Category: Scammer

January 6, 2017

The Traffic Monsoon Ponzi Scheme

Pyramid investment scheme worth £160MILLION shut down after taking money from 162,000 people

Traffic Monsoon, which is run by Charles Scoville, claimed to make people money through online advertising ‘AdPacks’. Mr. Scoville, an American “entrepreneur” has a history of similar schemes.

The Securities and Exchange Commission stated that “Traffic Monsoon’s advertising business is an illusion designed to obscure the fact that it is offering and selling a pure Ponzi scheme” . “Over 99% of Traffic Monsoon’s revenue comes from the sale of AdPacks”.

“The company has virtually no other revenue from any other source”.

ADPACKS

Everyone who joined bought AdPacks at $50 each (£38) and was required to click on 50 banner adverts each day, staying on each for five seconds. It’s this online traffic that members were told would generate income, but it didn’t.

In April, PayPal notified Scoville that his business had the hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme and in time froze the company’s funds – approximately $61 million. Scoville continued to sell Adpacks even though he couldn’t pay anyone.

The PayPal freeze ended on July 11, and Scoville transferred $25.6 million out of the PayPal account into a separate Traffic Monsoon account and immediately transferred $21 million of those funds into his own personal account.

He attempted to transfer additional funds out of the PayPal account, but PayPal stopped this.

Scovile continues to maintain his company is genuine and posted he on Facebook – “For those of you who read the report and wonder why I moved funds from the business account to my personal…it truly was to protect those funds”. Some people still believe in him and a petition has been launched on Change.org to raise money for Scoville.

The company has taken in $207 million dollars in actual cash, but on paper Traffic Monsoon had generated $738 million dollars in revenue. Clearly that extra revenue does not exist and only by continually increasing the number of new members buying adpacks could the scheme continue to pay out, until its inevitable collapse.

Had the SEC of not stepped in, Scoville and the funds may have disappeared.

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

December 22, 2016

The Fake Military Personnel Scam

This is a variant on the usual romance scam where a man or woman uses dating sites to find romantic partners and builds an online relationship with them before asking for money for problems such as needing a visa to visit the person or treatment for a sick relative in hospital or a hundred other reasons.

This variant is based on the scammer pretending to be in the Military and needing to pay to get leave. This scam seems to be predominantly carried out by Nigerians.

Here’s an excerpt of a typical email interaction between a scammer and a woman (complete with spelling mistakes).

hello dear what is a beautiful woman like you doing here, do yoy mean no men with eyes in [city]..you are beautifull, i am not always here you can drop your email or yahoo messanger id so we could chat more…bye

The scammer has a set of excuses ready for why you can’t talk to him or visit him.

You can not see me on Cam while i’m on deployment…because the kind of pc we use is called TOUGH BOOK, its extra strong but uses no cam.You can only see my pics.
I can’t send money out and no one can send me money while am on deployment here..hope u understand that..
You can’t call me while am on deploy but if u want to hear my voice that means u will get ur cell phone connected with my Radio phone here cus that’s what we the military personnel are using here..

He has excuses why you cannot phone him, skype, Face time or any other way of seeing him Live as that would show up that he’s not an American military man – just a scammer using someone else photos off the Internet.

What happens next is that the scammer sends his victim a letter supposedly from the military authorities. It looks official and notes that the man is in line for a large sum of money which can be sent via the victim.

Here’s some typical excerpts from such a letter.

We received your mail concerning your friend’s leave permit,we will like to know if Captain Smith Panderson is your Fiance or just friend ,We will also like you to send your full name, home address and phone number
A returning officer on ‘special foreign mission’ applying for leave request will be liable to receive some amount of money as Leave Bonuses/Allowance and this should be claimed by His/Her beneficiary (Optional). The amount is (39,340.00 USD).
Note : If you wish to be the beneficiary to the Leave Bonus, You will need to give us your account details to wire the bonuses/allowance there for your Fiance as soon all necessary things has been done by you.
Beneficiary is liable to pay for the liberty pass card,processing fee and other expenses required, it wil be approximately (1,551.00 USD) you can read more about this in the policy and instruction for leave request form which your Fiance will send to you.

You can see what’s going on and the scammer draws in the victim to get them to pay the up front costs of $1,551 but then there is no visit as it’s all just a sad scam.

The website www.scamwarners.com has a lot of information on the scammers who impersonate military personnel.

If you are unsure of someone (a military person) you are in contact with – then try scamwarners.com

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October 28, 2016

Security Blogger Scams the Scammer

A French security blogger named Ivan Kwiatkowski was incensed when scammers tried to scam his parents by pretending to be Microsoft helping them sort out virus problems.

