Spammers Use 'Mike & Molly' Finale As Excuse To Hawk Diet Supplement

Tonight's the series finale of Mike & Molly and what better time to use series star Melissa McCarthy (with an assist from a fake E! Online web site) to sell some sketchy weight-loss medicine.

Nearly all of the big media web sites fill the lower portion of their pages with come-ons for stories that are posted on other web sites. Sometimes they're billed as "More Stories" or "Other News," but generally speaking these are stories that have some vague connection to the content page on which their hosted.

The host page gets a small payment each time a reader clicks on the link and in theory the web site who paid for the link gets the added traffic.

But it didn't take spammers long to figure out that there are ways to manipulate the system. You create a reasonable-appearing tease which points to a story where you hope you can separate some readers from their hard-earned money.

I found this example on Investigation Discovery's Crimefeed.com web site, but I've seen it on a variety of TV industry web sites in recent days.

Here is the screen shot of the tease, which hints that McCarthy might have been somehow forced off of Mike & Molly after "magically" losing weight.

The link claims the story comes from a web site called "Female First," which doesn't seem to exist. When you click on it, you end up at a web site called eonline-celebrity.com. That site looks suspiciously like E! Online, and includes lots of links to other celebrity stories.

The page recounts a long story about how Melissa McCarthy has lost lots of weight after using this specific weight loss herb/nutrient. And the author claims to have tried it out as part of an "E Online investigation." And guess what? The author claims that it works!

While the claims (and the info) are all just made-up, you have to give the author a bit of credit for being inventive:

In an exclusive interview on Ellen, Melissa famously spilled the beans about her diet success, "The only person more excited about it than me is my husband, Ben! <Name Removed> was easily the best thing to happen to me in 4 years, and I won multiple awards for acting! It's an all natural weight loss supplement and I love that it's completely safe for my body."

We reached out to our friends at the Creative Artists Agency to get the scoop on <Name Removed>. Our insider at the CAA told us why <Name Removed> is so common in Hollywood:

"Actors and Musicians have very busy schedules, they don't always have time to eat healthy or exercise daily. Their lives are fast paced, so <Name Removed> is the ideal weight loss solution for them. They don't have to change their diet or exercise to maintain their bodies. 70% of all female celebrities who give birth, will be on the <Name Removed> for the next 2 months to shed off the extra baby fat to get back to their careers.

One other funny thing about the page is that all of the links on it go to a landing page for ordering the weight loss supplement, instead of whatever celeb news you were promised.

There are a couple of lessons to be learned here. One is that people will say all kinds of crazy things online to make a buck. The other is that web sites need to be more careful about the ads they allow to run on their pages.

And if you're wondering what weight loss method Melissa McCarthy prefers, Shape.com says she gives credit to a "high-protein diet."