iPorn Scam Revealed: User Numbers are a fraud--Francis Koenig ripping off advertisers
 

Apparently it was not enough for Francis to rip off AdultVest investors for millions of dollars, now he has turned his sights on ripping off the adult industry itself. Francis has bilked lots of porn advertisers out of some big dollars by faking the iPorn user numbers. Not only does Francis claim that iPorn is worth $1 B, he is telling advertisers that iPorn has 500,000 unique users per day (the real number is 8K/day) and making copies of his Alexa ranking as proof. This is how he perpetrated his scam:

In late May, iPorn?s Alexa ranking was 201,000. A few weeks later it was 2,986. This type of meteoric growth is nearly impossible. In iPorn?s case, it was fraudulent. Francis spent tens of thousands of dollars with traffic brokers to purchase garbage traffic -- skimmed traffic redirects, pop-unders and 404 error redirects. In fact he purchased 25 million of these hits from one traffic broker alone. This is the kind of traffic that users have no idea how they got on a site and just click on the site to close it?before it pops up again?and again?and again. Of course nothing converts because these users never meant to go to the iPorn site in the first place and most leave within seconds ? the amount of time it takes to find the close window button.

Francis figured out how to game his Alexa rankings by throwing lots of dollars to get tens of millions of hits in a short period of time. Once iPorn broke into the top 3000 ranking on Alexa, Francis instructed his salespeople (most who have left the company because they did not want to be part of Francis? fraudulent scheme) to make screen capture shots of the ranking and start ?dialing for dollars? calling every company that advertises on porn sites and getting pre-payments based on his Alexa ranking. Francis targeted a few of the larger companies to contact himself, to create six figure deals to rip them off personally.

Surprisingly, many top companies fell for the scam and prepaid ad dollars, and a few of the larger companies entered into more complicated deals so that Francis could charge them the really big bucks. Some of these larger companies did a 2 or 3 day test to confirm the numbers. When this occurred, Francis purchased some higher quality traffic just during the test phase to be sure that the conversion rates were not in the toilette. After the test?and AFTER the money was wired into his bank account--Francis would turn off the higher quality traffic because he was losing money on it.

This was a good scam because it is believed that Francis raked in well over $500,000 within the past month from his victims. Now, of course, there was the small problem of delivering on the numbers. Advertisers quickly started phoning iPorn demanding their money back. So Francis devised another scheme and ordered one of his techs to create a script to send 50% of this phony traffic directly to the advertisers on a rotation basis so they would see lots of clicks?but to have the traffic appear that it was coming from iPorn and not directly from the traffic brokers.

The other 50% of the phony traffic still goes to iPorn to keep the Alexa rankings high so he can continue to perpetrate his scam. However, Francis does not want to blow all his new cash on traffic (he needs most of it to spend on his lavish lifestyle since he already blew all the AdultVest investors money), so you will see that his iPorn Alexa ranking has been slipping.

And those poor advertisers, they are now getting clicks from users who not only have no idea who iPorn is, but have no idea how they got to the advertisers ads in the first place. Do you think there are good conversions going on? Well, I bet the advertisers know their not?and if they read this?they now will know why.

But Francis has not stopped there. Quick recap: 1) Francis bilks well-heeled investors for millions in AdultVest, 2) Francis bilks porn advertisers and other big companies for hundreds of thousands. What is the encore?

Now he has targeted the ?little guy? and trying to bilk people not in the industry out of their life savings by attempting to sell ?iPorn clone sites? for $25K each. These clone sites are exact duplicates of the iPorn site, but with a different logo slapped on it?and Francis gets the cash upfront plus 50% of any ad revenue on the site. Now, these so called clone sites does not take very long to create and charging $2500 might be a stretch?but $25K is robbery. And of course, Francis is sending some of his phony traffic to the clone site (yes, he already found one poor sucker to take him up on his offer) to ?prove? that this was a legit deal. Well you can be the judge of this one.

I finally come to the end of posting my iPorn expose. Fact is stranger than fiction and knowledge is power my friends?so anyone else that gets ripped off by Francis Koenig can?t say that they were not warned beforehand?unless of course they don?t read this forum. So do this industry a huge favor and share this posting wherever you can.

not like they nobody warned them.. But greed got the better of them

Anyone on here have any direct personal experience with them?

Doh! Wait, who are you?

interesting post.

gangsta.

roflcopter....

"unfortunately" i was never able to visit iporn because my antivirus didn't let me because of some trojan that was sitting there.

and please let's add that Jeremy, former employee of SexSearch, is now on board with iporn to hit up people who post something negative on boards to do some kind of damage control

Crazy the things that go on within this industry and how nobody seems to do anything about them. :2 cents:

Are you serious? That really blows...Jeremy is a good guy.

All this shit may be true, but no posting history totally destroys your credibility. I guess time will tell.

Brillant post :thumbsup

Lest anyone forget, they were going to buy AVN in January but the emperor was found to have no clothes...

