Marsha J. Pechman, Federal Judge out of the Western District Court of Seattle has ordered all the assets of Marketing Millionaire and accused scammer Jesse Willms to be frozen. Additionally, according to news reports, the judge also banned Willms from continuing his business practices specifically negative option selling (ie, continuity marketing).
Willms is currently charged by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of scamming consumers for almost half-a-billion of questionable “risk-free” products. According to the FTC, these products were often sold as being free, or just paying shipping and handling, but consumers would then be billed for months and months of charges on their credit card without any easy means of canceling the bills. Many consumers complained that they would often get the product after the free trial period, and have no means of returning it.
The FTC will be speaking to authorities in Canada where Willms lives in order to enforce the asset freeze there. Currently, according to news reports, there is a both a consumer and criminal investigation against Mr. Willms in Canada.
While Jesse Willms has not responded much to these accusations, he has hired many firms to engage in a positive PR and SEO campaign and consistently sends out news releases claiming that he has been assisting charities with financial donations. Additionally, there are at least a dozen “blogs” setup by Mr. Willms to counteract the negative press with positive SERPS.
