Re: Hepatitis C Recovery

The Jeanine London Jeff Bailey Hepatitis Cure Scam.
Jeanine London and Jeff Bailey are the authors of one of the most successful Internet scams ever created. Jeanine London claims that she was infected with the Hepatitis C virus as a child. She claims she was destitute and dying with end stage liver disease when Jeff Bailey came to her rescue with an alternative cure for her illness. In a conversation with this writer she actually claimed her first child died in 1981 at two days of age from “IN-VITRO hepatitis” C. Jeanine London now claims she is completely cured and for the benefit of other sufferers of the hepatitis c virus will sell them the products needed to cure themselves. Three aspects of social psychology, especially the psychology of persuasion, are most useful for their purposes: alternative routes to persuasion, attitudes and beliefs that affect social interaction, and techniques for persuasion and influence.

Alternative routes to persuasion
In any situation where one person seeks to persuade another to do something, social psychology has identified two alternative routes that the persuader can employ. A central route to persuasion marshals systemic and logical arguments to stimulate a favourable response, prompting the listener or reader to think deeply and reach agreement. A peripheral route to persuasion, in contrast, relies on peripheral cues and mental shortcuts to bypass logical argument and counterargument and seek to trigger acceptance without thinking deeply about the matter. As every scheme to defraud necessarily involves the offering of goods or services in ways that misrepresent their objective qualities and features, the principals in the scheme can never afford to use a direct route to persuasion, and therefore invariably fall back on methods using peripheral routes to persuasion.
What makes Jeanine and Jeff’s prospective victims more susceptible to peripheral routes to persuasion is by making some statement at the outset of their interaction that triggers strong emotions, such as fear. Their victims have no doubt heard the horror stories associated with the current Interferon based medications currently available for the treatment of hepatitis c. These surges of strong emotion, like other forms of distraction, serve to interfere with the victim's ability to call on his or her capacity for logical thinking, such as his capacity for counterargument. This aids Jeanine in making false representations that exploit a peripheral route to persuasion.

Attitudes and beliefs
Another dimension of the social psychology of fraud involves the differences between the victim's attitudes and beliefs about the person soliciting his money over the Internet and the London’s attitudes and beliefs about her intended or actual victims. In a typical commercial transaction where there is no question about the quality of the goods or services for sale, buyer and seller may begin with different levels of conviction about the appropriate price for that good or service, but each has a general expectation that both he and the other party will end up with something of genuine value that meets their realistic expectations.
In contrast, in a fraudulent transaction only the victim is likely to believe that both he and the offeror of the good or service share that same expectation. It may be that before people can become victims of a fraud, they must first succumb to the temptation -- called the false consensus effect -- that others share their feelings and ideas. In fact, those who commit fraud often adopt or devise ways of referring to their victims in denigrating or demeaning terms. In this decade, for example, law enforcement authorities have found that participants in fraudulent telemarketing businesses typically refer to a victim as a "mooch" -- a variant of "moocher," a person who demands something for nothing. Use of such terms undoubtedly eases the task of presenting their victims with representations that are false or deceptive, and ultimately choosing not to deliver what they promised or some item vastly lower in value than the victims had expected. Participants in fraudulent schemes may also devise characterizations of their own actions that minimize the harm they cause to their victims or that foster a more positive self-image of their actions.
Finally, social psychology experiments have shown that for some people who tend not to scrutinize persuasive messages closely, their post message attitudes were less dependent on scrutinizing the message when they perceived the source to be more honest. Thus, some fraud victims may tend to rely primarily on their belief or impression that the person with whom they dealt was honest, and to give little thought to the message's substance.

Persuasion and Influence techniques
A substantial body of literature in social psychology demonstrates that there are at least six factors relying on peripheral routes to persuasion that are highly likely to persuade or influence others.

Authority:

People are highly likely, in the right situation, to be highly responsive to assertions of authority, even when the person who purports to be in a position of authority is not physically present. London and Bailey use terms such as “the world renowned, Nobel Prize nominated Dr Patrick Flanagan MD PhD. Their victims respond to this, as few would believe one would make such claims unless they were true. In reality Patrick Flanagan bought his degree in Medicine from a Sri Lank a diploma mill. His PhD seems to have come from a non-existent Malaysian University. Some of the claims they make on behalf of Patrick Flanagan are so outrageous that if people believe these claims they will believe anything. The claim that Patrick Flanagan at age fourteen developed and patented a ICBM launcher now used by the United States military shows how responsive people can be to such assertions Two factors should have indicated that the victim might have questioned the order: (1) It came from a "doctor" with whom the victim had never before met or spoken; (2) the "doctor" was transmitting a treatment via London and Bailey without ever examining the victim.

