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This article I saw on one frugal chick and it made me happy that the bust was made, but SICK that this operation was going on at all!

Read the full article here – here’s some of my favorite quotes from it:

“Police seized boxes of coupons, vehicles, guns and other property. Investigators say those coupons are worth about $25 million dollars.”

“Police say the scope of the investigation and the economic impact are massive with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.”

“We’re talking about anywhere from $400 to $600 million in loss,”

“This is to American companies who produced American products and hire American citizens.” – that is the saddest part of all!  This hurts American companies.  It makes stores not even want to accept coupons anymore.  Please do not buy coupons online, the worst offender of counterfeits is usually ebay!  Buy your local papers and get legit coupons in them, or print coupons from bricks.coupons.com, coupons.com, smartsource.com, redplum.com, and from companies facebook pages!   I have a feeling some of the coupons used on TLC’s Extreme Couponing were from this counterfeit operation, although I can’t prove it.  They just seemed “too good to be true.”

In the article Miller says “If you’re a consumer out there and you purchased coupons from this website you certainly should not use them. You are subject to arrest.”

Do you buy coupons online?  How do you ensure you are getting legit ones?  Leave comments below to let other readers know!

I personally get 5 copies of the Sunday Paper delivered to my house, so I have never had to buy any coupons online.

Photo credit

Our freedom did not come free, and I am so grateful for all those brave soldiers who made our freedom possible.  I won’t be blogging today, of course, I will be honoring our nation’s Independence with my family.  I hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July.

TNT Fireworks stands just today (at least at the locations I have seen in Utah) have reduced Aerial fireworks to 50% off!  I asked them, the man said they will not go any lower.  So may as well buy them up now.  Plus I just tried, you can use the $10 off any $50 purchase coupon on top of the 50% off sale!

Remember the extremely dry conditions this year and do not light your fireworks near the mountains.  We are just doing ours in our driveway.  Have a safe and Happy 4th.  God Bless America, the land that I love!

Popchips aren’t good.  And I just found it out -for free!  I have never tried them before, but they are the free item of the week this week at Kmart.

What have you bought with coupon deals that you normally would have never bought, and then were soooo glad you didn’t have to pay for it?  What have you bought on a stellar deal, and now you almost want to pay full price for it because it is so awesome?!!?

I just went to Kmart and used up my $20 in gift cards.  It was a boring trip, stocked up on the Scott paper towels deal and got 3 bags, got 2 gallons of milk (UT & ID has  a coupon on coupons.com for $.75/1 any brand of milk and it doubles to $1.50 off!) and bought some baby pacifier clips, then used the weekly Kmart coupon for free pop chips.  Well I am glad they were free.  Now I know that even if a hot deal comes around, I am not stocking up on those!

New Things I’ve Tried With Coupon Deals:

Won’t buy even if they are nearly free (if free I’ll get them to donate): popchips, whole wheat pasta, pudding (any brand, doesn’t seem to matter when I try them I don’t like them), and that is all I can think of.  As you can see, I am pretty easy going when it comes to food!

Buy even if it means not getting a stellar deal: Sobe drinks.  These were on a hot deal at Smith’s a few years back for $.25 a bottle, and I went crazy.  They are soooo good!  I don’t drink much soda pop type beverages, but when I do it is a Sobe!  I also really love apples, I eat about one a day, so even if they aren’t in season I get those.   There’s also no particular brand I am partial to now, but I used to buy store-brand laundry detergent and fabric softener (before my couponing days).  I am possibly delusional, but I think they don’t work as good as all the name-brand ones you can get for much less with coupon deals.  I am never going back to store brand for those – even if the deals stop rolling in!  Which I hope they don’t.  But in case they do, I have quite a little stockpile of nice laundry detergents.

What about you?

As my husband is the father of three girls, this is going to become increasingly true for him!

Happy Father’s Day!

UPDATE: I also added a Cuckoo’s BEST Deals Facebook group, if you join it, you’ll get notifications when extremelly hot coupons and freebies are posted!  Only the time-sensitive ones, like first 10,000 get it, not all the deals I post will be posted on that page!

If you aren’t seeing my posts on facebook, hop on over to my page and make sure there is a checkbox next to “show in news feed”

Because facebook only shows posts with pages you’ve interacted with lately, by clicking the “like” or “share” button next to my status updates, you’ll also get to see them more in your feed in the future.

Facebook doesn’t show a lot of my posts, even on my own personal facebook page, so sometimes I think, why bother posting a status on facebook?!?!  So I often just list the hottest, most time-sensitive freebies and coupons on facebook, and the rest I put here and never on facebook.  So make sure to subscribe to my once-per-day email list to get a  list emailed to you of all the deals I’ve posted that day.

