Money Back Hero – scamming scam victims

You know how nature works. A lion kills an antelope and rips off the best parts eating them. Next comes scavengers, vultures and such. They'll take whatever is left.

Sometimes you can witness the similar kind of thing happening while observing scams. Scammers are often like vultures circling in the sky looking for more victims. When they spot remains of a scam – or even an active one – they appear from nowhere and land on it to scavenge any leftover money. And what's a better place for searching the most gullible victims than a scam that already has a desperate group of people ready to be scammed yet again. 

OneCoin, probably the biggest ponzi-pyramid scam ever, spread rapidly using Multi Level Marketing (MLM). However, they also exploited other MLM scams by integrating them and their victims to the mother scam. Having the whole business running on MLM ensured that the company got the most gullible people to join and also to spread the gospel to other gullible people.

Companies not doing MLM have to use different approach to reach the victims to be. Social media platforms such as Facebook offer plenty of gullible people to exploit. Advertising on those platforms can be a cost effective way to lure victims into a scam. Thus it isn't rare nowadays to see scams boldly advertising themselves on Facebook and YouTube. For example I would have never bumped into Bunny Token, WarField/GolderGames and Miner One had they not advertised themselves on YouTube. Then there is also... 

Money Back Hero

I thought that I had seen it all but then comes Money Back Hero. I didn't even know about this service until I happened to saw their ad recently on YouTube.

To put it short, Money Back Hero offers their services to scam victims to help recover their lost funds.

Quoted from the website:
"Money Back Hero is a team of scam recovery experts who are ready to fight for you. We stop at nothing to help you get your money back. As wealth recovery specialists, we have dozens of successes and millions already recovered. 

We have helped victims who lost everything get their lives back. And we want to make a difference, with your help. Every case we win is a dent in the Forex, CFD, Crypto and Binary Options scam industry. This noble work gives us a greater purpose. That’s why we love what we do."

At first look everything seems pretty convincing. They have a website offering even three phone numbers to call to and the company seems to be registered in the US. There's also a Facebook page having over 1.7k likes and the company has received several excellent reviews on TrustPilot. So what could be wrong?

However, something in the YouTube ad and the website made me suspicious so I decided to take a closer look at Money Back Hero. After some digging I only found more reasons to find this service not trustworthy. Instead of a hero getting your money back I find it likely that this is a kind of advance-fee scam, a scam scamming scam victims.

Discovering red flags

I started by testing how the people running the scheme would react to raising questions on the official Facebook page. I posted a message where I was asking why Money Back Hero was operating behind a shell company and why there was no names of the representatives of the company to be found. My message was never published and no one answered to me.

The website of Money Back Hero states that the company has been registered in Delaware as MB Hero Advisers Ltd. That's in fact true. Delaware business registry lists MB Hero Advisers LLC, but it was set up by an agent, Harvard Business Services INC. There are no names to be found.

An address referring to Columbus, Ohio, can also be found at the bottom part of Money Back Hero website: "130 E Chestnut St, Columbus, OH 43215, USA". Then I managed to find the following entry on Better Business Bureau:

However, that information seems to be fake, probably with fake names also. The business registry of Ohio doesn't recognise MB Hero Advisers LLC at all.

While searching for more information I happened to find a website fraudvictimsupport.org, which basically concentrates on advertising Money Back Hero and claims that the business is originated in Gibraltar:

Click to enlarge.

After doing all these searches I still found no information about the people behind the business. Just information that seemed to be fake. 

I noticed that one could write a review on Money Back Hero's Facebook page. There already was some reviews so I decided to write something to warn people about the service, and also to give Money Back Hero a chance to correct me if I my suspicions weren't true. It was a short review where I just pointed out that I had found some red flags and recommended not to trust to the company. As a result my review was removed soon after posting it and I was blocked from making any comments on the Facebook page. 

Well, that's exactly how scams operate so at that point I decided to write this review. – Good luck trying to remove this from the internet!

Fake, fake, fake

Money Back Hero seems to post quite regularly on the Facebook page. There's at most a handful of likes. Many of the people liking those post happen to be Eastern Asians. I wouldn't trust that many of them are real people as many of the profiles show common signs of fake profiles.

While visiting the website of Money Back Hero I noticed a pop-up window:

Wow, "Limited Time Offer"! Yes, I want the free guide!

I filled up an e-mail address and received soon "the free guide". It was a pdf file named as "Money-Back-Hero-Whitepaper". The content of the pdf is titled "The #1 Weapon In Your Fight To Get Your Money Back". The second page of the pdf reveals the author of this guide. Finally a name, someone representing the company!

Pierce Wilson

Pierce Wilson is introduced as the Digital Marketing Manager at Money Back Hero.

Quoting the pdf:

"Pierce Wilson is the Digital Marketing Manager at MoneyBack Hero. He is also an experienced Googler, father of a beautiful little girl, and husband to a talented hair stylist. 

He spends his time researching the deep recesses of the web and weeding through the garbage to find the golden nuggets. 

With over 10 years of experience in content writing, Pierce despises the misleading and the fake. Resources like governement regulatory bodies, banks, feedback from real users and scam victims informs his writing."

Yes, it actually does say so:

Wow, he is an experienced Googler and a husband to a talented hair stylist! Sounds like textbook stuff from "Scamming Dummies for Dummies".

I had already troubles believing that Pierce Wilson would be an actual person, and also the picture of him seemed to be a bit off. Like it was chosen from a library of photos. I ran it through Google's image search – the experienced Googler that I am – and found out that Pierce Wilson has another secret identity. 

Meet Choice Lauritano:

Choice Lauritano is also a fake person. He was born in a website named YouAccel. It seems to be a sort of combination of Facebook and LinkedIn, erm... for students perhaps? It really doesn't seem to be related to Money Back Hero in any way (other than having Pierce/Choice there), but it's rather interesting website nevertheless.

I have no idea what an earth is the purpose of YouAccel. There seems to be maybe even thousands of fake persons registered in the website. The site itself announces: "Over 300,000 Students and Growing!" Each and everyone of the members seem to be fake persons, having their individual fake names and fake profile photos. They even make automated posts inside the service, mainly sharing videos and articles. Oh, and YouAccel also has a Facebook page having over 150k followers and likers there.

This went a bit off topic, but I just found that website fascinating. Have a look by yourself! I challenge you to find even one real person among the members.

But back to Money Back Hero...

The website of Money Back Hero doesn't seem to have much traffic according to Alexa.com. However, the ad video on YouTube published in March 2019 has been watched over 160k times so I guess there might have been enough gullible people using their services to keep them running this business.

To conclude, I think I have found more than enough red flags to consider that Money Back Hero is a scam. By all means, correct me if I'm wrong. – Pierce Wilson? Choice Lauritano? Anyone?