Scarcity:

People are also highly responsive to indications that a particular item they may want is in short supply or available for only a limited period. Indeed, London and Bailey’s use the presumption that people come to desire that item even more when they perceive that their freedom to obtain it is or may be limited in some way. The belief that others may be competing for the short supply of the desired item may enhance the person's desire even more.

Liking & Similarity:

It is a truly human tendency to like people who are like us. Our identification of a person as having characteristics identical or similar to our own -- places of birth, or tastes in sports, music, art, or other personal interests, or in this case, infection with the hepatitis c virus provides a strong incentive for the victim to adopt a mental shortcut, in dealing with that person, to regard him or her more favourably merely because of that similarity.


Reciprocation:

A well-recognized rule of social interaction requires that if someone gives us (or promises to give us) something, we feel a strong inclination to reciprocate by providing something in return. Even if the favour that someone offers was not requested by the other person, the person offered the favour may feel a strong obligation to respect the rule of reciprocation by agreeing to the favour that the original offeror asks in return -- even if that favour is significantly costlier than the original favour.



Commitment & Consistency:

Society also places great store by consistency in a person's behaviour. If we promise to do something, and fail to carry out that promise, we are virtually certain to be considered untrustworthy or undesirable. We therefore are more likely to take considerable pains to act in ways that are consistent with actions that we have taken before, even if, in the fullness of time, we later look back and recognize that some consistencies are indeed foolish.

One way in which social custom and practice makes us susceptible to appeals to consistency is the use of writing. A leading social psychologist, Professor Robert B. Cialdini, has observed that unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, "People have a natural tendency to think that a statement reflects the true attitude of the person who made it." Moreover, once the person who receives such a statement responds by preparing a written statement of his own -- whether a letter, an affidavit, or an e-mail -- it tends to make the writer believe in what he has written as well, adding to the impression that both parties have displayed their true attitudes and beliefs


Social Proof:

In many social situations, one of the mental shortcuts on which we rely, in determining what course of action is most appropriate, is to look to see what other people in the vicinity are doing or saying. This phenomenon, known as social proof, can prompt us to take actions that may be against our self-interest without taking the time to consider them more deeply. Cults from the Jonestown Temple to Heaven's Gate, for example, provide cogent evidence of how strong the effects of that phenomenon can be in the right circumstances. London and Bailey’s various web sites are littered with others who are almost cured or have been cured. These fictitious people actually are used to implore those who are considering stopping their program to continue. They also use mistrust of the allo medical community and the Pharma industry to keep their victims on track.

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Fraudulent schemes committed exclusively through e-mail -- what we will call "e-mail scams" for convenience -- seem to be drawing on several psychological influences. In its simplest form, , an e-mail scam can rely exclusively on a false assertion of authority, particularly if the scam can target a group of people who are more vulnerable or susceptible to that assertion. Compared with long-time users of Hepatitis C support groups, who better understand the Internet's pleasures and pitfalls, victims who have just been diagnosed with hepatitis c are much more likely to defer to that assertion, and to assume without question that there are logical reasons for the assertion to be made at that time. London brings them in and then Jeff Bailey suggests they call him on “his dime” to effect a very hard close.
Jeanine London’s Web Profiles.
The only consistent truth I have found with Jeanine London is her name server web address, 65.114.238.8, from this address have come the following personas: Sungodjr, Godsent, hcvfree, Karen, Joseph and Glynda (from F.L. Baum’s Wizard of oz no doubt). She also has at least two yahoo groups that we have found but at this time. Her MO is to harvest names from these sites up email them privatly and then directs them to the MSM site, HepatitisCHelp.

The London Bailey Web Sites:
1. http://hepchelp.homestead.com/
2. http://survivalpack.homestead.com/
3. http://hepchelp.homestead.com/THCHAMP.html
4. http://groups.msn.com/HepatitisCHelp/