How to Spot GovCon Scammers & Con Artists

In this episode, I talk about scammers preying on unsuspecting individuals in the realm of government contracting. From promising easy riches to using deceptive tactics, this episode will expose the psychological playbook of these con artists. Drawing from real-life stories and practical tips, you will learn how to identify red flags and conduct due diligence to avoid falling victim to scams. Whether it's scrutinizing extravagant claims or cross-referencing with official databases, my goal is to equip listeners with the tools to navigate the complexities of government contracting safely and properly. Tune in to learn how to separate fact from fiction and protect yourself from fraudulent schemes.

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Michael LeJeune: [00:00:00] We are going to be talking about scammers today. I’ve got to say up front, this is not a podcast that I wanted to make. However, I have seen enough videos on all of social media on the last couple of months that I felt the need to make this podcast. It just burns me to watch people in this market who've had success at any level and then people that are brand new to the market, who are out there advocating for you to get into this market because it's so simple. It's just so easy. It's a side hustle. This is something you can do in just a couple hours a day here and there. You are going to make so much money. In fact, you're probably going to be a millionaire from doing this.

?I'm not going to name any names today, but if you go out there and you see videos that have the characteristics that I'm going to describe today, there's a good chance that what they're telling you is not true. Is that the case for every video you're going to see? Absolutely not. You're going to [00:01:00] need to do your own due diligence. And the last part of this podcast is going to talk about some ways you can do some due diligence. There's some really simple stuff, but the main thing is just kind of how to spot what just doesn't seem right.? And so we're going to talk about that.

Before we dive into that I want to talk about what I consider to be kind of like the psychological playbook of a scammer or con artist. Now, some of these people don't believe they're scammers or con artists, don't believe necessarily that they're doing anything wrong. That doesn't make it right. It doesn't make it right. But what is common in a lot of these situations is you have people that are using sales tactics which are very commonly deployed in business. They're using sales tactics that in my opinion are just deceptive. It's just deceptive to get out there and tell people that something is one thing when they deep down know it isn't.

There's a group of people out [00:02:00] there that will say something is something because they actually have no idea. They've just gotten in chat GPT or some other AI tool and said, Hey, give me some bullet points for a video. They don't have any clue whether it's right or wrong. There are some of those people out there and God bless them. I mean, they're trying their best, but they're also wrong in my opinion. If you don't understand this business, you can waste years trying to figure it out and never make the money that you want to make.

With that, let me talk about a couple of other quick little things from the psychological playbook perspective. The people that are misrepresenting, that's a good word to use, misrepresenting the government typically are focused in on things that they know are deep desires of people. Like, Hey, I know you want to quit that job because you hate your boss. I know you want to get in here make your own business and create your own family fortune and different things like that. They focus on things that are deep desires a lot of times that have [00:03:00] really high click through rates and things like that for videos. And then they dive deep and just kind of fan those flames. They get in a video and they talk about how easy it is to quit your job, to quit that nine to five in three months, right? Because you're gonna be making so much money because this is so easy. And I know a lot of other people have told you it's not, they are the liars. I'm the Messiah. I'm the one that can actually lead you to the promised land of this new business venture, where you're going to make more money than you've ever dreamed of. And they will throw in things occasionally about how it is a lot of work. It is this, it is that. But all of those things are downplayed and the things that are focused on are your dreams, the things that are important to you and just how easy this is. That's the theme of this.

And that's part of the psychological playbook. Because if I can convince you that your dreams are just a couple of clicks away, then I can convince you to take action, to go buy my book, go jump [00:04:00] into my course, go sit in a webinar, go through my Masterclass workshop end all be all whatever thing it is that someone's selling, right? Some start with a freebie, but a lot of times they drive you to this thing that is a paid thing. I've heard pricing as low as 300, you know, like 297, you'll get it now. And I've heard pricing as high as 20,000 for a course or something along those lines, where you're going to go through and learn how to be a government contractor overnight from 300 to 20, 000. ?And that is without coaching. When it gets into the coaching side, I've heard tens of thousands of dollars. I've heard people talk about 20,000 a month to be coached by this expert.

And so you’ve just got to be really aware of that. Because their playbook is, I charge this much because I'm so successful and my clients are so successful and all that kind of stuff. You'll just hear those things over and over and over again, so be aware of what their psychological playbook is. [00:05:00] It's going to prey on those things that are really really important to you and then make it seem overwhelmingly easy, like it's incredibly easy the way they lay it out.

