Grant Gross
Senior Writer

FTC stops envelope-stuffing scheme

news
Sep 24, 20072 mins

Group C Marketing must cease hawking its bogus work-at-home opportunities and pay a fine, as ordered by judge

A U.S. court has banned a company accused of marketing a bogus employment scheme through a series of Internet and newspaper advertisements from selling any more work-at-home opportunities, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Monday.

The FTC, in a complaint filed in September 2006, accused Group C Marketing, doing business as HBG Publications, and Satinderjit Singh Chaddha, the company’s sole officer, of selling bogus business opportunities. The business took more than $1.7 million from customers since mid-2004, according to court documents.

Judge George King of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles signed an order this month requiring the company to pay $287,500, based on the company’s ability to pay. The judge barred the company from marketing any more work-at-home opportunities and prohibited it from selling or sharing its customer list. The company must also file compliance reports when the FTC asks for them.

The FTC accused the company, based in Walnut, Calif., of advertising that customers could “make $7 for each and every envelope which you secure, stuff, and mail.” Group C told customers that for their $40 “registration fee” they would get everything they needed for the envelope-stuffing business, and that the money would be refunded after the first 100 envelopes.

However, after sending in the fee, customers did not receive envelopes and did not get paid for stuffing envelopes, the FTC said. Instead, the defendants directed consumers to start their own work-at-home envelope-stuffing scams and find other people to pay them $7, by buying their own ads similar Group C’s ads.

Grant Gross

Grant Gross, a senior writer at CIO, is a long-time IT journalist who has focused on AI, enterprise technology, and tech policy. He previously served as Washington, D.C., correspondent and later senior editor at IDG News Service. Earlier in his career, he was managing editor at Linux.com and news editor at tech careers site Techies.com. As a tech policy expert, he has appeared on C-SPAN and the giant NTN24 Spanish-language cable news network. In the distant past, he worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. A finalist for Best Range of Work by a Single Author for both the Eddie Awards and the Neal Awards, Grant was recently recognized with an ASBPE Regional Silver award for his article “Agentic AI: Decisive, operational AI arrives in business.”

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