Recently in scams Category

Jordan Evans & The Oil Rig Scam

By theaardvark on October 3, 2011 6:19 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

It's an unfortunate aspect of the internet that most people who sell something private on one of the many website set up to help you do so will have encountered this at some time.

That horrible feeling when you receive an offer for your "item" that seems just a little bit too good to be true but almost believable enough to accept.

Everyone knows the internet is full of scammers, right? But this offer seems like it could be genuine and you'd be stupid to turn away a real opportunity to sell your "item" just because your such a sceptic, right?

Another in the very long list of such scams comes form someone who always seems to use the same name "Jordan Evans" and is slowly cycling through a number of Gmail addresses associated with that name.

I've pasted it the full text of one of his emails below for search engine purposes, to help anyone searching based on that text.

The problem is, he seems genuine and he's even offering to pay by Paypal. Paypal's secure right? Once you're money's in there then you've got it right? So how can it be a scam?

The scam comes once you've agreed to sell the item. He says he's going to get a delivery driver come collect it but they need paying in advance through a Western Union account, but he can't do that. So he agrees to pay you more than the item's price.. say an extra £700, and asks you to pay the delivery driver, via Western Union.

He will then tell you he's made the Paypal payment when he hasn't hoping you'll make the transfer to the Western Union account.

As with all online transactions, you should never payout anything on the request of the buyer. If he/she wants your items, they can pay it themselves.

There's more info about this scam and some variations / different names / different emails used on http://www.scamwarners.com/.

---Email Text to help anyone searching for its provenance---

----- Forwarded message -----
From: "Jordan Evans" <evanszq03@googlemail.com>
To: [redacted]
Subject: [redacted]
Date: Mon, Oct 3, 2011 2:54 pm

Thanks for the mail,i am buying this for my son as his gift because i
would not be around to celebrate with him i am a petroleum engineer
currently on a rig offshore and due to the nature of my work,phone
calls making and visiting of website are restricted but i squeezed out
time to check this advert and send you an email regarding it. I really
want this item to be a surprise gift for my son so i wont let him know
anything about the item until it gets delivered to him,i am sure he
will be more than happy with the item.I insisted on paypal because i
don't have access to my bank account online as i don't have internet
banking, but i can pay from my PayPal account,as i have my bank a/c
attached to it, i will need you to give me your PayPal email address
so i can make the payment as soon as possible for the item and pls if
you don't have PayPal account yet,it is very easy to set up, go on
www.paypal.com and get it set up ,after you have set it up i will only
need the e-mail address you use for registration with PayPal so as to
put the money through.I have a pick up agent that will come for the
pick up immediately you have receive the payment in full.please get
back to me with your last price?
Jordan David

My precious / cute / dear man....

By theaardvark on March 4, 2011 2:15 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <skip@mathcs.emory.edu>
Date: 4 March 2011 18:35
Subject: *Possible Spam* By beautiful stranger
To: avrunde1992@<mydomain.com>

My precious man, I am waiting for you every moment of my life. I wish you to come to me. A large part of my soul is empty. This is the place which I had prepared for you.

I'm here. Just call me. I want to believe that you are not a mirage, which disappears and leaves no trace.

Only you can build my dream come true, because love is reality and life is illusion [URL Removed] Call me, please.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <otse@bewell.net>
Date: 4 March 2011 18:35
Subject: Take me
To: pogaardvarksep@<mydomain.com>

My precious man, I am waiting for you every moment of my life. I wish you to come to me.
A large part of my soul is free. This is the place which I have prepared for you.

I'm here. Just call me. I want to believe that you are not a mirage, which disappears and leaves no trace.

Only you can build my dream come true, because love is reality and life is illusion [URL Removed] I'll be waiting for your call.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <vincent.kitch@ci.austin.tx.us>
Date: 4 March 2011 16:35
Subject: By beautiful stranger
To: forest@<mydomain.com>

My cute man, I am waiting for you every moment of my life. I want you to come to me. A large part of my soul is empty. This is the place which I had prepared for you.
I'm here. I beg you, call me. I want to believe that you are not a mirage, which disappears and leaves no trace.
Only you can make my dream come true, because love is reality and life is illusion [URL Removed] I'll be waiting for your call.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <otse@bewell.net>
Date: 4 March 2011 18:35
Subject: Art of love
To: martinezjav@<mydomain.com>

My cute man, I am waiting for you every moment of my life. I want you to come to me.
The biggest part of my soul is free. This is the place which I have prepared for you.

