You're on Your Own Ducky

 

According to the BBC, the banks are now responsible for investigating credit card fraud.

So be very careful.

We know where the banks' interests lie.

I've covered this in details in the book, that goes with this blog.

A Nasty Fraud

 

A friend of mine got a phone call that he felt was a nasty little fraud.

If anyone gets a short (1 or 2 ring) call from this number 07061-784335, watch out - Do not call back. I got caught yesterday. All goes silent and a 4 second call cost me £2.00. I would love to get my hands on these scumbags.

My son also got a call that may be part of the same fraud.

Report them to Ofcom.

Palker and Partners

 

The same bunch of crooks who gave you Langton and Albrook Consulting have now got a new scam; Palker and Partners.

Or as the email address is PackerPartCons@gmail.com should it be Packer and Partners.

Extracts and work conditions are very similar :-

Financial executive
Positions available: 23
Region: United Kingdom
Earnings: 1500-2550 GBP (for first test month)
Occupation: part-time (2-4 hours per day)

This was lifted from Albrook or was it Langton. I don't care.

At the time of writing I've had 52 e-mails.

I wish they'd go away and do something useful like committing suicide.

American Greetings

 

I've had 185 e-mails today from a company that calls itself American Greetings. This company is not to be confused with the real AmericanGreetings.com, which is a free e-card company.

The crooks use a website called AmericanGreetingsC.org or AmericanGreetingsC.net. I have not clicked the link, as I don't want to be infected with some awful virus. But let's say that the domain is registered in Guyana and the e-mail address to write to is in Latvia.

Doesn't sound like a reputable company called American Greetings.

I've also had 118 greetings from Hong Kong.

Ignore all these very tedious and stupid people.

Sydney Car Centre - 2

 

It has been pointed out to me that the Sydney Car Centre is a clone of the web site for the Stratford Car Centre in the UK. The latter looks to be a highly legitimate business.

I've just looked at the Sydney Car Centre and apparently if you join you get a "Company Truck" as a benefit.

I don't think that the crooks behind the site have any feelings for the planet either. Who'd want to drive round in something like a Scania or a DAF anyway?

Upmarket Pump and Dump

 

Nick James of Panmure Gordon is quoted in the latest "Pump and Dump" scam I've been getting. I had 95 e-mails today promoting a stock called Boerse Invest Beteiligungs AG with a code of BJ5N.F.

I know nothing about stocks and shares, but this one had all the hallmarks of fraud. It was sent to a large number of non-existent e-mails that I monitor for a start.

I suspect that Mr. James and Panmure Gordon had nothing to do with this and I hope they pursue those behind it with a degree of vigour.

International Company Filling Internet Related Vacancies

 

I've just received masses of identical spam e-mails.

This is one.

International Company filling Internet related vacancies: 500USD/week

Our company seeks employees for doing online Internet jobs linked with finance/ multiplayer online games (MMORPG).
We have many vacancies to fill, since its a young direction of business, specific expirience is not required.
If you feel this interesting - email us for details and check out our site: www.rpgwork.com

They are all the same and I can't really fathom them, but as they are coming in such numbers they are ringing bells on my Fraud-o-Meter. Note the spelling of experience.

I should say that I've clicked the link and the site doesn't really say more.

If anything knows more please let me know.

Validating a Database

 

There has recently been press reports about student loan fraud. Basically, students applied for and received multiple loans before disappearing.

I understand that there were many loans on the same mobile phone numbers.

My software Daisy was used to help uncover this fraud. It has been used many times in similar applications, where you jsut look for duplicate mobile phone numbers or post codes.

One Off Frauds

 

Increasingly the frauds seem to run for a day or so and then stop. Perhaps, this is because they are successful until someone posts them on the Internet.

Three have shown this behaviour in the last few days; Broadcast APS, Langton Consulting and Albrook Consulting.

This may be the beginning of the end. After all, if they are not getting a return, the crooks will move on to something else.

What will be the next scam?

Broadcast APS

 

A quick post to say I've found 28 messages offering jobs at Broadcast APS.

