People who live in the Hillsboro Portland Area be on the look out!
Heather Duback, Rachel Skirving and Katie Ludwig is a part of this whole scam.infinite Talent maybe able to change the name but we are here to let people know just what your company repesents.
VAMS - Wilhelmina Scouting Network - Web Style Network - Trans Continental Talent - Options Talent - Emodel - Edge Talent - Efashionshow.com - Whymodel.com - Whytalent.com - Studio 58 - Industry Magazine - Castnet.com - Monster.com 24/7 Scam Coverage
VAMS Statement for NY CPB Hearing
Regarding Wilhelmina Scouting Network - Web Style Network SCAM
October 21
Buffalo, NY
Employment fraud -
From a period of the 2000 through Emodel, Options Talent Group, Trans Continental Talent, Wilhelmina Scouting Network, Edge Talent and Industry Magazine (another franchise scheme) engaged in the largest, most blatant Employment Fraud and labor abuse using the leading Internet job site, Monster.com to post up to 1,200 ads that were refreshed on an almost daily basis to recruit these "talent scouts" for their franchises all over the world.
These "talent scouts' were MISCLASSIFIED as Independent contractors, even though they were clearly doing the job of employees, based upon IRS factor classification tests and even state classification standards.
This was a clear and blatant tax evasion and employment fraud scheme. Over 25,000 people were victims of this employment fraud. We estimate over 175,000 people actually got mislead by these knowingly false ads on Monster.com and wasted an entire day of their time to attend these weekly "training sessions". To top it all off, the vast majority of these scouts were unpaid and were given goals supposedly to make a base salary after a 30-day period.
These goals could never be reached and the scam operators knew that. On a weekly basis these scouts would be churned through, misclassified, trained to defraud with scripts to approach innocent consumers in shopping malls, at college campuses, at clubs and anywhere they could find them.
The Role of Monster.com -
As soon as ads for "Talent Scouts" started appearing on Monster.com when this scam was called Emodel in hundreds of complaints flooded Monster from people who actually went to these training sessions and saw what a scam they were. Other innocent young job seekers believed the hype and thought if it was on Monster.com it must be legitimate. They found out the hard way. It did not stop there. At that same time, job seekers who had their resume posted on Monster.com at the time of Emodel were constantly bombarded with spam about becoming a talent scout.
Despite hundreds of complaints to Monster.com and their legal department, they choose to do NOTHING. All of these "jobs" were falsely advertised claiming full -time employment when nothing of the sort was ever offered. They also claimed that you could make a huge salary and that they were not sales positions. Both of these are false.
It did not stop there.in 2001 when they operated as Emodel and 2002 when they changed their name for the 6th time to Options Talent and became an Over the Counter Traded Stock under the symbols OTTG, OPTG, the amount of fraudulent ads increased.in Sept when Lou Pearlman and Greg McDonald took ownership and changed the name to Trans Continental Talent, the fraudulent ads INCREASED to over 1,200 daily.
Consumers and jobs seekers had lodged thousands of complaints to Monster.com and still NOTHING was done. Tens of thousands of innocent job seekers were sucked into this fraud at a blinding pace. To put this in perspective, besides the 60 franchises operating in the US, the same employment fraud leading to consumer fraud scheme was going on in Australia, China, England, Singapore and Moscow.
Over 100,000 fraudulent ads were posted and refreshed on Monster.com in that time period, ALL FRAUDULENT. This served as the main artery for the fraud to exist at this level. The constant non-payment, misclassification and churning of tens of thousands of people over this period represents one of the largest unchecked abuses and of labor and tax evasion schemes through a mainstream job board in history.
VAMS has all the evidence to show that Monster.com was AWARE of the thousands of complaints and choose to look the other way. They were without doubt complicit and collusive. Monster.com received over $500,000 to ignore, cover-up and brush aside complaints. Monster.com served a major cog in this racketeering operation.
Other fraudulent ads appeared soliciting models for claimed jobs. These jobs NEVER existed, but once again Monster.com was used to lure these job seekers right into the consumer fraud themselves. Monster.com knew this as well.
It did not stop there. One of the franchise scams they ran was something called Industry Magazine. Besides the fake modeling jobs that never existed through Industry Magazine, they listed openings for "Regional Directors" of Industry Magazine. Our inside sources that worked at the company said thousands of resumes were received, many by overnight Fed-Ex from people who thought these were legit jobs.
The truth is that these served as a front to try and get these individuals to buy into franchises for this magazine. This effort was spearheaded ocne again by the Queen of the Franchise Sales fraud, Terri Bears.
Samantha
Bend, Oregon
U.S.A.
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