Forward from: In a message dated 7/8/03 10:07:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: > FYI > > > The following article is from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter and is > copyright 2003 by Richard W. Eastman. Information about the newsletter is > available at- http://www.rootsforum.com/newsletter/index.html#ScamArtist > > It starts out as follows: > > Were You Victimized by This Genealogy Scam Artist ? > > I have written a number of times about GenSeekers. This site is owned and > operated by Mr. Elias Abodeely of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Mr. Abodeely is a > 21-year-old who has operated a number of Web sites, using various business > names, including genealogydevelopments.com, familydiscovery.com, > genealogyfinders.net, genlocator.com, genseeker.com, genseekers.com, > genealogy-express.com, and probably many others. Most of these are Web > sites that remain online for a few weeks while the owner collects money > from would-be customers. The sites then get shut down as the complaints > mount, but new ones appear with similar wording. > > Elias Abodeely has advertised his Web sites with thousands of spam e-mails. > These messages claim to offer access to millions of online genealogy > records for about $60.00 a year. (The price varies a bit from one ad to > another.) Once signed up for this "service," the hapless victim is given > access to a few pages of menus that point to other Web sites, all of which > are free of charge for everyone. The links on Abodeely's sites point to > FamilySearch.org, RootsWeb, and lots of other sites that you can access > right now at no charge. > > Your sixty dollars buys access to a list of links, nothing else. And those > links are not nearly as complete as those on Cyndi's List , a free site. > > For the rest of the article and how to report this guy go to his site at: > > http://www.rootsforum.com/newsletter/index.html#ScamArtist > > Bob Parks > >