Author: comptroller

Shopify Fake Websites

Shopify is a Canadian e-commerce company. It is also the name of its e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems.

Shopify is used by over 600,000 businesses worldwide and is very easy to use and cheap so anyone, including scammers, can quickly setup an online shop.

But Shopify is attractive to scammers. e.g. My Pillow, which makes pillows, sheets and mattresses noticed that an unidentified scammer had used Shopify tools to set up a copy of mypillow.com called mypillowstore.com, which claimed to sell My Pillow products. My Pillow sued Shopify, alleging it supported trademark infringement. Shopify took down the site, but My Pillow demanded damages plus any money Shopify made running the bogus store.

Shopify says it has a team focused on identifying and taking down sites like the fake pillow store.

It’s very simple for a criminal to set up a fake online shop using Shopify software. Designing a store and uploading products is a very quick process and the payments and order processing are all handled by Shopify.

The Triangulation Scheme (exposed by Paul Bjerke of LexisNexis Risk Solutions.)

Scammers use Shopify or a similar service to quickly create sites selling mainstream products such as vacuum cleaners, then the fraudsters use details from previously stolen credit cards to buy the item from a real retail website and have it shipped to shoppers’ homes. Later on, the card payment networks reject the stolen credit card transaction and the real retailer gets what’s known as a chargeback, leaving it with no money for the product it sold. But the scammer still has the original consumers’ money, Bjerke explained.

Shopify say that market forces will weed out merchants using unsavoury tactics but that doesn’t help good companies such as MyPillow from being exploited by the scammers.

Shopify claims it has increased the team focused on merchant misbehaviour and responds to clear cases of copyright and trademark infringement. The company has also modified its software to highlight possible fraud and help shoppers and brands flag improprieties.

But there is a better answer. Rival BigCommerce says it stops fraudsters from starting to use its service. New merchants must pay upfront and prove they have real inventory before they can start selling.

“On other platforms, you can sign up for a free trial and you’re ready to go without paying effectively,” says the company’s chief product officer, Jimmy Duval. “Our approach provides a natural barrier for fraudsters.”

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How Did 419 Scams Begin

Fifty Scams and Hoaxes is a new book by Martin Fone and is described as a light-hearted investigation into some of the worst examples of financial skulduggery, medical quackery and ingenious hoaxing from history. Along the way he came across a Pope advocating a drink based on cocaine, a pill to avoid hangovers, a woman who gave birth to rabbits, the man who broke the bank twice and the first examples of insurance fraud and scam emails.

It’s an easy book to read and is entertaining.

One story that surprised the Fightback Ninja is an early version of the 419 scam, also known as the advance fee scam where the scammer offers a fortune in return for carrying out a simple task.

The fortune might be a lock box of gold left by a diplomat that only you can access, or it may be the legacy of a dead relative and you’re the next of kin supposedly or any one of hundreds of such stories.

There is no fortune of course and the scammer progressively gets the victim to make a series of small payments for customs clearance or security checks or any other reason until the victim realises it’s a scam and stops paying.

Eugene Francois Vidocq in revolutionary France late 18th century specialised in using prison guards to send letters to carefully chosen very wealthy people.

The letters claimed he and his master were intending to escape revolutionary France and had a casket containing 1600 francs in gold and diamonds. They had been attacked en route and ditched the casket but now they were safe and had sent a servant to collect the casket but he had ended up in jail.

So, if you (the recipient) could send the money to have the servant released then the fortune can be shared with you.

The story is quite long and convoluted to add authenticity and is cleverly designed to lure the unsuspecting victim into believing about the fortune. This long ago scam shares many features with the modern day advance fee scams based upon it.

Vidocq reckoned that 20% of the letters he sent out ended up with money in his pocket so he became a wealthy man before retiring from the scamming game.  Modern day scammers need to send out millions of such messages to make any money from their fraudulent schemes.

Martin Fone’s blog is at https://martinfone.wordpress.com/

You can buy the book at www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

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Legal Aid Fraudster to Pay £22M

John Blavo ran Blavo & Co. solicitors. He specialised in mental health law and clinical negligence.

But his real speciality was creating fake legal aid cases and charging the government for non-existent cases.

In fact, over 23,000 such fake cases in three years.

He and his family lived the high life – mansions, supercars, holidays around the world etc.

His company doesn’t seem to have been especially talented at making the fake cases – but the Legal Aid Agency carried on paying out even when there were no records of the cases he was claiming for.

Eventually the Legal Aid agency did begin to suspect and started to investigate.

Between April 2012 and March 2015, he claimed fees from for representing clients at mental health tribunals in 24,658 cases but only 1,485 cases had actually happened.

In November 2015, Blavo & Co. was shut down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

A high court judge ruled that although Blavo & Co was doing about 1,000 cases per year they were claiming for about 9,000.

As sole shareholder of Blavo and Co, John Blavo was ordered to pay back £22 million but he has not actually been convicted of any offence yet. He is under investigation, but why are the Police taking so long?

No wonder the legal aid is so high if this shows the quality of checks they make before paying out.

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