I'm here. Please, call me. I want to believe that you are not a mirage, which disappears and leaves no trace.

Only you can make my dream come true, because love is reality and life is illusion [URL Removed] I'll be waiting for your call.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <vincent.kitch@ci.austin.tx.us>
Date: 4 March 2011 22:35
Subject: Take me
To: upnb@<mydomain.com>

My dear man, I am waiting for you every moment of my life. I wish you to come to me. A large part of my soul is free. This is the place which I have prepared for you.

I'm here. Please, call me. I want to believe that you are not a mirage, which disappears and leaves no trace.

Only you can make my dream come true, because love is reality and life is illusion [URL Removed] I'll be waiting for your call.

5 spam emails received over a few minutes. Almost makes you want to click on the links.

Telephone Virus / PC / Computer assistance scam

By theaardvark on September 29, 2010 6:19 PM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

This evening I received a phone call from someone claiming to be from "iGlobal". His Indian accent was a little difficult to understand, but I think he claimed some sort of association with Microsoft.

He warned me hey'd been receiving notifications from "the International Router System" that my computer was infected with a serious virus. He then proceeded to try and convince me that my system had a virus.

He asked me to sit at my PC (completely ignoring the fact that I told him I had 4 of them and asked him which one I should look at). He then asked me to click on the Start button and right-click on "My Computer". He then directed me to choose "Manage" from the options that came up.

In the Computer Management screen that bring up, under "System Tools", there's an event viewer. He asked me to click on "Application" and then under the "View" menu item at the top to select "Filter" and untick "information".

The screen that comes up could look pretty scary to someone unsuspecting:

This, he tried to convince me, was evidence of a serious virus infection corrupting my computer and the files on my hard drive.

And then came the crunch. He wanted to charge me for assistance in removing this supposed virus infection.

If you receive a similar phone call, be under no illusion, this is a scam. And it's one that's been on the rise recently.

http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/supportonclick-systemrecure-scam

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jul/20/phone-calls-india-scams

How and why you should cancel your iTunes account immediately

By theaardvark on July 30, 2010 8:38 PM | 8 Comments | No TrackBacks

I make no bones about the fact that I have, what I thought to be, an irrational dislike of Apple products. However, the experience of someone I follow on Twitter has convinced me that there may be substance to my position.

This morning @RichardJohn awoke to find a series of around 15 emails from Apple's iTunes, each one telling him he'd just bought an £85 app from Storm8 LLC. They were all less than an hour old.

Whilst an initial telephone contact with iTunes gave much promise that they would help to resolve the issue, a later email told him that he would have to take it up with his Credit Card company to get the transactions cancelled. iTunes is, by implication, denying that the issue is their fault.

A very quick Google search suggests that @RichardJohn is not the first to suffer this type of fraud on iTunes. Indeed, not only is this fraud becoming significantly more common in the last month or so, supplier Storm8 LLC is associated with a number of these frauds as it is their products being purchased.

The frequency of these frauds would suggest that this is not a case of someone being a little careless with their account details but, quite possibly, a systemic weakness in iTunes' account security. At the very least, their fraud detection is crap. Seriously, who in their right mind would buy the same £85 app from a supplier 15 times in a 60 minute period? Does iTunes not monitor buying patterns to look out for fraud?

You'd think that Apple/iTunes would want to stamp out a fraud of this type before it affected the reputation of its service. However, despite a number of high profile blogs reporting the increase in this fraud recently, very little appears to be being done. iTunes has booted off one or two obviously dodgy developers. They have not, however, done anything about Storm8 LLC.

Apple's hesitancy could be because Storm8 does produce a distribute some genuine, reasonable apps. I had its World War game on my HTC Desire for a while. It makes its money from selling "in-game" currency or points (as Farmville does on Facebook). And it's the purchase of this that seems to be the subject of the fraud.

