Advertisements on the Internet on "how to make 200,000 yen a day" and "groundbreaking ways to make fast cash" are making 20 billion yen a year in sales and growing fast, as are complaints that the ads are bogus.

These advertisements, dubbed "information merchandise," purport to sell information and knowledge on the Net such as "how to earn money by investing," "how to be a winning gambler" and "how to lose weight." The ads usually appear on special sales sites, posted by individuals and companies.

Many sellers suggest bloggers post such ads on their blogs, offering to pay commission from revenue generated by the ads. Some people who lost money by purchasing fraudulent products touted in the ads post additional, exaggerated ads on their blogs to recover the losses, and new buyers who are attracted to these ads also end up losing money. As this kind of vicious circle continues, some describe the phenomenon as a Net-based pyramid finance scheme.

A 43-year-old female company employee in Kanagawa Prefecture came across an ad in April that promised help to "make a stable income easily at home." The woman needed money to repay a loan as she was taking an extended period of leave from her company due to health reasons.

Attracted by examples of personal testimonials on the site, such as "even as a beginner, I earn 980,000 yen a month" or "I was able to get rid of my debt," she downloaded the file by paying about 10,000 yen with a credit card.

The advice she read when she opened the file was to "collect points by clicking advertising e-mail and redeem the points for cash." She clicked a large amount of advertising mails every day for a month, following the advice, but ended up making just 80 yen.

Since then, more than 1,000 information merchandise e-mail-based ads a day have been sent to her. Deceived by the alluring words, she has bought about 30 kinds of merchandise for which she has paid a total of 600,000 yen. However, none of the merchandise was practical. Advice included "declaring personal bankruptcy by borrowing a lot of money from consumer financing companies" and "becoming a plant [a ficticious person to attract customers] at an online dating service."

"I just ended up sinking deeper into debt," she said regretfully.

According to the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, the number of complaints and consultations concerning Net-based information merchandise has rapidly increased in the past year. If the ad is false, buyers can demand refunds based on the consumer contracts law. However, in many cases, the seller's address is fictitious, leaving no means of contact.

One reason for the increasing number of victims is due to a system peculiar to Net business, called "affiliate advertising." Advertisers ask individual bloggers to post their ads on the blog. If someone buys merchandise as a result of viewing and clicking on the advertisement, advertisers will pay a portion of the merchandise price to the blogger as commission.

In the case of information ads, the commission is usually higher than for ordinary physical merchandise. The common rate is from 30 percent to 50 percent. Many information ads drive buyers by touting the profits they would make by advertising their products.

For this reason, some buyers who knew what they had purchased was phony opened multiple blogs to recover losses by advertising it by themselves. A 60-year-old man said: "I falsely wrote on a blog that I earned a lot as I wanted to get a commission. Deceived persons then deceived someone else. It was like a pyramid scheme."

According to Trend Life Co., a publisher of a book that examined more than 100 examples of information merchandise, about 22,000 different types of information merchandise are sold on major sales sites and more than 500,000 people have bought such items at least once.

Satoru Yamagishi of the publisher said: "Victims have turned into perpetrators, expanding the number of people involved exponentially. Few people can deceive others when they meet in person, but anonymity is guaranteed on the Web. Some people might casually participate in these schemes because their sense of guilt or remorse is much lighter when using the Net."