Cash-For-Clunkers Site Milks Celebs, Our Patience

Cristian de la Fuente and unidentified friend

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Do you know this man? Apparently his name is Cristian de la Fuente, and he's on Dancing with the Stars -- a show that we've never been able to watch because we're always reading press releases and going on test drives and other stuff on your behalf. (You're welcome.) Anyway, Cristian and other heavy-hitting Hollywood E-list types like Ugly Betty's Angelica Vale have come out in favor of the Cash-for-Clunkers program because of "the large impact the bill has on the Latino community and other immigrant groups."

They've allegedly voiced their support by namechecking CashForClunkersInformation.org, a website that gives info about the Cash for Clunkers program. Which sounds great, except there are about a billion sites that claim to do that, and most of them are just ad farms -- meaning they generate traffic via search engines and draw advertisers, but they're not "official" clunkers sites, and they're under no obligation to provide accurate info.

Also questionable: the site was set-up by a marketing firm, not a consumer group, or even a dealer. Definitely shady: the domain was registered by DomainsByProxy.com, which is notorious for facilitating registration of fake/scam/sham websites. In fact, why don't you Google their address: 15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260? See the results that pop up? Not cool.

Don't get us wrong: we kinda like Cash-for-Clunkers (although it could've been much better and far-reaching). And we might even like Dancing for the Stars, if we weren't pre-disposed to, you know, hate it. But we have zero tolerance for shady websites. Life's too short for that. If you want the real details about Cash-for-Clunkers, go to the source, people.

[PRNewswire]