Archive for May, 2014

Jordan Belfort

Posted: May 29, 2014 in Notable Inmates

I was bored so I decided to see if there were any notable inmates who have ever been at Taft prison camp. It seems like there have been a few…

Jordan “Wolf of Wall Street” Belfort spent 22 months at Taft prison camp. It was during that time that he wrote his memoirs which spawned a few movies… Boiler Room and The Wolf of Wall Street.

JPay at Taft

Posted: May 23, 2014 in CorrLinks, JPay, Taft, California

I guess since Taft is not run by the Bureau of Prisons (it’s outsourced), they don’t use CorrLinks for email. Instead they use JPay. This means if you want to send me email while I’m at boy’s camp, you have to do it through JPay…

http://www.jpay.com/Agency-Details/Taft-Correctional-Institution.aspx

Taft is in California, and my inmate ID I think *should* be 13411-111.

So I found some Bureau of Prison public APIs last week and decided to build a system that generates charts to show historical trends on facility population as well as more general stats for BoP.

For example, here you can see that in the last month, the Bureau of Prisons have 8,195 more inmates and 299 less staff. Seems like a winning combo… lol

Or when looking at an individual facility’s page, you can see (for example) how San Diego MCC has had inmate population grow by 5% in the last 2 weeks.

This is what happens when you give nerds access to data.

Taft, The Place To Be

Posted: May 12, 2014 in Taft, California

I got my designation today… The Taft Camp (in California). Looks like a pretty sweet town. I’ll definitely be going about a week early to check out the most boring place in the world (the middle of the desert). 🙂

At least Taft has a sick synthesizer band somewhere…

A.S.P.D.A.M. #6

Posted: May 12, 2014 in A.S.P.D.A.M.

A.S.P.D.A.M. (Answering Stuff People Didn’t Ask Me)

Fidel Martinez on dailydot.com:

eBay’s top two affiliate marketers have been arrested after allegedly defrauding the online auction site of millions of dollars…

Pace Lattin on performinsider.com:

They had both been arrested by the FBI and indicted on multiple charges of wire-fraud and criminal forteiture, and faced perhaps life in prison

False. I’ve never been arrested in my life (by any law enforcement branch), never been handcuffed, never been read my Miranda rights (or anything else that goes along with being “arrested”).

Also, there never was any “criminal forfeiture” (correct spelling) before or after sentencing (nothing was “seized”), and pretty sure no one ever faced “life in prison” over any of this.

So What Happened?

Posted: May 12, 2014 in Affiliate Marketing

If you really want to know the history that lead up to all this, I posted it on my personal blog 4 years ago. I still stand by everything that was posted there (mainly because it’s all exactly how it happened).

http://www.shawnhogan.com/2010/08/what-does-carmen-electra-cyber-terrorism-and-meg-whitman-have-in-common-ebay.html

A.S.P.D.A.M. #5

Posted: May 11, 2014 in A.S.P.D.A.M.

A.S.P.D.A.M. (Answering Stuff People Didn’t Ask Me)

Weber on namepros.com:

So, were all visitors of digitalpoint getting ebay cookies?

Nope, none were.

A.S.P.D.A.M. #4

Posted: May 10, 2014 in A.S.P.D.A.M.

A.S.P.D.A.M. (Answering Stuff People Didn’t Ask Me)

garyv on warriorforum.com:

No I’ve been a member of his forum for over a decade, and I can remember a lot of people over there cookie stuffing. I can specifically remember having an account banned over there for even bringing it up. They were stuffing clickbank cookies over there for a while as well.

If anyone was cookie stuffing back then, it was via images posted in posts and nothing that had anything to do with us (other than a user made a post on our site). In fact, it was one of the reasons we built the Image Proxy system we use (so users can’t).

False. To my knowledge, no one has ever been banned for talking about *anything* (unless it was a mistake or a rogue moderator).

Also absolutely false. There never was any sort of ClickBank cookies being stuffed on digitalpoint.com (or any site I have anything to do with). As far as I’m concerned, I’ve always thought ClickBank is spammy garbage. I’ve never bought anything from ClickBank, never sold anything on ClickBank and never had a ClickBank account.

A.S.P.D.A.M. #3

Posted: May 9, 2014 in A.S.P.D.A.M.

A.S.P.D.A.M. (Answering Stuff People Didn’t Ask Me)

Alex on theadminzone.com:

I’ll hold my personal comments about what he did to myself.

While not an actual question, I’m definitely curious about who you are (or actually more what I did you you)?

A.S.P.D.A.M. #2

Posted: May 8, 2014 in A.S.P.D.A.M.

A.S.P.D.A.M. (Answering Stuff People Didn’t Ask Me)

Will_Watts on theadminzone.com:

Considering he’s lied already, and failed to mention his so-called “grey area” (read: illegal) techniques, I’m not sure why you’re quoting him.

It’s entirely up to you whether you’re willing to accept that he’s done something legally and morally wrong.

Do you think it’s okay for someone who’s committed fraud to go free just because they’ve paid it back?

I don’t think anyone of authority has even *claimed* I lied about anything. I’ve actually been nothing but honest and forthcoming about the entire thing (which is more than I can say about others involved in the case on the other side of the fence).

For example, the eBay employee who knew more about the situation than anyone else most definitely “forgot” to mention all sorts of relevant information when she was interviewed by the original prosecutor on the case.

The prosecutor thought it was important enough that when it all came to light after he interviewed me, they made her fly from the UK to California *again* to “reinterview” her on short notice.

At my sentencing hearing, the judge reiterated the fact that the government was satisfied that the information I provided was “complete and truthful”.

As far as what “I did”… I’m guilty of one count of wire fraud. One user was forced to click one ad, and that user was outside of California (therefore using a wire that crossed state lines… the Internet), with the total monetary gain of that action being $0. I didn’t pay back the $28M that eBay paid me (nor did the US government seize any assets) for being an affiliate if that’s what you are thinking/hoping because that money wasn’t “ill-begotten”. Me being paid $28M as an affiliate and me pleading guilty to a single count of wire fraud (which involved 1 person and 1 ad) are only related because people make (incorrect) assumptions about things.