Sponsored Reviews Stole My Money!

Remember yesterday there was that batch of 3 sponsored posts? Well, now there is only one. I thought I had earned just over $24 for writing them and I should have been paid that by the end of yesterday into my PayPal account. All was not to be.

This morning (25 minutes ago - can you still feel the rage?) I received this email:

"Dear Blogger,

It has come to our attention that fraudulent purchases have been made through our system. You were approached by an advertiser to write a review for one of the following Domains:

-- 9SEM.com

-- Eyemiss.com

-- Hidrotips.com

Unfortunately, these purchases were made with stolen credit cards and we have no choice but to return the money to the credit card holder and delete the order in our system. This means that we are unable to pay you for the review that you completed, and ask that you remove it from your site(s).

We apologize for this inconvenience and for the time you spent writing the review. We assure you that we are taking measures to prevent this from happening in the future. This sort of fraud is rare and difficult to catch through standard fraud prevention schemes.

We appreciate your understanding and your continued support. Please submit a support ticket if you have any questions"

I thought perhaps there had been a mistake, but then checking my PayPal account revealed only the payment for the first review had been paid. The payment history in Sponsored Reviews told the same story.

I checked the Terms and Conditions and of course they don't have to pay me. Its quite ironic that I have an entire site devoted to uncovering internet scams and then I got scammed myself by what we all thought to be a respectable company.

Admittedly it wasn't technically Sponsored Reviews who 'stole my money' but it makes me wonder if it's worth writing more sponsored posts via them. I know there is no such thing as easy money online but the ratio is pretty bad, 2/3 of the purchases from them were by stolen credit cards! I have never heard of this happening before, has this happened to you?

Maybe I am just being punished for selling my blogging soul to the Sponsored post devil...