I was bloghopping around the blogosphere just now and found this post, Scam=Scum at joey maggie. He was posting about someone called Ashwin Kanna, which owns two blogs, 30 Gigabytes Dot Com and Ashwin Kanna Dot Com (I am not generous by giving links to a scum) had made a false claim about his “USD2,500 Blogging Extravaganza” by saying that his own blog actually won his own competition after making so many bloggers link to his blog!
Why I am so upset about this is that he had many similarities with me and he is one of the first few bloggers I met on the Internet since I get into blogging. He let the all the dot com moguls (bloggers that use their own names as a domain, which is me) down. People label this scam as the “Rise and fall of a dot com mogul”! He made himself a total of 400+ free backlinks just by setting up this false competition!
I think from the beginning he already gave me a bad impression as he remove my links (set up as an agreement of link exchange) after he get an PR3 for his 30 Gigabytes blog when my old Simple Life of YP is just PR0. I didn’t take much attention of it and removed the link as his 30gigabytes Dot Com is just full of ads and it is starting to turn into something like a splog! I think Steven from Steven’s Expressions knows experienced this as well. He is already showing signs of “not-so-good” personality by the time he started blogging. Lessons learnt: Don’t break your promise in the blogosphere!
Also, he embarrassed all the young bloggers! Does everyone reach the age 18 will go out of bound a little bit or worse like conning others’ effort? Young people loves to take risks but this is all wrong! Wayne Liew don’t do that, even my blog is not getting backlinks, I will do it the legal way with ethics in it! If I ever launch a blog contest, please participate, I am sure that I will give away the prizes, no empty promises such as a USD2,500 will ever come out in Wayne Liew Dot Com, but of course, I am not 18 yet! 
He also did what many of us, which are “genuine” bloggers, will not do. His posts are a complete copy of sites and other blogs out there. This two blog of his is a complete loser and although his Technorati authority now stands at 469, I am sure I will go down, real fast. If you have been conned by him, just remove his links immediately from your blog and spread the words out to fellow bloggers that you asked them to join this competition last time!
I didn’t join this competition since I also didn’t join all other linking activities such as viral linking and so on. For bloggers reading this, a link from your blog is precious, every link means a vote to a site. Although the benefits of linking to others are great, don’t link to a fraudster, you are wasting space and time, pursuing something that you will never ever get!
This Ashwin dude also get a video to condemn his FAMOUS ACT. Check it out!
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August 27th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Hey, thanks for the shout-out!
August 27th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Never mind, he deserves it…
August 27th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
My blog was the first one you referenced, and although I never expected to win the contest - I expected to get the link backs promised.
I have, however, received more link backs in wake of the con than from the actual contest itself!
My blog is still fairly young, and ‘free & easy contests’ like these and link-trains are a quick way to increase technorati ratings. . . .
I don’t make money off my blog, so I need those links to drive traffic . . .
August 27th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Ouch, thats gonna hurt. There are plenty of people like that out there; money is all they got in their mind. But, don’t worry, just like you had said, his reputation will not last long as he made the biggest mistake, deceiving the blogosphere!
August 27th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
I got scammed too! That is so unethical of him to scam all bloggers! Hmph!
August 27th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
i go check the post, it’s deleted.
August 28th, 2007 at 12:08 am
Let’s exchange link
Was conned by him also in my other blog but remove his link already. Stupid blogger… The Internet can spread news very fast and soon his ranking go down down down…
August 28th, 2007 at 7:46 am
@ Joey
Learn from experiences. At least this con didn’t ask any pre-entering funds from you.
@ James
Many did join that competition an ended up giving free links to that blog. He thought the blogosphere is a place full of stupid people but he will know feel the power!
@ Nastasshea @ Nesh
Have you removed his link to show your “power”?
@ Nicholas
Ya, it is already been deleted. If he holds the right thing, why delete it? He knows he had gone too far…
@ Irene
Will contact you about link exchange later. Maybe we can make his Technorati authrority ro right down to 0!
August 28th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Stupid fella!!!
August 28th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Yes, indeed…
August 28th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
didn’t know bout this blogger…
thanks for the info
August 28th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Now you know, don’t fall for this trap if you come across one, report the case to Wayne Liew Dot Com immediately!
August 28th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Well, I didn’t check up on him for quite some time. Long enough for a turtle to get its eggs hatched.
I just removed his link when he did not respond on my where-is-my-link question. Sad to get to know such thing happened among young bloggers. What a shame.
August 28th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Same with me. I can’t believe it, I think at that time we made this link exchange deal in Blogger Forum. Wow, long time ago, people do change, or shall I say, we will not know someone by just looking at the surface…
August 29th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Another scumbag .. we’ll all hafta be more careful eh.
August 30th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Ya, make sure that every link out is worth it.
August 31st, 2007 at 9:18 am
Wah lau that’s a scam indeed!
August 31st, 2007 at 9:27 am
Yes, be sure to not fall for easy money next time. By the way, nice blog you have there…
November 12th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Hi,
I agree that scamming people is wrong. However link baiting is not wrong.
I think however that his approach was wrong. He was practicing the art of “link baiting” where in he legitimately ( if wrongly ) claimed that his blog was the one that had won the award for getting the most people to link to him. I guess he should have thought it through first… that he would piss a lot of people off.
However, he is not the first blogger to do link baiting. Did you recently see JohnCow.com claim to be hacked… and asked for $1 from each visitor to “free the cow”…. it turned out he was link baiting too….
Link baiting will always be there, always new ways to promote sites by claiming someting extravagant. Check out http://www.onebillionviews.com - a guy bet his friends he will get one billion page views - if he wins he gets 20 cartons of beer…. another link bait.
Cheers
John
November 12th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Hi there John,
I know what is linkbaiting and I know that it is attractive. John Cow did is wonderful linkbait for fun and he had gave away the “donations” he earned as prizes.
Linkbait is not wrong but what Ashwin did was certainly a cheat, you can’t be launching a competition with yourself winning it. Just take a look at those contests by some companies near you, the first Terms that is stated is always “Employees and close relatives of them are prohibited from participating”.
November 12th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Yea I know,
As I said, he was wrong.
But he was doing linkbaiting, evil, still a form of linkbaiting :).
December 10th, 2007 at 6:31 am
Ok, here’s a blog contest that is real. A contest for $200 for bloggers. It’s at the bottom of the page at Face.com
December 12th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
I will take a look at it. $200 is a pretty attracting amount.