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Have you ever ordered a dietary supplement or skin product that is offered on a "free trial" basis where you believed that the only cost was in the shipping and handling, only to later find out that you have received additional charges without your consent?   If so, you are not alone.

Millions of Americans have reported to government agencies and consumer complaint bureaus over the past 10 years that they've been scammed by various "free trial" schemes that never fully disclosed the terms and conditions of the sale.   Thereafter these consumers, in the masses, have claimed that they lost billions of dollars collectively.

The USA Herald has recently identified one of the primary "operators" of these "free trial" schemes that has had his billing methods called into question by tens of thousands of consumers, authorities, and the news media.   From our investigation, it appears that this operator has orchestrated millions of dollars of ill-gotten revenue via deceptive "free trials" scams.  These scams have received tens of thousands of consumer complaints to banking institutions and governmental agencies by consumers claiming fraud.

There's only 1 catch:  the main operator of these "free trials" isn't listed on any of the merchant agreements and on paper is not the direct beneficiary of the scheme.   Nevertheless, his company facilitated nearly all components of the activities for the "free trials" to take sales, including but not limited to shipping, advertising, chargeback management, private labeling, MID acquisitions, and customer service.

Through our investigation and detailed collection of data, we will reveal the great lengths this operator has gone through to make it difficult for authorities to track down what thousands of consumers are calling "fraud."  As part of our research, it appears that a very sophisticated Visa/Mastercard merchant banking structure, of which we will analyze in great depth in subsequent articles, has enabled the operator to maintain the scam for years across a multitude of companies without getting caught.  And while there's a very in-depth legal structure in place that is intended to make it hard to trace the free trial schemes back to the operator, it did not prevent us from discovering who he is.

For starters, selling a product on a "free trial" basis is not illegal within itself, however the "free trial" operator that we are investigating appears to have put together a complex scheme to deceptively advertise a range of products that obscure the terms of sale.