Looks like another scam to me.

Nothing Changes

 

I had lunch today with Peter Phillips, the retired insolvency practioner (and expert/OBE) and he showed me a clipping about his father from the London Evening News for Friday, August 19, 1938.

Nearly seventy years ago seems a long while ago when there were no computers, jet engines, mobile phones, ball point pens, Victoria Line (and Beckham), Big Brother as we know it, helicopters, McDonalds, Fosters and of course the Internet.

I looked at the two stories on the clipping from the paper.

The first is a story about trouble in Palestine, where five British airmen and about fifty Arabs were killed.

The second is a story concerning Peter's father, Bernard, who was also an insolvency specialist.

On Track of Tanfield's Gold and Jewels

"Startling Developments" Expected By Bankruptcy Official

Creditors of Stanley William Tanfield, the convicted sharepusher, who is now serving seven years penal servitude in Wormwood Scrubs, may be paid 20s. in the £ if new lines of enquiry, begun today are successful.

The trustees in the bankruptcies of Tanfield and his wife expect "startling developments" during the next four days in their widespread search for the hidden hoard of gold and jewellery which Tanfield accumulated shortly before his arrest.

Claims against Tanfield total £40,000 and against his wife £20,000.

More Clues

Valuable information was received today by the Trustees from more anonymous telephone-callers and anonymous letter-writers, claiming to be former associated of Tanfield.

All day long, Mr. Bernard Phillips, one of the trustees, had gone to different addresses in London, following up inquiries.

So we have a story about Palestine and one about a sharepusher.

Wouldn't a sharepusher be a "pump and dump" merchant today?

Nothing changes.

Langton Consulting/Albrook Consulting Agency

 

Two companies and one e-mail.

WEEKLY VACANCY LIST
How to start?
To continue with the application process please fill in the form below and send it back to our email:

Copy the application form to your reply
First Name:
Last Name:
Country:
City:
Tel.no:
E-mail:

Additional information about yourself :

Copy the application form to your reply

Realtime operator
Positions available: 21
Region: United Kingdom
Earnings: 2500-3000 GBP (for first test month)
Occupation: part-time (2-4 hours per day)

Job description:

* manage online payments
* answer project related e-mails/calls

Financial executive
Positions available: 23
Region: United Kingdom
Earnings: 1500-2550 GBP (for first test month)
Occupation: part-time (2-4 hours per day)

Job description:

* receive the correspondence from our company or customers
* answer project related e-mails/calls
* manage project related payments

LANGTON CONSULTING LLC has obtained your contact details from public internet sources. We thought that you could be attracted to part time work from home position with our company

© Copyright 2004-2007 LANGTON CONSULTING LLC

If it's Albrook just substitute the new name.

It's funny but two companies have exactly the same numbers of vacancies and use the same job description.

Sounds very dodgy to me.

When I was a partner in Metier Management System we had about 10 financial people for say 300 employees. So that would mean that Langton (and Albrook) would have about 700 employees.

How come a company that big hasn't been heard of by Google?

Google's Fast Reaction

 

The last post on Sydney Car Centre turned up in Google within a couple of hours and if you type that phrase in quotes into Google, it's top.

This seems to validate the updating-by-blog route for web sites.

Sydney Car Centre

 

I wondered where the next fraud was coming from and here it is. The Sydney Car Centre.

While we may have high expectations of our associates, we also give them high rewards. Imagine being part of a stable organization with a sterling reputation - a place where the Sydney Car Centre is an integral part of all that we do. With our car centre personality, you'll not just succeed - you'll thrive. And, with our strong commitment to promoting from within, you'll definitely enjoy your rise to the top.

Today the Sydney Car Centre is looking for an industrious regional assistant to fasten the process of the delivery of customer payments to the suppliers. The position offered is a part-time job, and will only require from you to be available for 1-2 hours a day.

As a regional assistant, you will be supposed to operate with the payments from those customers, based in your country. You will be expected to accept 2-3 transactions to your bank account every week, make certain calculations about every transaction (you will be precisely instructed about it), & transfer the funds to the suppliers by means of western Union/Money Gram less your fee & the charges of the Western Union/Money Gram. You will be continuously communicating with the manager from the head office, who will instruct you & give advice regarding every new payment.

