Last month I hinted about some information proving the dishonesty of one of Amway’s most prolific internet critics. As I expected, that critic guessed who I was talking about and has attempted to cover his tracks. Alas, he hasn’t succeeded.

JoeCool is the (main) internet pseudonym of a former Amway and WWDB IBO by the name of Steve Nakamura. He’s based in Hawaii and has been literally obsessed with criticizing Amway since at least 2004. On the (now moribund) Quixtar Blog forums he has made over 6500 posts since 2004 (that’s more than 2.5 posts a day) and has been the originator of almost all new posts on that board for the last 2 years – most of the time by simply trawling the net for old posts critical of Amway, and reposting them.

In 2009/2010 alone, just on the two blogs he puts his “name” to, he published over 470 blog posts critical of Amway and at least a thousand comments on other Amway related posts on the internet. So far this year he has already published 90 posts just on the two “joecool” blogs. That’s nearly a post a day that he admits to.

The man is truly obsessed.

For some time though, it’s been clear to those familiar with his style of writing that “joecool” isn’t the only pseudonym he has been posting under. For example, at one stage there was a blog “my amway journey”, purporting to be a blog of a new IBO, “Peter Parker” that progressively became more and more critical of Amway until finally he quit because the “business didn’t work”. Thanks to numerous errors it was obvious the blog was not written by someone who was actually a current IBO, and it was extremely clear to me and others familiar with Nakamura’s style of writing that the blog was his. Indeed early in its life we predicted it would take exactly the path it did. The site was eventually closed, probably because several commentators were pointing out the errors and that it seemed to be written by joecool.

It was also clear that Nakamura was commenting on other people’s blogs under different names – sometimes to the extent of even replying to his own comments! Indeed, it became so common that when a new “anti-Amway” commentator or blog started up, my first thought is always “is this another joecool?”

He of course always denied it, but recently he slipped up. How? Well, several of the anti-Amway blogs started publishing Google Ads, similar to what I do on this blog. Coincidentally enough, they all started doing it at the same time. What Nakamura didn’t seem to realise was that those ads include a unique “publisher code”, which identifies the google account the ads are being published by (and earning money for). Two of those newly monetized blogs were blogs under the “joecool” name. Another example was “Amway Functions Suck”, by “Derek”.

Guess what? They had the same publisher ID, ie the same person was publishing ads on each of these websites.

Not surprisingly, shortly after I alluded to “new evidence”, the “Amway Functions Suck” suddenly website disappeared, the other sites started using Amazon advertisements instead of GoogleAds, or removed the ads altogether. In addition, a post on the QuixtarBlog forums by joecool, which I believe promoted “a new critic” and the “Derek” blog was also deleted by him. At least one mysterious “new” critic also showed up. Again on blogspot. Again with the same writing style.

A guilty man trying to cover his tracks?

I expected this, so I naturally kept some evidence. I have also confirmed that as of the time of writing, the code below can still be seen using Google Cache (though this will eventually disappear), so for now anyone who chooses to do so (and I encourage it) can confirm what I am saying is true.

Here’s the beginning of the ad code from a “joecool” blog “The Truth About The Amway Global Opportunity” –

google_ad_client=”pub-8271106372553502″;
google_ad_host=”pub-1556223355139109″;
google_ad_width=300;
google_ad_height=250;
google_ad_format=”300x250_as”;

It appears he tried to remove it, but if you check the source code for the current live page (right click on the page and select “view source”), that code is still there, right now as I write this. Forgive me for not linking directly to his site – I’m sure you can understand why! – but feel free to find it yourself and confirm the code. I expect it will disappear not long after Nakamura sees this post of mine, but it will stay for at least a while in google cache, so you can check it there too.

Here’s some of the ad code from the “Derek” blog, now deleted. Unfortunately for Nakamura, it lives on (for now) in google cache –

google_ad_client=”pub-8271106372553502″;
google_ad_host=”pub-1556223355139109″;
google_ad_width=300;
google_ad_height=250;
google_ad_format=”300x250_as”;

“google_ad_host” is the ID of the webhost affiliate, in this case, blogspot. “google_ad_client” is the unique code of the person posting the ads.

One and the same.

JoeCool will most likely come up with some wild story that he was “sharing” an account with “Derek”. Uhuh. For the rest of us, we just know that when we come across a new anti-Amway blog or commentor on the internet, our first question should be – “is this just joecool again?”.