I picked up right away that this was the IRS scam I'd heard so much about. 

Am I getting scammed for licensing fees? 

In my former career, I interviewed many highly educated people  - doctors, attorneys, judges, engineers, etc who were taken to the cleaners by scam artists - yet they refused to believe that the "investment" wouldn't pay off - they couldn't bring themselves to believe that they just flushed a fortune down the toilet - The fees associated with the "Mastery" program or any other GURU course is nothing more than flushing money down the drain - All of the information provided is readily available for free in many formats - what the student "investors" are paying for is someone to hold their hand while they jump in the pool - someone to make them feel like they have an edge that then gives them the confidence  to take that scary first step - to answer your question .... definitely Fortune Takers

The REAL 'scam' is that there IS NO GET RICH QUICK SCHEME.  

It is very hard to find something legit in this space due to the overwhelming amount of spam and scams geared towards what I am looking for.

There was one Company recently that gave lead free inspections in PG County and it turned out they were scamming people.

Doesn't pertain to any of my rentals, but I once got scammed by a fake ticket seller.  

It's much easier to run a scam if you're paid in cash, less tracks to cover.

But it certainly is NOT a scam in the sense that the material is 'wrong' or 'fake', but I would definitely question some of the statements they make in their marketing efforts.

I’ve also had a career where I support sales training programs for a ½ billion $ company, so I can see straight through the sales hype and the scam artists.