The ideal candidate will be industrious, goal-oriented person, with the availability of a personal/business bank account suitable to be used for the company needs. Knowledge of English, computer literacy and sociability are appreciated.

The company guarantees to pay NET 10% fee out of the amount of every payment you dealt with and to provide you with the regular income & flexible schedule. All the related expenses you might have (like the Western Union/Money Gram chargers, related expenses on traveling) are covered by the company.

The more detailed information is available on our web-site, where you can fill in the on-line application form for this position.

We would be glad to welcome you in our team!

We are looking forward to hearing from you as soon as possible!

Yours sincerely, Tyrone Wall

Interestingly every one is signed by a different person, so they must be an extremely big company.

So far I've had 16 e-mails on Sunday, 6 yesterday and 13 today.

They also seem to share a web site with a fraud from a few months back, Lux Capital. You can at least say they are persistent.

Avoid them like the plague.

Aegis Capital Group

 

This company is still being plagued by spam.

I've just read their web site and they say this :-

Important Notice
An unaffiliated company with a Hong Kong website is apparently sending fraudulent notices of a part-time administrator position. There is no such position open with Aegis Capital Group LLC, and the recruitment emails are being sent by an overseas organization that is seeking to impersonate Aegis Capital Group LLC, presumably to perpetrate a fraud upon anyone responding to the email.

We have received many reports of this unaffiliated company relentlessly spamming targets to lure them into this fraud, particularly targets who may have posted resumes on job boards like Monster.com. Aegis Capital Group does not have any job openings, and is not sending these spam emails. We have received many requests from targets to remove them from the spam list, and we have received a lot of “spam back” emails and even a few threatening telephone calls to our receptionists. We know the spam is annoying, but we are not sending it and we cannot remove anyone from the spam list that is being maintained by these overseas fraudsters. We have reported the problem to local law enforcement, but their ability to stop the overseas web abusers is limited. You can forward the spam emails to uce@ftc.gov, and maybe the Federal Trade Commission will be able to help get you off the list or close down the fraud sites. There are a few blogs (eg., www.bobbear.net, www.suckerswanted.blogspot.com and www.jamesmiller.com/) that have posted a lot of information on this fraud, as well as others, and we would encourage any frustrated spam targets to visit these sites and support these bloggers.

Thanks to them for plugging my website.

But on a more serious note, it just shows how a sensible and respectible company can do little about these evil crooks

A Preferred E-Mail Program

 

I collect spam and so that I get early identification of the various scams on the Internet.

As I get about 6,000 messages every day, I find that some e-mail programs just buckle under the strain. Thunderbird collapsed and just couldn’t cope. I would never touch it with a bargepole as extricating myself from the mess it left took about a week of concentrated work.

So although many here will find this heresy, I use Outlook 2003, which with it’s filters and rules, leaves me with about twenty messages a day to sort manually. There are issues, but most of the problems and how to avoid them are posted on the Internet.

IKEA Get in on the Act

 

I got this e-mail yesterday :-

Foundation's Officer,
Stichting INGKA Foundation,
The Netherlands.
http://www.ikea.nl/

Dear Sir,

NOTIFICATION FOR CASH AID.

This is to notify you that you have been chosen By the Board of trustees of the above International charity organization based in the Netherlands as one of the final recipients of a Cash Grant/Donation for your own personal,education and business development

The Dutch-registered Stichting INGKA Foundation is named after Kamprad, and owns INGKA Holding, the parent company for all IKEA stores. The charitable foundation was reported by the business newspaper The Economist in May 2006 to be technically the world's wealthiest charity - with an estimated value of at least US$36 billion in 2006 (larger than the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation) - but its primary purpose is, by some, believed to be corporate tax-avoidance and anti-takeover protection for IKEA.Kamprad is chairman of the foundation.Having been rated as the biggest charity foundation in Europe for the year 2007,the foundation has decided to randomly select email addresses that would benefit from this year's donation/award.