However, with the incredibly tight strangle-hold that Apple typically has over its markets, it would surely not be difficult to reverse out such obviously fraudulent transactions. If it was to deprive Storm8 of the revenue from these it would encourage Storm8 to investigate what is going on. With Storm8's help it surely can't be too difficult to trace where the benefit of these purchases is going and prosecute the perpetrators.

But this all hinges on Apple's & iTunes' willingness to accept that there is a problem and address it. Something Apple is not known for. It would rather deny the existence of a problem, push the blame somewhere else and address it only if and when there is a real up swell of public / media pressure.

Well, I can't wait for that. I, stupidly, used my bank debit card on my iTunes account. If someone was to run up a £1000 bill on that it would cripple me financially and I couldn't afford to wait the 2 to 4 weeks it would take to get my bank to reverse out the transactions. So I'm going to cancel my account.

I don't feel comfortable simply removing my card details. I want to delete my account completely.

Typically, they don't make this easy. There is no "Cancel my account" button. Apparently you have to contact Apple from this page and tell them you wish to cancel your account. Something I will be doing this weekend.

My Favourite Spam of the Week

By theaardvark on July 28, 2010 9:38 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I'm Nataly. I'm 29 years old.
Maybe we can through letters to know each other's.
A few words about myself:
I consider myself like interesting, womanly, romantic and creative person. I'm faithful and kind woman. I like to spend my free time on the nature, especially at the sea coast. Speaking about my hobbies, I like to draw pictures with oil and coal. At the last time my hobby is also decoration of apartments. Surely, as a social person I like to sped the time in a circle of best friends.
It is ideal for:
I search for the clever, adult man. Which will always love me. Which will want to be with me always. Also will understand me. I will be your small princess, and you will be my prince. And we will love all life each other.
Here's my address:
mamanhadodehru@yahoo.com
Nataly

Don't ring 07660 number!

By theaardvark on February 9, 2010 10:34 PM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks

Image by Skagit Information Management Systems (Skagit IMS) via Flickr

I missed a call recently from an 07660 number (079660 960199). When I returned the call I got what appeared to be garbled answer machine message, in hindsight intended to keep you hanging on the line to work out what's going on.

It would appear that these calls are some kind of scam. The return calls are expensive (apparently 42.5p per minute) and not included in your mobile minutes plans. They are also, apparently, not covered by www.phonepayplus.org.uk/, the organisation set up to police premium rate services.

If you receive a phone call from a phone number starting 07660, by all means answer the call but don't return it.

There are some internet rumours that operators of payphone services are being stiffed by these numbers too. The person running the 07660 number earns so much they can pay to use a payphone to call the 07660 number and still make a profit with the phone operator ending up picking up the bill.

Theiving, scamming European City Guide still going...

By theaardvark on November 29, 2009 2:05 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Back in 2004 I blogged about a pernicious (not so) little scam that has caught out thousands of innocent businesses in the UK and across Europe. European City Guide mail out these request for updated information to be entered into their CD Rom and Online directory. Unless you read closely it appears that updated information is all they require. Unless you read carefully through the small print you could easily miss the fact that it is, in fact, a contract for a paid entry costing 997 Euros.

Often, the first time such businesses realise they've been scammed is when the ECG send in its debt collecting attack dogs. A former employer of mine was caught out by this. At the time the cost of the entry was even more hidden on the mailouts. The business was hassled by debt collectors and legal firms for several years.

Stop the European City Guide is a website dedicated to publicising and tackling this and other similar scams. The people behind the European City Guide have tried to shut stopecg.org down on a number of occasions using spurious libel action threats against their ISP and a number of legal threats. On one such occasion I, along with many others, hosted a partial mirror of the site to prevent data, and access to it, being lost.

Yesterday I received the mailshot above, so the ECG is obviously still going, which suggests it's still making money, which, in turn, suggests innocent businesses are still being ripped off.

If you received anything like the above, please just screw it up and throw it away. If you've been caught out and returned it, the best course of action is simply to ignore any correspondence, phone calls or threats of legal action. These thieving cowards would never take court action because they know that there's no chance of success.

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Recently in scams Category

Jordan Evans & The Oil Rig Scam

My precious / cute / dear man....

Telephone Virus / PC / Computer assistance scam

How and why you should cancel your iTunes account immediately

My Favourite Spam of the Week

Don't ring 07660 number!

Theiving, scamming European City Guide still going...

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