issues with Kevin Thompson, and his “automatic” enrollment into his $297/month coaching program with the purchase of the physical product…I didn’t even know I had “authorized” that and never even wanted it, obviously. Plus I never asked for it, nor did I use it. He was a total jerk about offering a refund of that expensive membership. PS thanks for this article, I too was almost bamboozled with what appears to be a very straight forward way to make some serious side money. thanks for sparing me from Lambo!
Looks like they are selling it as tradebooksnow.com which redirects to booktrades.biz and Ricky Mataka is the face of the webinar promoting it. Can’t find their names attached to it but I’m sure it’s the same thing. Clever criminals.
Chris Luck is promoting a webinar from these guys right now. It’s the same webinar I remember seeing sometime in 2017 so, they are still at it. They are selling it for $997 + $197 month or 4 payments of $297 + $197 month now ugh how awful. I don’t know how these people sleep at night! 🙁
Hey guys they are emailing their old customers to come back to spend more money. This is Sept. 2018!
Option 1: $197/mo
Option 2: $997/year
Option 3: $4,997 coaching
https://approved.clickfunnels.com/btb-replay-rds22747204
Just watched a webinar promoting the same thing. So glad I didn’t buy it now!
I saw a Facebook video of Luke Sample’s system of Book Arbitrage. There was a link at the bottom of the video to schedule an appointment to see whether I would be a fit for their system. https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=16727362
The guy was Joel Goh. I received the weirdest call from him where he did not tell me anything about his system but insisted on me telling him about me. He was very evasive and hung up on me.
In doing a google search on book arbitrage- saw the link for zen Arbitrage
Thank u for this article. I have posted the link at the bottom of the Facebook video. No one needs to get conned
Lost respect to certain company promoting book trades this week they train digital amarketing gency & Amazon ecomm they go by 3 letter acronym starting with letter O. AVOID webinar unless you like hearing from Mr Soul Patch again
Hey Tony,
You mean OMG with Mike ong and Hurricane Liz Herrera! I was interested in the DMA also but decided against it. So glad I didn’t buy into this book trades scam.
I can’t ever trust them again!
Oh Geez! I just started with them and got sent this article and I’m sick to the stomach… I have $12.34 to my name and I used credit to start and was hooked by the testimonials… My initial outlay was $2336.60AU and I haven’t even started buying books yet, then I get charged $370AU each month after that. I can’t imagine how I could possibly get my money back now. Has anyone had success with this, or do you know HOW to ask for it back? You have to meet their T&C’s. Any help here?
I found this article after participating in a group call with EnterpreneurDaily bookbiz. They have the audacity to charge special one time fee $3500 then $279 per month after. Could they be stealing data from Zen also?
So disappointed Fred Lam is now promoting Textbook Money aka BookTrades. For those who google over here, please dont buy that course. 2019 price $1497 & $197/month every 30 days. Expect upselling for the coaching program down the road. If you read the terms of agreement that no bothers to read. You agree to pay a $3000 initiation fee at $300/mo or special offer. Also, you have 60 day grace period to ask for refund. You must prove that you are trading 14 books a week, 2 searches a day (the 2 book search requirement must have 3 hr gap), 5 days a week. You must document your searches on a Google spreadsheet. Mr Lambo didnt mention that did he. Better to not buy and try to get a refund later. May 2020 be prosperous year for book traders everywhere
Hi Peter, This is my confession of stupidity in regards to Textbook Money. In August of 1917, I came upon them thru an Internet Video. The Lambo Luke one. Later, after purchasing into the original system, I was introduced to Jon. It bothered me because sincerity seemed to be dripping from every pore.
I studied the system and it made sense. I was an early subscriber and covered my initial investment, but things just didn’t seem right and book trades became more difficult. I signed on for the extra training and mentoring. I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere very fast however. I had some illness issues and fell away from it. Then, I found ZEN! I joined immediately and have seen much better results, but because of illness have had to move slowly.
I have now set up to move ahead with all engines running. I purchased your special Zen Zenith and see that it is fantastic. You will see me moving some books now as of February 2020. I am still going to PayPal and see if I can get some of or all of my money refunded from Textbook Money. I am so glad that I found (maybe not “just by chance”), Zen Arbitrage. I am sure I used some of the “bad” data they received. Thanks for sharing and opening up about how they have scammed you and many others.
Zen has so much more training, truth, information, sincerity. The Videos and training packages are professional and excellent. Thank You Peter. Sincerely, Gordon La Pearle
Hello, I heard Jimmy Sweeny promote them as well.
Fortunately, I had heard about them before and did some checking. Found out they were very shady and warned off.
I informed Sweeny’s team of those folks and what really was going on.
Their head admin. replied by very defensive and said Sweeny will only deal with the most and highest and the greatest yada yada yada.
Then I was mysteriously cut off from their newsletter and other information, and that was after I bought Sweeny’s products.
Not a very nice way to treat buyer there Sweeny.
Also, why are you exposing your clients to people like “Lambo Luke” and cronies?
Glad there is a site to expose all this and thankful for your website and letting people know what is going on.
They no to hard to get refund was what helped me avoid them.