Priapus/ Adultvest/ Iporn= bullshit.

unless you don't give a flying fuck who hits you up or what they say. LOL.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

PS I wil lbet my bottom dollar the Wizard is Mike Weiss.
Who else would have that much inside info

And it's great timing with his resignation being today don't ya think?

just sayin'...

no it doesn't.

Does anyone have the history of AdultVest?

A friend of mine met them at the Erotica L.A. a couple of years ago, and was pretty excited about getting financed through them, but he ended up just paying them for something (like entering their database or smtng) and that was it...
I still think that the idea might have worked if it was done in a more legit manner.

mike weiss is a great guy. very intelligent. he's an internet pioneer and helped form and shape the whole file sharing world. :thumbsup:2 cents:

Interesting....

A decent media buyer can tell from the Alexa's detailed stats the quality and primary sources of the traffic.

Tough to say, but from what I hear, almost every employee who quit in the last year (most of em) has kept his email....

Feel bad for whoever got suckered.

If you read this Mike, you are a great guy, a visionary and someone who will still do great things in any industry you choose to work in. Let's go hit some golf balls soon!

Whomever this Wizard is, he is just that, a Wizard, who has exposed the truth. :thumbsup

one thing i'd like to mention being in this industry for 11 years. you just don't come into this business with money and think you're gonna take it over. we just saw that today with the closing of the VC backed Starlet Bucks or whatever it was, again. I've never seen anyone come in, that wasn't already in this industry with a chunk of cash and a dream, and make it. you have to know what you're doing or be able to afford the people who DO! that's my two cents.

I think Francis Koenig knew exactly what he was doing, and got what he came for

Interesting ...

From Alexa on iPorn's clickstream

Upstream Sites

Percent of total visits to iporn.com preceded by a visit to the upstream site.

* 15.51% buy404s.com
* 10.37% fpctraffic.com
* 2.67% amateurteentube.com
* 2.36% jerktastic.com
* 2.23% naughtytube.net
* 2.07% tubeko.com
* 1.76% trafficholder.com
* 1.51% cam4.com
* 1.40% urlcash.net
* 1.32% livejasmin.com

Mike's a legend I met some guys last week who knew him from Morpheus and only told me great things about him

Airek- include me in that foursome.
:-))

well, do i still post here or not? :winkwink:

MaDalton is the man! :thumbsup

peope lying about numbers in the adult industry


what the heck?!

I bet those models at the bikini competition were all trannys too!

Got us again!

WOW! That's one fuckin' big scam...

LOL

Francis may be the most homophobic guy I have ever met, that would be priceless.

Has anyone been on Iporn.com on their Iphones?

A1R3K - I still like pie also - you??

Yep, fwds to a mobile sponsor...

I LOVE PIE!!!!!!:thumbsup:thumbsup

hmm were they??:Oh crap

http://www.fubarwebmasters.com/galle...228/z04344.jpg

http://www.fubarwebmasters.com/galle...228/z04377.jpg

talk about bad news, stay clear from anything iporn related

Fucking scammers!

Thank fucking god!!!

http://icon.v3o.net/pf_04/pie/porn4pie.jpg

Francis promised $10,000 in prize money for the InterNext Bikini Contest--did anyone see $10K?

well to be fair, there was supposed to be 2 k cash I think and an 8k Modelling contract:2 cents:

re the modelling contract, this is just off my icq, the contributor wishes to remain anonymus...................

i knew they scammers man, all they wanted me to do was send girls to their hotel room to win the *modeling contract*

they were even rude to Janessa, telling her she should leave her boyfriend because he was rich and good looking...I was a bit disgusted.......he=francis.......she was contestant #1

they were saying the winner would be announced on Monday so that they could *judge* the girls all weekend
monday came and they never posted who won
that i could see...but they def were implying whoever partied with them and fucked them would get the contract

winner to be decided on the following monday? WHY???
why not right then...well i know why

Just wanted to say that it would/should be obvious from the "time on site" stat on Alexa that the traffic was junk. Looking at it even now, avg time 1.3 min/day definitely makes it obvious it's probably mostly shit traffic. Look at what other high Alexa porn sites are.

I stopped reading there.


idiot. :2 cents:

Bump for the scam... man o man..

That is seriously dissapointing to hear :disgust

Thanks for posting this.

I will 3rd or 4th that Mike Weiss is a great guy and could never figure out why he didnt bail on Francis Maddoff sooner.

I will never forget the first time I ever talked to Francis. It was before Iporn was even known, something like 5 yrs ago. He called me up asking for my client list so he could talk to them about bringing them investors. He couldnt understand why I wasnt willing to give him my client list.

He never did understand how the industry worked. Too bad as someone else said if he had done it the right way, he could have made a lot of people a lot of money, including himself, and could have been well respected.

...and then there was Berlin
 

rumor had it at last year's Venus fest in Berlin, an iPorn employee had to bust down the door to Francis' hotel suite to rescue a drugged out model that was being molested. Bad behavoir keeps getting worst.