Alleged Scamsters Tell How To Avoid Alleged Scams

Here's one from our unofficial Irony Department: We occasionally get e-mails from folks who have been contacted by a company called TCMI, which charges around $5,000 to help find folks find lucrative jobs through the help of a sort of super-secret-double-probation database. These folks usually Google TCMI and find this Press story, which describes TCMI's hilarious modus operandi.

But what really got us from the latest e-mail was that this would-be victim sent us a link to TCMI's December press release on "How to Avoid a Career Scam."

Key points:

-- "TCMI recommends that the jobseeker fully investigate the company prior to accepting any offer." Really? Would that include investigating TCMI, which changes its name every five minutes and for some reason claims to have offices in Scotland and the Middle East, when they don't?

-- Does the company have an atmosphere "that is conducive to growth and free complaints"? For serious, TCMI? Does that mean unresolved complaints filed at BBBs across the country, as well as from state attorneys general?

The interesting thing is, if you type "TCMI" in Google, the word "scam" is the second suggested modifier. The Press story is there, but it's surrounded by the "How to Avoid a Career Scam" release. Could it be that someone was trying to bury the Press story?

Hair Balls doesn't think so, mostly because that would be a really dumb way to do it. A smarter way would be for TCMI to change its name to, say, XYZ. So then when a person they reach out to Googles XYZ, the Press story wouldn't even come up. And see, only a room full of freakin' dumbasses would try to mask the Press story with a ridiculous press release. So in effect, we'd be calling the guys at TCMI a bunch of freakin' dumbasses. And, really, that's the last thing we'd say. So believe us: TCMI has nothing whatsoever to do with a room full of dumbasses.