[or-roots] Re:Lawsuit Against Morphcorp for Fake Family Hist...

[Harguess, Dale]

I belong to the SDOP and will look it up tonight at home and send
tomorrow.  Or you could try Googleing for their website.

Dale

P.S.  I do descend from Peter Brown and am a member of the Mayflower
Society.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: or-roots-admin at sosinet.sos.state.or.us
[mailto:or-roots-admin at sosinet.sos.state.or.us] On Behalf Of Gary Murray
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 3:32 PM
To: or-roots at sosinet.sos.state.or.us
Subject: Re: [or-roots] Re:Lawsuit Against Morphcorp for Fake Family
Hist...

 

LINDA:  i remember that woman's name very well.  when i first started
gene. many, many years ago i was told by someone supposedly in the know
that it was dumb of me to do this.  all i had to do was contact the lds
family history library and they would send it all to me.  found out in
quick order that just wasn't true.  remember this was 35 - 40 years ago.
i also just assumed that there were so few people in oregon that i would
instantly find anyone i was looking for.  i do remember believing that
one.  made sense to me.  i have been caught in two family gene. that had
all the sources and proofs listed at the end.  one was for peter browne
of the mayflower and it seems to me the other was reynolds, but just
don't remember.  the browne one was very impressive.  supposedly done by
a woman i copied it word for word.  then on my first trip to england i
found out none of the sources existed.  i fought the idea of destroying
all that data for quite a number of years.  the sources looked so good.
that was my first trip into royalty.  it was very interesting but very
confusing also.  i have since found a royal entry in another line and i
spent about 5-7 years following that.  i also found there was a rootsweb
board about royalty and became involved with that.  if any of you think
there is a lot of dissention on the board you should go to the royal
board.  they seem to call each other just about every name in the book.
the most foul=mouthed bunch i have ever run across.  hopefully the list
owner eventually stepped in and put a stop to it.  the royal lines are
very, very confuaing since the women were hopfully all chaste but the
men had 10-15 concubines.  i come down from one english line where the
head of it was a prince and very royal but he m. adivorced lady and had
to give up his hope for the throne.  i am not now or ever was interested
in the bunch of throwbacks they have over there now, that pass as
royals.  i read anything and everything i could find on the royal
families from victoria back and i mean back.  i had a ton of books on
those people but donated all of them to the forum when i moved here.  no
one on that royal board could agree on anything.  i bought many, many
written pedigrees over the years.  i bought one that is 4' x 6' and was
put out by the mormom church in 1939.  [good year since its the year of
my birth]  the lds were only interested in showing how the leaders of
their church were descended from royal lines but the chart goes back to
adam and eve and was fun.  somewhere around here i have the chart for
all that and although i don't believe a word of it, it was great fun.  i
still have the chart on the wall showing how my bonney clan goes back to
the mayflower.  while i have been invited to join the mayflower soc. and
the soc. for the crown of charlemagne, i never have.  the only thing i
joined ever was SDOP and after a year my belonging to this soc. gave
out, i would still like to rejoin but can't figure out how.
ANYBODY??????

MY BEST ROYAL DESC. IS from edward the III, king of england and i
desscend from one of his daughters.  i bought a dvd on edw. II who had
all kinds of problems and it is a piece of garbage.  i think someone
wrote a play about him that made no sense.  it was bloody and horrible
and was like nothing i had ever read, except for the way he was
murdered.  so if you are a direct on any bonneys, the line goes back to
the immigrant, thomas bonney and then thru his wife to just about every
royal house in europe.  HAPPY TRAILS.

gary in az.

i had an uncle that liked to tell everyone outside and inside the family
that we traced our lines back to the horse thieves and bank robbers and
then stopped.  

	----- Original Message ----- 

	From: LinLouVan at aol.com 

	To: or-roots at sosinet.sos.state.or.us 

	Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 3:09 PM

	Subject: [or-roots] Re:Lawsuit Against Morphcorp for Fake Family
Hist...

	 

	Again ! ! !

	Anybody remember Beatrice Bayley, then, Halberts, then "Your
Name" Researchers?

	This scam has been around as long as we have been doing
genealogy. Each time they

	are found out, they move and change names and/or someone else
takes over. Isn't it sad

	that there are opportunists  out there and enough gullible
people to support them - for a 

	while?