I will tell you up front, while this business is not hard, it requires a lot of hard work and there's nothing about it that's easy. It's not easy to bid on a proposal. There's a lot of effort. There's a lot of work. There's a learning curve. It's not easy to navigate government contracting regulations. It's not easy to navigate shipping products. It's not easy to find vendors or manufacturers who are willing to let you resell their products or services. It's not easy to build relationships with teaming partners. The list of “it's not easy” is really, really long. Can you do all the things that I just said aren't easy? Absolutely. You can do them. But a lot of times it requires not only finesse, but trial and error. Trial and error means losing means being told [00:06:00] no. How easy is it to be told no or to lose repeatedly? It's not easy. Psychologically you have to be able to overcome all of those things in order to become a successful government contractor. And a lot of people do overcome it. A lot of people. But there are a lot of people that can't.

In fact, if we just look at a business in general, the average person who starts a business will close that business. That's just the statistics. You know, it's more than 50%. I would say it's closer to 75/80 percent because the small business administration says that 50 percent of all businesses will fail within the 1st 3 years. But what they don't say is out of the ones that passed 3 years, another 50 plus percent will fail between years three and five. Just because you get to year five, doesn't mean you're going to succeed. The numbers just keep shrinking and shrinking and shrinking.

Just because you have a business, doesn't mean you're going to be successful. There's a lot that goes into it. I was not always successful. I experienced a lot of problems early on in the business, not being able to pay bills, not being able to [00:07:00] meet just basic things that we were trying to accomplish. And it took a decade, actually more than a decade, of really, really hard work, trying things and failing, slightly shifting gears and directions. It took more than a decade of me doing that before I finally got to a place where I was extremely happy and I would consider myself successful.

You’ve got to get over that hump and people don't want to talk about that, especially people that are trying to sell a course. They want to say by the end of the seven weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, three months, whatever it is, you're going to be making so much money it's going to be ridiculous. You have to look out on the front end for that kind of stuff.

Now, let me hit you with three quick stories. A client of mine came to me one time and said, Mike, I really want to work with you. This was right before they became a client. I really want to work with you, but I'm really concerned because we've been burned before. This sounds like what I need, but I just, I'm trying to do my due diligence. And I said, well, how were you burned last time? They said, well, I was burned because there was this [00:08:00] person who said they knew everybody in the government. It sure seemed like they did because they started getting me on these phone calls right away with all of these important people, contracting officers, program managers, teaming partners.

Yeah, I was having call after call. And then on one of the calls after a couple of months, I questioned like, man, none of this has gone anywhere. What's going on? And so somewhere in their third or fourth month, they started pressing somebody on the phone. The person cracked and said, Oh, I'm actually Joe's fiance. I'm not a contracting officer. I'm so sorry. And they were crying and all this kind of stuff. That's how they knew they'd been scammed. The person had their family and friends posing as contracting officers and teaming partners all kinds of other people, right? So that's one story.

My next story is actually from a video that I watched the other day. Again, not going to share any names, but I've seen a handful of videos, it's not just one, where somebody says this person went from homeless to millionaire in a matter of a few months. And I saw a couple of videos the other day [00:09:00] and I was like, you know, I got to check this out. I want to hear their story. I'm genuinely interested. And so as I'm listening to the story, I'm like, the person says they won this certain thing. And I don't want to say it because it might give away whose video this is and I don't want to name names, right? Lawyers don't like you doing that. They said they won this thing and I'm like, wait a minute, that's not a contract. They start going down this rabbit hole and I'm like, wait a minute, let me go look this person up in USASpending. And sure enough, this millionaire, my air quotes for people just listening to the podcast, this millionaire had one contract over the last year for 4,900. One contract, and they're on a podcast talking about how they became a millionaire using this person's stuff. I can give you stories like that all day long.

And so you've got to watch out for those kinds of stories. Cause I've got countless other stories of people that were rags to riches. I was living in my cars, living on the streets. I was living in my father's basement. I was living [00:10:00] wherever I was living in a van down by the river. But now, thanks to this amazing course over the last three months, I have turned my life around and I now own a Lamborghini or whatever it is, right? You hear a lot of these stories and you're like, wow, this just sounds way too good to be true. All those stories happen all the time.

Now my third one, I'm going to kind of combine the stories here. I can't tell you how many times I hear the story of a retired fill in the blank military person, colonel general, whatever it may be, who is now doing consulting and is charging 50 grand a month for their services. And after six, eight, 10 months, they haven't produced a thing, nothing. Stories like that happen all the time. Don't be one of those people.

