Opinion ID: 2718331
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Grant Connect Scheme

Text: Like the Line of Credit scheme, the Grant Connect scheme relied on misleading advertising and hidden “upsells.” The Grant Connect landing pages featured pictures of President Obama and Vice President Biden, or of a scantily clad female model holding cash. The pages stated that billions of dollars in government grants were available to individuals “to help [them] with [their] financial situation,” including funding home purchases, child care, debt consolidation, medical costs, and other personal expenses. The sites offered an “easy to use program” to “instantly find the Grant that’s right for you,” and included phony testimonials from individuals claiming that they had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in government grants. FTC V. KIMOTO 9 The “landing pages” used the same deceptive two-step ordering process as the Line of Credit scheme. The inconspicuous offer details included an initial $2.78 processing fee along with automatic recurring monthly charges of $39.95, as well as enrollment in two additional offers with their own trial periods and negative-option monthly charges. Customers who purchased Grant Connect were directed to the Grant Connect website, where they discovered that most government grants cannot be used for personal expenses. Despite this fact, Global Gold representatives (who also handled calls related to the Grant Connect scheme) told users they could find grants for things like expanding a business, buying a home, and other personal expenses. The Grant Connect scheme began in March 2008. By the time the FTC shut down the site in May 2009, and after considerable effort on their parts, more than 91 percent of Grant Connect’s customers had cancelled their memberships.