A content mill that writers have never thought much of may be imploding. In May, the FTC fined Constant Content’s parent company, RevenueWire, for participation in scams. Writers for Constant Content are now reporting that they aren’t getting paid.

A Reddit post dated July 8 says:

I joined Constant Content this year and sold my first 2 articles in April. I didn’t get payment on the 1 May for the articles and contacted support on 16 May to query this. I received a response a few days later and was asked to verify my PayPal address. I did this on the same day but didn’t receive any response or payment.

I sold another article in May and still didn’t receive any payment by 1st June. I sent emails on 6th June and 1st July with no response to date.

The user is brand-new on Reddit and has no track record, so take it for what it’s worth, but a reply from a very experienced user says:

Yep, they’ve missed the last two payouts apparently for losing their payment processor. I’ve been there since 2009 and this is the first time it’s happened. It’s disappointing. I stopped uploading to them until they fix it but someone dug up that they got fined by the FTC for allowing their payment processor to be used by Indian call center scammers so idk what’s going to happen.

Some digging turned up a post dated “15 days ago” (that would be June 23 in the normal calendar) with many comments. A commenter quoted an email from Constant Content asking authors to email the routing and account numbers of their bank accounts to CC to set up direct deposits. Sending the keys to your bank account by email, even to a reputable company, is a bad idea.

The email further said: “We are in the process of integrating with a new payments partner; however this process can take 2–3 weeks to finalize. Please note that there are number of complexities a company has to navigate through when integrating with a new payments partner, and we are doing everything we can to make sure that you are paid in a timely and reliable manner.”

Don’t be too confident. The FTC’s report on the fine said:

A Canadian company, RevenueWire, and its CEO, Roberta Leach, will pay $6.75 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges they laundered credit card payments for, and assisted and facilitated, two tech support scams previously sued by the FTC. According to the FTC, RevenueWire entered into contracts with payment processors to obtain merchant accounts to process credit card charges for its own sales of eBooks and software. The contracts prohibited RevenueWire from submitting third-party sales through its merchant accounts. In reality, however, RevenueWire used its accounts to process credit card charges and collect payments from consumers on behalf of ICE and Vast, two companies that allegedly used tech support scams to bilk consumers out of millions of dollars.

SafeCart, the payment processor Constant Content was using, is a DBA name of RevenueWire. It’s all one big, happy family. As I’m writing this, all links to safecart.com redirect to Google.com.

Here’s the full text of the FTC’s complaint against RevenueWire. It discusses the scams in detail.

Consumers who call the identified telephone numbers, reach tech support call centers in the U.S. and abroad. The telemarketers at these call centers then reel in consumers by activating the software and diving into a deceptive diagnostic followed by a deceptive sales pitch for costly computer repairs. The telemarketers make misrepresentations to consumers about “necessary” repairs to their computers and often fail to run meaningful diagnostics to determine any purported problems. The telemarketers charge consumers hundreds of dollars for their purported tech support services.

The outfit that did this wasn’t under RevenueWire, but it used RevenueWire for payment processing and “lead generation.” That last term isn’t as innocuous as it may sound. The FTC says:

Furthermore, in or about April 2014, RevenueWire added bogus warning “pop-ups” (i.e., pop-up dialog boxes on computer screens) to Call Stream. The pop-ups windows—referred to generically as 844Desktop—did not sell software, but instead deceptively claimed to have detected computer infections, froze consumers’ computer screens, and directed consumers to call toll free numbers to fix the supposed problems.

All this was separate (as far as I can tell) from Constant Content’s operations, but is RevenueWire a company you want to deal with? If you’ve been writing for Constant Content, you may just have to cut your losses. I would never send bank account information to a company that facilitates scams. Or deal with it in any way, for that matter. The most hopeful scenario is that RevenueWire will sell off Constant Content and better people will take charge.

Full disclosure: A few years ago, I submitted some articles to Constant Content. Like many other writers, I found their editing process horrible, so I quickly gave up. They paid me a small amount of money before I quit.

Updates, July 9:

Here’s an analysis of RevenueWire’s role in the scam from Malwarebytes.

Don’t confuse Constant Content with Constant Contact, which is a far more reputable company.