Here's a few ways to spot that scammer or con artist or person who just doesn't know what they're doing is using chat GPT to figure this out. If it sounds too good to be true, check it. It probably is. If somebody is willing to tell you all about the good, but nothing about the hard work or very little about that, like they downplay, Oh, [00:11:00] you know, it's hard, but we'll get through it. Oh, it's hard, but this is going to be so easy using my free full proof, bulletproof, fail proof, whatever proof system you're just going to be able to fly through this. And in six months from now, you're also going to be a millionaire on my podcast, helping me scam other people. If it sounds too good to be true, there's a good chance it is. That's number one.

Number two, if somebody is pushing this business in government contracting as a side hustle and super easy, that's a pretty good indicator that they are completely full of it. This is not a side hustle. It's not. It's not super easy. I talked up front about all the hard things inside of this business. So don't let somebody push this business as a side hustle.

A lot of times they push it as the middleman strategy. You'll hear a lot about that. While the middleman strategy itself is not illegal, there are aspects of it the way I've seen it pushed that are illegal. There are limits on subcontracting. There are other [00:12:00] manufacturing rules that you have to follow. You can't just go get a bid on a product or a service and sell it to the government. There are rules in most cases, and you have to follow those rules. And if you don't know those rules, if you don't understand those rules, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. And so just be careful about that one. You'll hear that one a lot.

The other thing is I hear a lot about you're going to get results fast. You're going to get results super fast. If you're hearing, you're going to get results fast, the odds are that's not true at all. They just aren't. And most people should know that. If somebody says you're going to go on this crash course diet in 10 days, you could lose 25 to 40 pounds. A lot of you who are listening probably have tried those. And in a month, you've lost four pounds. Or maybe six. You haven't lost 40 pounds, but they put that out there and they put how easy it is. And on day three of the diet or day three of the whatever you are regretting life. That's just the way a lot of those things happen. Results that are guaranteed to be fast are a big [00:13:00] indicator that something's wrong.

Another issue that I see a lot is when people have a ton of websites where they've got this landing page over here and this landing page over here. And when you scroll to the bottom, you can't find company names. You don't find a lot of information. You may see a photo here or there. But you're like, man, something doesn't feel right about this. And a lot of times the reason it is that way is because they don't want a lot of information being tracked down. They don't want people to easily see who their company name is because they could go look it up. They don't want to see some of those other things because the FTC or somebody else in the government could go look it up and they don't want some of that stuff there. They want somebody to have to go through hoops if they're actually trying to track them down. So if you've got multiple websites all over the place that don't have a lot of information and you're like very confused of what's going on, sometimes that's an indication.

Not all the time because in Marketing best practices, we do use landing pages a lot. But those URLs, the core URL at the front, the.com, the. whatever [00:14:00] should go back to their main website, not something else that is just unprofessional, right?

Let me give you this final tip. I've done this before. I talked about it earlier. You can do this. Anytime you question somebody's ethics, you question whether it's a scam or whatever it is, you can simply go into USASpending or SAM.gov and you can pull a report. I think it's easiest to go into the USASpending portal because you don't have to log in or anything like that and start putting in that company's name. You should very quickly be able to identify that company. If you can't find them there, you can Google them. You can try to use SAM. You can get their SAM UEI, their unique identifier, and then go back to USASpending, pull that report, and see if they actually have done what they say they're going to do.

I can't tell you how many times over the last five years I have seen people online talking about how much money they've made. I've gone into the SAM report, I've gone into the USASpending report, and the answers are staggering. Sometimes I'll hear tens or [00:15:00] hundreds of millions of dollars. I'll go into USASpending and they've made 50, 000. All time. We're not talking last year, we're talking ever. That's all they've made. Some have one contract, some have no contracts. You can go and do your own research to make sure you don't get scammed.

The other thing you can do is you can check with me. I know a lot of very reputable people. Not everybody works with us. There's a lot of our peers in this market that are extremely reputable, really good folks, really good heart. They provide a really good service. There's a lot of them out there. We're not just talking a handful. There's a lot of really good coaches and consultants in this market who can really help you.

Be careful, do your due diligence. And if you have questions, just reach out. Let me know if you need anything.

I'll see you next time.

Narrator: I really hope you enjoyed the podcast today. If you did, I would really appreciate it if you would like and subscribe to the podcast and screenshot it and tag me on LinkedIn or whatever social media you use. Thank you again [00:16:00] for joining us today, and we'll see you next time.