A twist in the story finds us searching for ways to track down a mysterious person now that his company has gone under..

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*NOTE: If you have not done so already, please read part one AND part two of this post for context.

I scrolled through comment after comment on a post that had asked people to nominate 'unsavory TEFL companies to be on the look-out for'..

It would seem like there's a long history of companies prying on young and impressionable kids by offering the Dream of a Lifetime to travel halfway across the world and make a living teaching ESL. These companies charge boatloads of money for their service and a promise to get you off the ground with a job.

It looked like, from the comments, that for many this promise 'wasn't what was promoted on the label.'

I was about to give up, when finally, I saw it! A looong post.. but summarized as basically WorldTEFLSchool is showing troubling patterns of behavior. The post was from Anonymous, but said that she worked for a company that partnered with WorldTEFLschool and they had to break ties because of lies and debt incurred, as well as questionable recruiting practices. She included a couple excerpts of correspondences she had received from
the company... one was signed Executive Manager, Jimmy Crangle..

I had a full name now! I googled "Jimmy Crangle" and found myself glaring at the smug, smirking image of the Imp himself!

_{[Mr. Sleaseball himself.]}src

His name was attached to some marketing company called Booster365. Turns out he is the CEO of this company and targets small business owners to transform their business in a 3-step digital marketing program he provides. The website for that company doesn't exist anymore.. noticing a theme?

I found a couple posts that connected Jimmy Crangle with scam. There were three or four posts from angry customers who purchased one of his TEFL Franchises and were left holding the bag. They paid a stupid amount of money under a promise that they could run their own online TEFL certification company and make $50k in the first year, which was double ROI. But, the online franchises never took off as promised and Jimmy went off the radar.

One of the posts included the name of a new TEFL company, iTEFL, that claimed was Jimmy's newest scam... I followed the scent.. the trail was hot.

iTEFL didn't have Jimmy's NAME anywhere on it, but his mark was all over it, from the layout to the promises and courses offered. I was ready to contact the company, but I needed PROOF that this was Crangle's company.. I didn't want to make the same mistake as with TEFLWorld.

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The embedded youtube videos posted on iTEFL were testimonials from young adults who had had such a great experience doing their TEFL course through the company. They all seemed to have two things in common..

1. They all said "It's not a scam" in one form or another and..
2. They all did their course on Koh Samui, Thailand!

One of the videos I watched linked to a channel called "James TEFL Support".. The channel had a few iTEFL content, but it was filled with videos that reviewed eEnglish.org TEFL courses in Thailand. So I followed the trail to eEnglish's website. It looked nearly identical to iTEFL and they had the same TEFL accreditation member number! But, still no sign of the 'imp's' name! No proof!..

until..

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The link to their facebook page! In the About section..
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Case closed folks!

I sent them a message. And didn't get a response for two days.. I was about to give up hope, when today.. guess what?!

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😎😎😎

There you have it. Sometimes simple things can get carried away, and what we expect to take a few minutes out of our day ends up consuming a lot more than that! Or is it just me? I hope you enjoyed my investigative journey Down the Rabbit Hole! Do you have any funny or exciting tales about getting lost down a internet spiral? What did you find out? Was it worth it? Let me know in the comments below!

Until Next Time..