We all must have heard of the Free Money ads on TV. For many years we have been told of government grants and unclaimed funds just waiting for us to apply for our money. One of the latest scams is Lesko’s Free Money Book. In the ads he constantly explains that loads of free money is waiting on us and all we need doing is apply. The Free Money Book is full of innuendos and half truths. although money in grants and unclaimed funds are really available acquiring said funds is far from easy.
As anyone that has applied for a grant or small business loan through the grant process can verify, the applicati9ons and the process which must be followed strictly one must be either a well established business with many assets or a non profit business. For many grants only medical agencies or governments as counties or states can acquire those grants. Much of the process and actual application is not in those scam books.
From ConsumersAffairs.com a 2004 article explains the scam much better this way; “December 21, 2004
Multi-million-dollar advertising and a new book by author Matthew Lesko are peppered with exaggerations and half-truths about government grants, according to a report released by the New York State Consumer Protection Board (“CPB”).
In its report, “Secrets Revealed! How Misleading Advertising Is Feeding a Nationwide Boom in Government Grant Scams,” CPB says Lesko and others are feeding a growing number of government-grant scams now hurting consumers across the country.
“Lesko is now promoting a new book, ‘Free Money to Pay Your Bills,’ by claiming that the federal government has more than $350 billion in ‘hidden money’ that ordinary people can use to pay their credit-card bills and ‘get out of debt.’ That claim is simply not true,” said CPB Chairman and Executive Director Teresa A. Santiago.”
What Lesko’s companies do is sell your personal information collected from his customers or anyone asking for information. The info collected is sold in list to anyone paying for the list. Thus crooks other than Lesko may have your name, address and other important info. Like most con artists, the free-money hucksters take a grain of truth and distort it.
In an article on BusinessWeek.com titled “The Myth of Free Government Money: A Perennial and Pernicious Scam” The SBA spokesman Mike Stamler says “The huckster at the heart of it implied that these grants were there, but the government didn’t want to let everyone know about them,” Stamler recalls. “He told people not to take ‘no’ for an answer when they called us.”
John Rooney, a professor at the Lloyd Greif Center says he ordered a “free-money” book advertised on television. The author claimed every entrepreneur was entitled to a government grant. Rooney received a directory of farmer’s subsidies, Housing & Urban Development programs, and government-loan applications. The book had testimonials (real or unreal) from people stating amounts of money they got but not how.
As the old saying goes if its too good to be true. And not only is Lesko selling his scam many ads offering grant research or applications and other grant related businesses are also scams. For any grant info visit http://usa.gov to begin your search.
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/0001/sa000111.htm
http://consumeraffairs.com/news04/lesko_grants.html
