Hopefully, you have never heard of Stephen Pierce. And unless you either frequent internet marketing dens of inequity or have accidentally answered the phone, chances are good you haven’t (we hope). But there are a lot of people that have heard of him, and as a result, many of them end up with a lot less money and no good explanation for it. I will let my friend the Salty Droid tell you all about it in his recent posts: Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP, and Stephen Pierce…standard warning about the filthy language over there, and I do encourage you to do enough reading and link following to understand the specifics.
According to Salty’s investigating, Pierce not only has scammed tens-to-hundreds-of-thousands from people buying biz-ops, but he also flexes his lawyer on them, and sues people all the time. It doesn’t take a genius to do a little web searching and find tons of complaints on Pierce – but these are common in the stinking, scuzzy world of biz-op Internet marketing. What is not common is to sue people as much as Pierce does, and this is pretty unappealing by most standards. It’s like stealing the wheels off wheelchairs, or raping the wounded.
Here’s the interesting thing though. There is a legal action brewing against Pierce and his company, led by an attorney in Dallas named Allen Rosenberg. The way a suit like this works though, is the attorney for the plaintiffs cannot solicit more folks to join in – so the word has to be spread in other ways. Like on Salty’s site, or this blog post.
To quote the droid from the most recent post, The People VS Stephen Pierce:
Dallas Attorney Alan Rosenberg is preparing to bring a lawsuit against Stephen Pierce International {and affiliated companies and individuals} for the victims of SPI’s various scams :: fake opportunities :: and boiler room soul crushings. Alan and his firm :: Chamblee, Ryan, Kershaw & Anderson, P.C. :: have agreed to take the case on a contingency basis … which is super awesome of them because people who’ve just been scammed for insane monies don’t tend to have lots of cash lying around.
If you’ve been scammed by Stephen Pierce {or a phone room calling in his name} you should consider being a part of this suit. Not just for yourself :: or for the money {which you deserve to get back} … but because it needs to be done for the greater fucking good. Because it’s not going to stop unless we all step up and do our part to stop it.
Contact Alan Rosenberg at this email address for more details about getting involved in the suit.
All of the links there are live, and I do encourage you to reach out to Rosenberg if Pierce’s organization (Stephen Pierce International) had or has you in its tendrils. And, if you have a blog, or Tweet, or Facebook all the time or something, make sure to help spread the word, so victims can learn about this action and come forward, and hopefully get back some of what they lost here.
Here’s hoping this suit gets huge, and brings more light to this subject matter – not to mention a little well-earned restitution!
I want to comment on the continuing expose of Stephen Pierce international and Impulsive Profits, both owned by Texas based internet marketing expert Stephen A. Pierce. The three former customers who complained online about their inability to get either service/product/support or refund were typical.
Apparently, the version of the contact that gives you only 3 days to request a refund fails to mention that you may not receive your log in information or materials for weeks or even months. Forcing the point will get you on the refund “list”, but getting Stephen Pierce to actually approve the refund and send the money is another hurdle. Former employees say that Stephen Pierce himself has to approve every single refund, refusing to give anyone in his company the authority to do so based on some standard policy or procedure.
Instead he put employees in the awkward position of having to hold back the flood of complaints with excuses and delay tactics. When neither the employee nor the customer can take it any longer, Attorney Kevin Vela got involved. Customers credit Vela with enabling the fraud to continue with his own threats of defamation lawsuits. In fact, Vela tried to get one former customer to commit to informing on former employees in exchange for his refund. If true, that is an extraordinary length to go to for a simple refund when the company didn’t give you a product or service in the first place!
This torture is meted out to consumers who have already had their dreams of internet wealth shattered, their trust destroyed, their patience tried, and their persistence tested to the extreme. Most customers just give up.
I’m sorry,. But that scenario played out dozens maybe hundreds of times does not sound like the working of a legitimate business to me. Making former customers beg can only hurt a company’s reputation and provoke customers to anger and action that they might not otherwise have taken.
Treat too many consumers with this callous disregard, and they will fight back.
It certainly is going to be interesting to see everything as it becomes public in this brawl. Thanks for commenting, anon.
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I found you on http://www.saltydroid.info and thanks for helping expose Stephen Pierce. He’s screwed over this customers and now a dozen suppliers and vendors are chasing him for unpaid bills. While he’s blaming everyone on earth, he’s got a youtube video up there that brags about how he made $75,000 in the first 4 months this year “from just one revenue stream”. He’s lying to someone about something. So typical of these stinking rip off cons.
Hey BranP, Yeah, I am not a fan of using deceptive methods to collect customers’ credit information. Things are tough enough out here without someone preying on insecurities and ignorance in an effort to cash-in. I do hope you continue to remain free from that spell, and do what you can to help others see it for what it is. That is what the droid is doing, despite what his haters are hating on about…and what we all need to do, to help people protect themselves.