At the start of this year, I outed a shady company in Florida, Community Service Help, Inc., that sells community service hours: the company claims it can match people have been assigned court-ordered community service “with a charity that is currently accepting online volunteers” – for a fee, payable by the person in need of community service to the company. However:

• There is no list on the company’s web site about what people do as online volunteers through the company, and no list of “charity partners” that use this service.
• There is a list of testimonials from people who have supposedly used the service — testimonials which all sound amazingly the same, as though they were all written by the same person.
• There is also no listing of the names of the staff people and their credentials to show their experience regarding online volunteering or community service.
• It’s statement on its home page, The only place to complete your court ordered community service online!, is a blatant lie! It’s NOT true! There are many places to complete online volunteering for court ordered community service – FOR FREE
• The company has no profile on Yelp.com.
• And the final kicker: no online volunteering service is performed at all. Instead, in return for your fee, you get access to online videos that are supposed to help you be a better person. The people who use this service do no activities other than watching videos as their “community service.” Through a nonprofit organization in Michigan, the company arranges for paperwork to be sent to the court or probation officer that says the paying customer has completed the “community service” and how many hours they spent doing such.

I call this a scam because I’m sure any court that has accepted these community service hours has no idea that no community service was actually performed. I’m sure the judges or probation officers have no idea that all the person did to complete his or her community service hours was to pay a fee and watch videos on his lap top or smart phone (or, at least, someone watched those videos — who knows who!), that there was no completion of an actual activity that helps a nonprofit, a government agency or those such agencies serve. And, finally, there is NO need to pay this company to find online community service – here is a list of credible organizations that involve online volunteers – freely offered!

Just how unscrupulous is Community Service Help, Inc.? The company now proudly has a tag on its web site as featured on NBC news! per an investigative piece done by an NBC affiliate out of Columbus because of my original blog outing this company as a scam!

It’s a story that just keeps on giving. And here’s the latest: this scam has gone global! A comment was submitted to my blog, by katy_electrician@yahoo.com, which said, in part:

Court ordered community service is a new way punishment. Are you looking for community service .To gets started just check your email first and follow the directions to see if you need an online time sheet. Most people will not need an online time sheet for court ordered community service. If you read the guide and find that you do need the online time sheet just follow the directions and we will help you set it up. After you read the CS101 Community Service Guide you will discover how easy it can be to find court ordered community service options and your assignments will start coming as fast as you can complete them.1.Sign up Online2.Receive your Assignments3.Record your hours worked online4.Print out your completed time sheet Keep the judge Happy and Stay Outta Jail!

You can read the entire message for this latest scam here. I did some digging, and found the first paragraph of the same post on Topix, and it seems the person promoting this scam is in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Yes, that’s right: this company hired someone to promote his or her scam, and the person not only keeps forgetting to include the web address for the company, the person submitted the information to a blog that is fighting against these kinds of scams!

Sigh.

If you need community service hours, and you want to engage in online volunteering for those hours, here is a long list of credible organizations you can volunteer with. No fee to me required – I offer this list of fully vetted, credible organizations freely. This is a list of real virtual volunteering. There’s even advice on the page on how to negotiate with a court representative regarding performing your community service online (not all courts will accept such!).

Here’s also a web page to help you if you want to perform your court-ordered community service onsite, in-person – again, freely offered by me.

See this blog for more info on how to identify these online community service scammers – not just for those assigned community service – probation officers, court representatives, judges, you need to read this page as well! and other such companies.

November 6, 2012 update: I just got got email from a TV reporter in Atlanta, Georgia who used my blogs about this scam to create this excellent video about this scam and the people behind it. Thanks Atlanta Fox 5!

February 2013 update: Here’s the latest on what’s going on with this company.

July 6, 2016 update: the web site of the company Community Service Help went away sometime in January 2016, and all posts to its Facebook page are now GONE. More info at this July 2016 blog: Selling community service leads to arrest, conviction

My voluntourism-related & ethics-related blogs (and how I define scam)

Tags: court, probation, community, service, home, home-based, arrest, arrested, DUI, volunteer, volunteers, lawyer, lawyers, legal, virtual, volunteering, microvolunteering, micro