TEFL Online Pro — a potential fraudulent company backed by a fake tefl review site
In the online TEFL space, there are bound to be a fair amount of unscrupulous characters and scammy programs out there. It appears there is a new player on the field, TEFL Online Pro, which might take the cake as being the pinnacle of a fraudulent company backed by a fake review site — Trusted Tefl Reviews.
There is mounting evidence that suggests that TEFL Online Pro's entire operation is poorly conceived scam, run by one individual pretending to be both graduates and staff of this made-up online TEFL company. This individual appears to also be the creator, and operator, of the potentially fake TEFL review site, Trusted TEFL Reviews, creating multiple fake personas to give the review site (and TEFL Online Pro) the optics of looking credible.
Even more troubling is that TEFL Online Pro and Trusted TEFL Reviews might indeed be the work of a man named Neville David Thomas, a past scam artist in the online TEFL space {proof below}.
Let's take a step back and unpack how we got here. Trusted TEFL Reviews — trustedteflreviews.com, appeared on the scene in mid-2019 as a credible review site that didn't accept advertising dollars. The owner of the site was a very active woman named Mia Williams. Shortly after this review site's inception, it became clear that this site was nothing at all to be trusted. The review site's real intended use is to prop up Online TEFL Pro and write fake negative reviews about legitimate TEFL courses. Evidence below.
i) Both TEFL Online Pro and Trusted TEFL Reviews were created in the same month (March 2019) within 10 days of each other. Both domains were purchased from the same website company, registered anonymously and registered in Panama of all places. This can be verified by searching the WHOIS records for these domains.
* Already this is quite a coincidence, surely a smoking gun. Why would a TEFL course pay extra money to hide the true identities of their owners?
ii) Mia Williams and Paul Murphy {the head trainer at TEFL Online Pro} do not exist until 2019. There are no LinkedIn profiles, company registrations, bios, pictures, blogs, work history, for either of them. If people have decades of experience + are active on the internet, it would make sense for them to have a teaching history/professional profile, wouldn't it? Well, there's nothing. They simply did not exist until both websites were created in March 2019 {within 10 days of each other}.
*Some people do not have LinkedIn, but 'Mia Williams' has been incredibly active on social media with over 280 posts on Quora since March 2019. Wouldn't it be reasonable for her to also have a LinkedIn account? Wouldn't the head trainer/owner of a TEFL course also have a professional profile? Neither of them does and that's because they are made up people.
iii) Shortly after Trusted TEFL Reviews was created in March 2019 (although they write and lie that they have been around for years) TEFL Online Pro just happen to win their fake Teachers' Choice Award. You can currently view those details on the review site. Ironically, TEFL Online Pro have no other reviews on the internet. There are no Google reviews and they are not listed on any other TEFL course review website. That's strange.
*It is so obvious at this point what is going on that it's kind of humorous.
iv) Negative reviews for other online TEFL courses begin to pop up frequently on Trusted TEFL Reviews.
v) Finding it peculiar to see multiple negative reviews coming from unknown graduates on a new review website, a few legitimate online TEFL courses questioned the authenticity of the reviews on Trusted TEFL Reviews.
Instead of offering proof that these negative reviews were credible, Trusted TEFL Reviews decided to attack the other online courses, creating both a scam and blacklisted section. You can currently view this content on their website. Needless to stay, the information in these sections is false and Trusted TEFL Reviews refuses to make any counter argument from the online companies public — they are not allowing us to add comments on the site. When an impartial review site creates a scam section about your company for questioning the legitimacy of some reviews you've received, you know there is something up.
*This is where it became clear what Trusted TEFL Reviews M.O. was. Review sites do not attack courses directly.
vi) While 'Mia Williams' {the potentially fake persona of Trusted TEFL Reviews} has created a scam section and blacklist section for certain courses who questioned the validity of the review site, she has gone out of her way to defend TEFL Online Pro on various forums and platforms on the net. So much so, that the mods at Reddit have banned all mention of TEFL Online Pro and have added both TEFL Online Pro and Trusted TEFL Reviews to their 'avoid like the plague' section. You can view this in the r/TEFL section on Reddit.
I think the case has been made that there is indeed something very strange about these two entities.
Connection with Neville David Thomas?
i) In an effort to find out the real owners of TEFL Online Pro and Trusted TEFL Reviews, a few online courses decided to do some research. It was quite easy to conduct. We just went on Facebook and searched for these terms in various TEFL/teaching groups. Low and behold, a man named Neville David Thomas kept popping up recommending both TEFL Online Pro and Trusted TEFL Reviews, saying he was the owner of TEFL Online Pro.
A quick google search of his name brought up a history of Neville creating multiple fake review sites for fake TEFL courses in the past.
Search for yourself: Neville Thomas TEFL, Neville Thomas Scam... etc.
These go back as far as 2012. There was even a review site {circa 2015} where he created another female persona as the creator. You can view this evidence for yourself here — https://teflonlinereviews.wordpress.com
*Note that this review site uses the word 'trusted' in its description and is managed by another female persona. There is also a scam and blacklisted section as well.
So, there you have it. All of these claims can easily be thwarted by Trusted TEFL Reviews and TEFL Online Pro. All that is asked is for Mia Williams and Paul Murphy to prove that they are real people. This can be solved immediately by a link to a LinkedIn profile (something created before 2019) or official registration docs/articles of incorporation of their companies.
We believe that neither of these entities will produce this basic information and that proves that these websites are at least lying about who they really are. We would also ask that Trusted TEFL Reviews provide proof of the many negative reviews that other legitimate online TEFL courses have received and remove the scam/blacklisted sections on their review site. At the very least, they should allow us to add comments and defend ourselves. They won't, because they appear to be lairs.
*liars ;)