Company information:
Hollywoodprofiles.com aka hollywoodprofiles
Hollywood, California
United States
secure.hollywoodprofiles.com
The reason I created this article is because hollywoodprofiles.com ripped me off and I decided to investigate these guys and the further I would dig the more I realized this is a total scam committing interstate fraud!
Hollwoodprofiles.com is an illegal scam operation committing federal mail fraud by scamming unsuspecting job seekers, actors, models and movie extras. If you have been a victim of this scam you can report hollywoodprofiles.com to:
1. Attorney General
Texas
https://www.oag.state.tx.us/forms/cpd/form.php
California
http://ag.ca.gov/contact/complaint_form.php?cmplt=CL
New York
http://www.oag.state.ny.us/complaints/complaints.html
Florida
http://myfloridalegal.com/Contact.nsf/Contact?OpenForm&Section=Economic_Crimes
2. Call your credit card company or bank, since this is a scam you can get all your money back. File a “chargeback” and give them a link to this website so they can see the findings of my investigation. You will surely get your money back and hopefully Visa & Mastercard will eventually ban these criminals.
3. Contact http://ripoffreport.com and file a complaint. http://ripoffreport.com will accumulate these complaints and when there is enough of them a class action attorney will see this and file a class action against the owners of hollywoodprofiles.com which is Elan Cohen and Pinnacle Group which Elon is hiding behind, at that point hopefully they will be able to pierce his corporation and hold him personally liable for the fraud he is committing.
4. Contact http://bbb.org and file a complaint. The media watches for high complaint volume and will eventually do an undercover report and expose these guys on TV.
5. Report them to the FBI, since this is interstate mail fraud this is also a federal matter which is handled by the FBI. To file a complaint with the internet crime complaint division of the FBI click here: http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/
6. Report them to their domain registrar which in this case is godaddy.com, here is a link to the page you need to report them if you have received spam from them : https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/spamreport/spamreport.asp
7. Repost this information on blogs and forums to help others before they are defrauded. If you have an extra $20 bucks you can even pay for google adwords with a link to this site, that would be sure to get this blog more attention and stop hollywoodprofiles.com from scamming others.
Here are the reasons with proof why hollywoodprofiles.com is a sham, scam and fraudulent business:
1. They send spam email and have many complaints online regarding this illegal practice, here are just a few:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080404185220AA6dzs3
http://mycrapmail.blogspot.com/2008/03/casting-calls-in-your-area-anyobject.html
http://www.ripoffreport.com/searchresults.asp?DateRange=6&Entry=16&SearchType=1&hasPhoto=&q1=1080&q2=California&q3=&q4=&q5=&q6=&q7=
http://spamnation.info/go/domain/hollywoodprofiles.com
2. They do not disclose that the “risk free” trial will turn into a $49.95 charge after the 7 days. This is a screenshot from their payment page which does not clearly indicate that this is a membership and that you will be billed $49.95. You may not know this but by them not CLEARLY disclosing their fees they are clearly using deceptive business practices and bait & switch techniques, both of which are illegal.
3. They do not have 6, 000 Industry Professionals using their site like their ad claims, instead they steal castings from free sites and most of the auditions I contacted told me they never even heard of hollywoodprofiles before. This constitutes false advertising and Pinnacle along with Elon Cohen can be held liable for this fraudulent act.
This is a screen shot of a commercial on their site claiming that 9, 000 directors use the site. FAKE!!!
4. The Casting Society which rates hollywoodprofiles with an “AAA” rating is also owned by Elan Cohen the owner of hollywoodprofiles.com. This is a clear conflict of interest and this company was created to lure and fool users into thinking this company is accredited in the industry.
http://whois.domaintools.com/uscastingsociety.org
5. They advertise jobs that do not exist when signing up. The show they have a number of jobs in places like Kansas, after you sign up you realize nothing is listed for that area.
6. They claim in their user guide that they invented online submission which is also a lie. Most talent sites I use including exploretalent.com had that first. They also claim to have a patent pending probably just another lie, all this company does is lies, cheats, & their main goal is to TAKE YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY!
Shame on you Elan Cohen and shame on you to all the staff at Pinnacle group. Please do the right thing and repost this in as many places as you can and also write comments about this below so it indexes well and do your part to stop these criminals!
Also if you work for Pinnacle group AKA Elan Cohen, beware you are also liable for the fraud that is occurring and may be subject to jail time once the authorities are in your office investigating your practices. As an employee you to can do the right thing and post what you know and report your boss (Elan Cohen) to the
California Attorney General (http://ag.ca.gov/contact/complaint_form.php?cmplt=CL)
and to the
FBI internet crime division: http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/
