On Tuesday 16 March 2021, I received this message via my website’s contact form.

Website contact form message from Jim McKinley

The message is well-written and didn’t trigger any spam filters. I was still a bit skeptical and decided to do some investigation. Jim offered to give free retirement advice to my readers. Although this seems wonderful, there is a nagging feeling that this is a little too good to be true.

The Money With Jim website only has 4 pages. A quick lookup of the http://moneywithjim.org/ domain information reveals it was registered using GoDaddy on 28 April 2017 and points to a DigitalOcean hosting server in the United States. The website itself does not have a secure certificate (HTTPS).

Whois lookup on domain.com

A reverse Google images search reveals Jim McKinley’s photo is lifted from Pinterest. Conveniently, we don’t get to see Jim’s face.

Reverse Google Image search
Similar image on Pinterest

Jim claims to be a “retired banker”. He offers financial advice in the form of articles on first-time home buying, banking basics for teens and day-to-day budgeting. The best part is, all his services are “100 percent free of charge”.

His about page reiterates these services and the articles blog page has about 3 blog articles written by three other authors. The website also has a contact form to reach out to Jim.

If Jim McKinley were such a financial influencer, surely there would be more information about him online from other credible sources? A quick internet search reveals quite a number of Jim McKinleys but none that fit his biographical profile.

Google search of Jim McKinley

Everything so far doesn’t give us proof that Jim is not really who he claims to be. Luckily, a piece of information slipped through with the contact form submission and this is the last clue to this puzzle. Jim submitted his message from the following IP address: 154.224.104.209

A lookup on his IP address reveals the IP address originating from Kampala, Uganda.

IP address reverse lookup

In light of this, it is highly unlikely that Jim McKinley is a retired banker living in Uganda.