Very minor violations: he mentions $3000 over a 6 week period. More than that is coming out of those advertisers' accounts. He's not a small-scale customer.
It's fraudulent because he's deliberately trying to deceive advertisers who run through Google. There's this little nugget:
>Oh yes, I was also running little blocks of adverts provided by Adsense and, yes, I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the websites of those advertisers – all of whom were interested in selling stuff to sailors.
Which is explicitly attempting to game the system. A second's thought of how it works will convince you: advertisers are charged by click, but they make money by purchases. Having extreme CTR with extreme bounce rates means the advertisers are being scammed. Actions caused by willful ignorance in this case look almost identical to willful intent...
And they very nearly are the same thing here. Say you noticed your bank rounded up for certain transactions. Would running thousands of those transactions with the intent to make money - the same as the article - count as willful intent to scam the bank? Would the bank be right in penalizing you for doing so?
It's fraudulent because he's deliberately trying to deceive advertisers who run through Google. There's this little nugget:
>Oh yes, I was also running little blocks of adverts provided by Adsense and, yes, I told my subscribers that I got some money if they visited the websites of those advertisers – all of whom were interested in selling stuff to sailors.
Which is explicitly attempting to game the system. A second's thought of how it works will convince you: advertisers are charged by click, but they make money by purchases. Having extreme CTR with extreme bounce rates means the advertisers are being scammed. Actions caused by willful ignorance in this case look almost identical to willful intent...
And they very nearly are the same thing here. Say you noticed your bank rounded up for certain transactions. Would running thousands of those transactions with the intent to make money - the same as the article - count as willful intent to scam the bank? Would the bank be right in penalizing you for doing so?