Stichting INGKA Foundation in conjunction with the United Nations Organization (UNO) and the European union, is giving out a yearly donation of One Hundred Million United States Dollars as specific Donations/Grants to 150 lucky international recipients worldwide in different categories for their educational pursuit,health care,personal Business development and uplift of their enviroment. These funds are freely given to you to use for your business educational and personal development, and at leats 30% to be used by you to develop a part of your enviroment, as this is a yearly program, which is a measure of universal development strategy, and eradication of poverty.

Please kindly note that you are not the only beneficiary in your country this year, and your country is not the only country that is benefiting from this donation, as beneficiaries have been chosen from countries from all continents.

The idea of this donation is that within ten years from now, there will be notable richness among many unusual people around the world.

This will give many people the opportunity to get their lives to a stage where they had always wanted. Kindly note that you will only be chosen to receive the donation once.which means that, subsequent yearly donation will not get to you again, so its your choice to spend the donation wisely on something that will last you a long time. And please do not bother following up this email, if you have benefited from this donation in previous years.

Based on the random selection exercise of internet websites and millions of Super market cash invoices worldwide you were selected among the lucky recipients to receive the award sum of US$1,500,000.00 as charity donations/aid from the Stichting INGKA Foundation and the UNO in accordance with the enabling act of Parliament(note that your email was selected from either the internet, after absolute viewing of your profile or a Shop's cash invoice around your area in which you might have purchased something from).

You are required to expeditiously Contact the Executive Secretary below for qualification documentation and processing of your claims, from Monday through Sunday.

On contact with this officer, you'll be given your donation pin number which you will use in collecting the funds. You are to contact back this email when you have collected your US$1,500,000.00

Please endeavor to quote your Qualification numbers (N-222-6747, E-900-56) in all discussions.

***********************************
Executive Secretary,
Mr. Philip Coaster
Tel: +31-644-863-856
Email: ikeafoundation100@yahoo.es
**********************************

Please note that this donations/Grants are strictly administered by "European Union" under delegated powers from the UNO. you are by all means hereby advised to keep this whole information confidential until you have been able to collect your donation, as there have been many cases of double and unqualified claim, due to beneficiaries informing third parties about his/her donation.

Finally, all funds should be claimed by their respective beneficiaries, not later that 15 days after notification, as failure to do so will be to that particular beneficiary cancelled and its donation reserved for next years receipients.

On behalf of the Board kindly accept our warmest congratulations

Yours Sincerely,
Mrs.Susan Wallace
(Foundation officer)

It's crap.

Questions :-

1. Why would a reputable foundation use a Yahoo e-mail address?

2. Why is the phone in the Netherlands and the e-mail address in Spain?

Because they are crooks.

It has nothing to do with IKEA

Robert Soloway

 

Robert Soloway is a serial abuser, who is fully described on Spamhaus. A couple of days ago, he was arrested and now looks likely to spend some time and possibly a long time in one of the United States finest prisons.

But will it make much difference?

Over the last few days, I've received 12, 14, 4, 9, 2, 15 and 0 e-mails from his company called the Email Broadcasting Company. At least I didn't get any yesterday, but thats a small drop in the 5-8,000 I get every day.

I doubt it. But at least the sentence he'll hopefully get will encourage others to stop. But not if they're in China, Russia or other democracies, where extradition would not be possible.

Tiscali - A Cautionary Tale

 

Tiscali have been suffering attacks by spammers and some of their customers have been unable to send e-mails.

This is the start of an article in the Daily Telegraph.

Thousands of emails sent over the past week may have disappeared into a "black hole" without any warning they have been lost.

A small percentage of Tiscali Broadband's 1.8 million customers are thought to be affected, with an unknown proportion of all emails going astray, after the company fell victim to "spammers".

Although the problem began a week ago - on May 24 - many customers are still unaware they may have lost important business and social messages because the usual "error" warnings are not being returned.

I've just looked at their web site and the front page says nothing about this.

That is not a very good customer support policy.