Marl the Stock Robot: Scam?

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Have you heard of Marl the Stock Robot? Google “Marl” and click the first ad you see. You don’t have to read the whole page because I have summed it up in the next paragraph. Please click the ad anyway. You’ll understand why in a minute.

That page tells a story about the invention of “the first commercially available stock picking robot” which is available for $28,000 per license, which includes a week of training in the programmer’s home. The script assumes you can’t afford the software and offers you a stock tips newsletter subscription for only $47.

Maybe it’s a great newsletter. I don’t care about that. I am interested in the Marl software which, at $28,000, is out of the reach of anyone earnestly reading that page but vastly under-priced if it does what they claim.

Normally you would reject this sort of offer on the “too good to be true” rule alone but I wasn’t satisfied. I went looking for the software and I didn’t find any information leading to the purchase of a Marl software license. I did find a large number of sites echoing the same story and offering the same newsletter.

The site is one of a great many taking part in an affiliate marketing scheme to sell a newsletter subscription. This is just one of countless schemes telling lies in order to sell something. This is why I told you to click the ad rather than publish a link. They are paying for those ads, baiting real suckers, lying about a non-existent robot. Your clicks cost them money.

I don’t know whether the newsletter is any good. Maybe it can teach you enough to make some lucky investments. But if you want to make real money from Marl, I suggest you set up an affiliate marketing web site to sell that newsletter and buy all the ads you can get for $47.

Update 1: This is how a person can make money on a stock tip scam and why the government puts them away:

The volume of distribution of a newsletter such as the one at issue can rapidly become large enough that its membership, acting on the tips they receive, create an artificial demand for the penny stock and consequently cause the stock price to rise. If one reacts quickly enough and buys the stock before this wave of demand comes to market, it may be possible to realize a very high margin of profit where no real value exists in the merits of the company being traded. In this scenario, the biggest winner will be the first person to know about the tip and act on it, i.e. the publisher of the newsletter. Subscribers can profit, too, but they must buy fast and sell before the artificial demand bubble pops and the price regains parity with the actual market value.

Update 2: A reader going by the name of Mistlethrush left a very important comment below. It reveals the inner workings of the Marl software!

103 thoughts on “Marl the Stock Robot: Scam?”

  1. To demonstrate a predicted large price increase from one day to the next, do this: take screen captures the first day of various highly volatile penny stocks; the next day find one that had a large increase and match up the videos. It may take a few days to generate a good match, but who said creating a slick scam didn’t require a little patience?

  2. Excellent post. Glad that there is always a counterforce to amoralistic opportunists and scammers.

  4. I wonder if they have been flagged by clickbank – I fell for this on 1/04/08 and today I have yet to see a charge to my credit card although I did get a confirmation from email from clickbank. I put in a request for refund anyway so we’ll see what happens

  5. Another clue is in the source code of their home page, you’ll find which basically instructs the search engines not to store a copy of the website, i.e. cache on Google. Probably an attempt to hide evidence if necessary.

    I called the 800-390-6035 Clickbank number and was granted a refund immediately. They told me my $47 would be back in my PayPal account within 24 hrs. Thank god Clickbank is reputable. And thank you Andy for posting the blog.

  6. I did a reverse IP lookup and it appears that there are 15 domains hosted on Alex aka Tom Hunter’s IP. See links below.

    Samantha Cornforth,,, his girlfriend, wife?

    AFFILIATEDCASH .COM
    BRINGPOPCORN .COM
    DAILYRAKE .COM
    DAILYRAKE .NET
    DOUBLINGSTOCKS .COM
    EQUITYPROMOTER .COM
    JUSTGAMERZ .COM
    ONLYGAMERZ .COM
    POKERBOBBY .COM
    SAMANTHACORNFORTH .COM
    THEAFFILIATEACADEMY .COM
    THISRICH .NET
    UNLOCKTEXTS .COM
    WEALTHYMARKETER .COM
    WEALTHYMARKETER .NET

  8. i did purchase the newsletter for $47 bucks cause i don’t have a lot of money and would like to do a little day trading on the side. they sent me my first stock pick monday morning and said the stock would open at .10 and was undervalued and had traded as high as 2.00. by monday afternoon it was a .18 and today(tuesday) it was at .26. they made a great point in the newsletter about more expensive stocks. first off if you buy them at something like $50.00 dollars a share you probably have enough money and don’t care that it won’t double quick. and if you invest something like $100,000 or a million in those types of stock and they only gain 5 or 10% once again you don’t care because that’s a lot of money. you mentioned that newsletter cause a surge in gains. who cares if it does and the small guy can profit, like i mentioned before, i’m from seattle and all the big stocks in this area that people got rich from were mostly from stock optioned employees or other people riding a dot.com wave which is basically the same. so i don’t neither disagree or agree with you but I think anytime the small guy can get a piece of the pie its good.

  9. Have any of you Einsteins noticed that they are supposedly based in Seattle WA but give a UK telephone number…..?

  10. doubling stocks would not return my e-mails, so i googled and eventually found this blog…apparently they are e-mailing their newsletter at different times for the same stock to get a bunch of people to buy to artificially increase the price then they can sell and make a profit and leave the rest of us a loser…call clickbank at 800-390-6035 and they will refund your money immediateley…

  11. People, get real and think about this SCAM!

    They claim thier Robot will yeild 34.7% per week. $347 on a $1,000.

    OK, after 52 weeks their original $1,000 would have compounded to, are you ready for this…..$5,334,761,123.

    The calculation is real simple, just enter your $1,000 ento Excel and multiply times 1.347. Do this 52 times and you get $53 Trillion!!!!!!!!!!!

    It only takes 24 weeks to grow to a million.

    And yet they run around trying to get $47 for their newsletter. Yea right!

    Remember, A Fool and his money are soon parted.

  14. Where were you people before I plopped down my $47 and followed a recommendation for SKVI. Sadly,I am down over 50% on my buy. Anyone thinking about this…DO NOT BE TEMPTED. I have requested a response from”michael” on many occasions since buying on his “undervalued” recommendation 12-13-07 stating that the target price was .68. I bought at .26 and it crashed to .16 by the next morning. Michael sent an email blast just now congratulating those that followed yesterday’s recommendation. This was his first recommendation in 4 weeks. Thank you for the Clickbank phone number.. but my $450 is gone forever.