And if you want to never miss an extremelly hot freebie, like the ones that are the first 10,000 only, sign up for my free Cuckoo Hot Text Messages Alerts! 

Wa-hoo! Great news, you can now view Cuckoo for Coupon Deals on your phone, complete with instant updates, easy navigation, comments, well everything!  As shown above, click on the little two down arrows to access the menu navigation and categories.

Coupon for Coupon Deals app for Android users – this puts a little icon on your homepage and when you click on it, it goes to the mobile version of my site.  You don’t have to install it in order to view the new mobile version.

iPhone users, I don’t know how to create an app for you, but if you type in my page or go from my facebook page on your phone to my site, it should show up in mobile mode!

Since this is new, if anyone has issues comment below so I can look into them.

I have an update on last night’s episode of Extreme Couponing!  Jill Cataldo got an email from Angelique who did the Kmart shopping trip.   She answered the question on where she got her coupons for Free Quilted Northern TP, and said she is trying to help the CIC find out who made the fraud coupons.

In the comments of Jill’s site, she says “I will in no way EVER purchase a FREE item coupon again from anyone anywhere! This has definitely cured me from any desire to do so!”

Kudos to her for admitting that she used the coupons and then trying to help however she can find who is producing the fake coupons!  It takes a lot of courage to do that and I am glad she did.  It appears to me that she probably didn’t realize they were fraudulent when she bought them.  She says she bought them from a coupon clipping service.   Jill didn’t ask about the Doritos coupon, which I am still curious to see where she got it from as well.

You can read more info with some great pictures on Jill Cataldo’s blog.  She also has a screenshot of the other person on last night’s same episode, Cole, with more of the fraud Quilted Northern coupons.

Cuckoo’s Tip: I would say that most coupons for “free” items are released in the newspaper, like the coupons for free McDonald’s Cherry Berry Chillers we saw this week or the free starbucks refreshers coupons last month.  So if you see coupons for “sale” online, and the coupon was never issued in the newspaper, chances are it is a counterfeit.  Sometimes bloggers are given coupons for free items at events like Blogher.

After watching TLC’s Extreme Couponing trip with Angelique at Kmart, I am mortified.  It appears she used several high-value freebie fraudulent coupons, and isn’t it nice how she was able to double more than 5 coupons in one day?  Don’t you love (cough) how they bend the rules for that show?  That is exactly why I refused to be on this show when TLC repeatedly contacted me to do their Kmart episode.  That, and I didn’t want to be seen on camera preggo…. just kidding 😉  She looked great pregnant, much better than I do. But seriously, I was worried that store policies may change if this show aired, and now I am more worried than ever.  We all saw store policies change at other stores after being featured, so only time will tell what is going to happen next.

Here’s one deal that I think was fraudulent: Angelique buys 20 or so bags of Doritos on a BOGO free sale.  They are $4.29 or so for the bags that aren’t free (I didn’t record the episode so I don’t remember the exact numbers).  She then uses a high value $3.99 off Doritos coupon on 10 bags, so all 20 bags are $.15 each (thanks Harajukumini7)

Here’s the issues:

• A., Frito-lays has said there is a fraud $5 off  Doritos coupon out – the real coupon has a was max value of $2.01.  Meaning the store won’t get reimbursed for the fake coupons she used.  If she didn’t use that one, I am not sure which one that she used (there are 11 on the official fraud coupon list), but I haven’t seen any coupons for $3.99 off Doritos that are legit.

I spend hours each week couponing there and trying to teach people how to follow their rules and still get the best deals possible, and I hope that people don’t watch that episode and think somehow it is reality.   They might see my scenarios and roll their eyes because they look nothing like getting 100 freschetta pizzas for free.   I just wanted to vent a little. That show is not reality.  It is for entertainment; shock and awe. If you want to save money you certainty can, but it takes a lot of patience, learning all their tricky rules, and not all cashiers even know their own coupon policies.  It is not as easy as it appears and to be blunt, you aren’t going to have trips like Angelique did.

Here’s the list of coupon deals this week – they are doubling coupons everyday in June!

Here’s some posts with more realistic couponing trips, ones done with NON-fraudulent coupons, that I hope will help people learn how to coupon correctly:

• M&Ms Coupon & $5 Gift Card Deal = $1 for $26.79 in items!!!
• My Shopping Trip Scenario 05/06-05/12: $15.81 for $48.47 in Products!
• Watch my Kmart training video if you’re new.