This is exactly the kind of information I am trying to find. Thank you. I will be in touch. Cindy ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2001 6:07 AM Subject: [VTCALEDO] Re: info for article on fraud > Dear S.J. > What an interesting subject to research. > While I have not been the subject of genealogical fraud, I have an > opinion about it. I think that one of the worst things to do to a beginning > researcher, which boarders on fraud, is to offer them useless products. I > can think of 2 for example. First are the books containing "all" the people > in the U.S. with the same surname. The publishers of these have downloaded > all the same surnames from current nation-wide telephone directories and > published them as a book. Unless you have a very unusual name, these are > pretty much a waste of money. (My father-in-law bought one several years > ago, and it was a waste of money.) Second are the people offering "25 family > group sheets" of a particular surname. (I see this often on e-bay, including > one current one for my surname Moulton) Again, unless you have a very very > unusual name, these are worthless. > I think that some beginning genealogists also lose money because they > don't know what they are looking for, and therefore are not able to give > hired researchers proper information. When they don't get helpful > information back, they may erronously jump to the conclusion that they have > "been taken," when it really was their own fault due to ignorance. > Finally, some may consider bad researching fraud. For example, I > volunteer in the NH vital records vault once a month. Recently a patron came > in to do research for someone else who had corresponded with him on-line. I > surely wouldn't have wanted that person doing research for me after I saw the > sloppy notes and careless searching he did. However, since he had > volunteered to do the lookups, and was not being paid, I guess I wouldn't > call his results fraud. If he had been paid, and supplied the other person > with incorrect or incomplete results, is it really fraud or just plain bad > researching? Except for hiring accredited or certified researchers, we all > take a lot of chances when we hire a researcher since it is difficult to > judge the credentials of researchers, except by word-of-mouth reputations. > Thanks for letting me put in my two cents. > -Mary Ellen Moulton, Plaistow, NH > > > ==== VTCALEDO Mailing List ==== > No, I've never been to Scotland. But I've been close; > I've visited Caledonia County, Vermont. > -- List admin. [email protected] >