	 

	Linda VanOrden

	Junction City, OR

	LinLouVan at aol.com 

	 

	 

	 

	 

	 

	In a message dated 11/28/05 10:29:52 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
whizinc at comcast.net writes:

		My Dad received this.  I don't remember which
genealogical society LCGS is.  I considered buying one of these books.

		Ronda Howard

		 

		 

		----- Original Message ----- 

		From: Alice Sanders <mailto:sanders922 at msn.com>  

		To: sanders922 at msn.com 

		Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 8:10 AM

		Subject: LCGS FYI Lawsuit Against Morphcorp for Fake
Family Histories

		 

		 

		Bill Mahoney sends the following to share.  An FYI
warning was sent out earlier about these fake histories.  It is nice to
know 

		something may be done about the people running this
company.  Let's wish Arapahoe County much success in this.

		 

		THE FOLLOWING IS FROM THE DENVER POST

		25 Nov 2005

		State Sues Genealogy Company

		The suit claims 150,000 people nationwide were swindled
out of $49.95 each when they bought a book with fake family histories
from Morphcorp of Denver.

		By Manny Gonzales 

		Denver Post Staff Writer  

		For $49.95, people who bought genealogical "yearbooks"
from a Denver-based company got the same family coat of arms, the same
family recipes and even the same family jokes, according to a lawsuit
filed Wednesday. 

		And it was a lucrative scam that swindled 150,000 people
nationwide who bought into fake family histories, according to the civil
suit filed by Colorado Attorney General John Suthers. 

		The suit, filed in Arapahoe County District Court
against Maxwell MacMaster and his company, Morph corp LLC, seeks to
cease the operation and penalize him up to $2,000 per book sold, which
could amount to $300 million. 

		"This is a guy who has been exploiting a natural human
emotion, a curiosity about our family history . and he made a lot of
money doing it," Suthers said. "People got a standard book that really
reflects no individual genealogical research. The books come with a
family (crest), but if your surname is Jones it would be the same
(crest) used if your last name was Smith." 

		MacMaster, who has residences listed in Denver and
Kailua, Hawaii, was contacted about the suit but said he had not read
the specific allegations and declined to comment. His lawyer could not
be reached for comment. 

		Aurora resident Lynette Dahl is one of 21 alleged
victims in Colorado. Dahl said her family purchased a yearbook a couple
of years ago in hopes of learning more about where she came from, but
what she got was "generic." 

		"They make it sound like you're going to get all this
great information, but you get it and it's generic, fill-in-the-blanks
stuff," Dahl, 42, said. "The book had a coat of arms for my family,
supposedly. But when I opened it, immediately I could tell this was some
kind of cruel joke." 

		Dahl said that after numerous attempts to reach the
company and after filing complaints of unfair business practices, she
finally was refunded her money from Morphcorp. 

		According to the suit, MacMaster advertised in magazines
and sent out mailings offering a yearbook detailing "2,000 years" of
family history. 

		The suit claims MacMaster and his then-wife made various
false and misleading statements in direct-mail advertising claiming that
they shared the same last name of the consumer targeted by the flier.
The suit also alleges that Morphcorp engaged in improper pricing
practices. 

		The company mailed out 250,000 fliers a month, the suit
claims, and targeted mostly people over the age of 60. 

		The books sold contained much of the same information,
including "family jokes and recipes," and family pictures appear in each
yearbook regardless of the surname of the consumer, the suit claims.
There were some variations, Suthers said. For a German surname, the
books contained the same German family recipes and jokes. 

		Because jokes were the same in many of the yearbooks,
some Jewish customers were offended when their families were referenced
as being Catholic, the suit claims. 

		It's the second time MacMaster has gotten into hot water
for an alleged genealogy scam. In 1996 he signed an assurance as
president of a company called Mountain Pacific News Service to cease
operations. Suthers hopes to prove MacMaster violated the agreement,
which would be another violation of the Colorado Consumer Protection
Act. 

		The attorney general has been investigating the company
for about a year, since complaints were submitted to the Better Business
Bureau. 

		"As these complaints roll in, it's almost comical how
this guy would try to fool people," Suthers said. "Anyone with any
sophistication almost immediately would identify the yearbook as
boilerplate." 

		Staff writer Manny Gonzales can be reached at
303-820-1537 or mgonzales at denverpost.com. 

	 

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