Trackfire International - Track Fire International scam, $17/hr, office manager, Mr. M, $2000, no one makes less that $4000/mo., Lancaster Pennsylvania
Track Fire International - $17/hr Management Position - "All you have to do is sell $2000 worth of products and then you're an Office Manager - no more sales." It sounds too good to be true...because it was. This was a very elaborate scam that I'm ashamed to say I allowed myself to be sucked into. I was hurting for money and a job so I sold myself on the very sketchy company. I was interviewed by a guy named Mark (not Mr. M) who looked very unprofessional and appeared to have bought his suit at a thrift store. I asked him after the initial interview (which he hired me on the spot with no management experience) if this whole thing was legit. He said he thought the same thing at first, but it seems like the real deal. My next question was how long had he been with the company (because he looked my age or younger) and he responded with 2 weeks. Something didn't seem right but I needed a job so badly that I went ahead and paid the $75 background check fee and a few days later paid the $95 start-up kit fee (both of which are non-refundable). I read over the papers very carefully and it seemed like I was screwed if it was a scam. I went against my better judgement and bought into it. After a couple of weeks of selling and realizing that this was a pyramid sales operation (sell $2000 of product leads to selling $5000 which leads to $10k and so on), so I got out of it. I was very frustrated and it still irritates me that people like "Mr. M" aka Mark Mingolo can get away with doing this to innocent people. If anyone knows how to bring a class action against this scam artist please count me in. I hope this guy goes to jail for a long time and has to pay back the tens of thousands of dollars he scammed.
Derek
Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
John
Reading,Pennsylvania,
U.S.A.
Some Useful Info
#2UPDATE EX-employee responds
Thu, November 20, 2008
I'm responding to Derek, the author from this report.
Derek, I remember you well from the late summer of 2007 in Lancaster, PA. This is John. You probably remember me, too. We started the same Saturday ("Initial Training"), and we had to laugh a few times at how similar our situations were and how much we looked at things in much the same way. You said you told your girlfriend about this guy at "work" who thinks like you do--likewise, I said that I said the same thing to my wife. Once I saw this report, she tried unsuccessfully today to get in touch with you using the phone number you gave me at that time last year (most of us in the EDS in Sept. at the Days Inn shared our numbers, I'm sure you remember). Of course, I stayed on with this scam for quite a while after you left shortly after that--but I'm not entirely sorry about that either, for a very good reason.
If I can get in contact with you, I'd like to get you up to speed, as much as I can, on what all happened after that up to today. I can't (and won't) give out my new contact information on here, because there are still idiots out there who either think, or want others to think, that I had something to do with this scam. Actually, I just checked another web site out where it looks like what before appeared to be a "few" people is actually the same person who has tried to do that on a few occasions--I kind of rooted them out with the way I wrote my post on that site today and saw familiar patterns in what they said in reply--it's someone obviously very close and sympathetic to Mingolo--can't say scammers aren't gullible, either!
Anyway, I'm not giving these idiots (Mingolo and company) any more satisfaction whatsoever, so I won't give my information on here for you to get in contact with me, but perhaps you could give me an e-mail address of yours (since no one really knows you--you weren't there long enough for that to have too bad an effect, if any); or I don't know, maybe since you wrote this report, the Rip-Off site may allow you to have my e-mail address automatically--I don't know if that's how they do that or not, but, anyway, here I'm giving them expressed permission to give my e-mail address to only you, if you request it.
In the meantime, I don't know how much information you researched on these loser scammers, but if you didn't know about these locations yet, these will give you a lot of hours of interesting reading on the "history" of this scam:
1. Here on Rip-Off Report, the place where you can get the "whole" story (at least what's written) is by typing in simply "Mark Mingolo" and then do an 'Advanced Search' on that term. There are about 56 entries (reports), including yours now, when you do that.
2. The other good place to look is on gopetition.com, and search under the term 'Track Fire'; you'll see a very long thread there--it's over 1,000 posts on it now--it was started last December by a very good friend of mine and my wife's whom I "hired" last October.
3. Also, on the GoPetition site, you can research more of my story and other info on a thread I started this last August when Mingolo was caught in one of his later incarnations of the same scam in New Orleans under the term 'National Racing Services'; that one continues to run simultaneaously with the Track Fire thread on the same GoPetition site; I also wrote under different names at different times on both threads (sometimes others took the same, or a similar, name, too) to keep the scammers hopping and more busy throughout the months--I like to taunt them when I can and throw out a line every once in a while to see if they'll bite--like I said, one just did today! Big time! You'll probably learn to recognize my posts, too, after a while.
Anyway, I'll check back with this site and my e-mail as often as I can to see if you've contacted me. Just a forewarning, though: I may not give you all the information I currently have, and probably won't, and it's nothing personal, but Mingolo has been known to use "plants" in his offices--one was confirmed to have influenced me so Mingolo could steal more money from me right before I went into the new office--so, I am very cautious with who to trust with the most vital of information--there's really only a few of us who do know all that's really going on. I'm sure you'll understand if I have to keep it that way for a while, at least until justice does get served. You'll probably understand that I'll also have to ask some "security questions" that only you would be certain to know the answers to, first, before I give you any more contact information than my e-mail address, or any other information of any real substance.
As you can tell from this, and if you read the threads, that something really IS happening behind the scenes to make all the wishes you expressed a reality. Trust me, they are my wishes too, and others' as well; and Mingolo can bet that I am more than determined to make sure they do become a reality!