How To Identify a "Free Energy" Scam and Discover a Cool Exotic Energy Information Source in the Process

Or, how to come up with a really wordy title! As for "exotic energy"...say what? Something to do with a pole dancer on crack, maybe?

The decision was made to investigate what was most likely a Free Energy scam being promoted on the Internet. The product: The HoJo Motor, guranteed to power your house in two days with a hundred bucks worth of off-the-shelf hardware.

Hey, quit your laughing, okay? You gotta realize, I'm a true believer. I believe in the willingness of large corporations to suppress knowledge of inventions that could threaten their profits. Beyond that, I believe that in the right hands, astrology is a fair predictor of personality, that some people really can throw lightning, that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, and that most of my past lives are better off not remembered.

But more than that, I needed to throw a changeup. Too much political stuff; tonight's Hub needed to be about something else.

Enter the Hojo Motor.

The "I.D. the Scam" steps were actually fun. I love this stuff. However, not everybody out there has the extreme combination of skepticism and willingness to believe that I've possessed since--probably--infancy.

So I went at it like a rabbit checking out a mesquite tree for both thorns and edibles, looking out for ouch while hoping for yummy.

1. How likely was a Free Energy offer to be anything other than a scam? Not much. Hope springs eternal, but even so, the odds were against it working out well. Thus, before even leaving the ad page, the HoJo Motor had earned its first D.A. (Down Arrow): ↓

2. Next, the obligatory "You ain't gonna believe this!" video. Which was...rather poorly done in that no working models of the HoJo Motor were shown. Instead, the production involved nothing more than a series of Power Point type slides with an audio voice-over. Two more D.A.'s right there. ↓↓

3. Another "production values" problem: The narrator had that hopped-up, hyped-up, hurry-up style like the late Sham-Wow guy. Serious and scientific just wasn't in it, despite his mention of the inventor (Howard Johnson, no relation to the hotel fellow) and Johnson's three applicable patents, complete with patent numbers. Most damning of all, Mr. Fast-Talker wanted the listener to buy the build-it manual quick-quick-quick (for only $49.95) before the "greedy power companies" forced his people to take down the website.

All of which jammed the D.A. Generator in "open" mode. Before I could shut the danged thing off, it had spit out fourteen more Down Arrows! ↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓

4. Then it was time to go beyond the promotonal page itself. A brief Googling of "HoJo Motor scam" producted oodles of results, review after review after review which purported to "debunk" the technology up front but then quickly pulled the old bait-and-switch, swearing this magnet-powered Free Power source was the best thing since sliced bread.

Wow, the scammers had been busy, writing all those reviews for their own sort-of product. But they were also sloppy. Every web page looked pretty much like the original sales site. The Clone Wars were in full rage.

The arrow popper went nuts. ↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓

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Even the boat-tailed grackle I talked to in the Walmart parking lot could see that. He was ticked...and brought the conversation right back around to politics, which I'd been trying to avoid all day.

"Free energy from the Hojo Motor?" he sneered. "That's as ridiculous as Obama's economic policy!"

That grackle's got attitude.

While digging around in the attempt to uncover a real review by someone not attempting to sell the HoJo Motor, one--just one--link on Google's first page of results caught my jaundiced eye.

-*click!*-

And...