Ivan decided to find out more about these scammers and see if he could turn the tables on them. He called the number his parents had called and a lady named Patricia answered. He spun her a yarn about his computer having problems with Zeus virus and could she help.

Oh yes she could.

It is typical with these scams, for the scammer to install software on the victim’s PC supposedly to ‘see how bad the problem is’ but in fact to use a cheat so as to show the extent of the ‘fake’ problem’ and maybe to look for credit card details and passwords etc.

Ivan had setup a PC off the network so he could let the scammer have a look around safely.

He allowed Patricia to take control of the PC and install her software. She told him she’d found that the PC had 1452 viruses and she could supply anti-virus software and fix it for $189.90. Ivan told her he’d buy the software in Paris where he lives and the conversation ended, to the scammers surprise.

But Ivan wasn’t finished yet – he phoned back and spoke with a new scammer, Dileep, who checked the situation and offered to clean the PC of viruses and install anti-virus protection for $299.99.

Ivan offered to buy the package but when it came to giving credit card details – he had fake card details to use but pretended he couldn’t read very well so when the card number was rejected he claimed poor eyesight was the problem. After numerous attempts he had a brainwave. Ivan had j.Locky ransomware on disk as he had been researching it recently.

He convinced Dileep to accept a photo of the card so he could read the numbers himself, but Ivan send the photo with j.Locky attached.

The scammer didn’t know it but j.Locky would be busy in the background encrypting all of his files then would demand a ransom to have them released.

Scam the scammer.

Nice one Ivan

To read the original account of the scam, go to https://blog.kwiatkowski.fr/?q=en/node/30

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

September 28, 2016

The Psychology of Scammers

There is a lot of evidence about scammers and how they operate.

There are scammers that operate a number of different scams but many seem to find one that works for them then stick to it.

The many Nigerian 419 scammers are an example of sticking to the same game plan. They tempt people with a very large sum of money – usually in the millions and tell a highly improbably story of why the money is available. But with such a large amount of money as the enticement then for many people that overcomes their disbelief and they pay the advance fee which might be called a processing fee or release fee or Police charge or whatever. The scammer gets the advance fee and of course the large amount of money does not exist.

Most people know of theses scams, so why do the scammers stick to it instead of changing?

They enjoy the challenge, they stick to what they know, why change your plan when you can make the current one work? There are always more people to scam.

There are financial scams so complex that even few experts can understand how they work and at the other end of the spectrum are the incredibly simple scams such as sending out spam emails saying in a lot more words

“We have a large sum of money in your name and will be happy to send this too you once we verify your identity. Please provide a photograph of your passport or driving licence, your full name and address and contact details”

Some people will answer this with the information which the scammer can then sell on to other scammers.

Are the scammers motivated just by money?

No, many do chase the money, but for a lot it’s more about the game – winning, showing superiority over the victims who fall for the scams, the badge of honour of taking money from people and giving nothing in return. For some its excitement – getting away with illegal activities and not getting caught. For some, it’s all they know to do.

Many scam messages are childishly inept – poor grammar, spelling mistakes, odd use of words, poor quality layout etc. For some this may be genuine mistakes .e.g a poor translation from another language but often it is deliberate. The scammers often don’t want to catch people who will realise it’s a scam – they want the most believing and easily conned hence the mistakes to put off anyone who stops to think about the likelihood of the story being true. In this case, implausibility is the scammer’s friend.

Finally, if you get a cold caller trying to scam you, you won’t be able to talk them out of it and you won’t be able to shame them out if it. Scammers make a clear decision to con people out of money and that’s what they stick to.

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September 16, 2016

Carol’s Story of Dealing with Lloyd Loom of Spalding

A guest post by Carol.

I was looking to buy some bedroom furniture – a bedside table and a couple of other items. I knew the name Lloyd Loom was a good British make and searched on the Internet for what I wanted.

I found a supplier (Lloyd Loom of Spalding) with stock and chose the items. I received an invoice online and paid by bank transfer (nearly £1,000). This felt safe as the “company” has a good reputation.

I did speak with the supplier and he seemed very helpful. He could deliver to Cornwall without any problem. He sent a set of swatches so I could pick the exact colour I wanted.

Over the next period, I received regular updates from the supplier but no furniture. There was no difficulty contacting him and I still believed the furniture would arrive.

But it didn’t.

I had paid by bank transfer and the bank tried to recover the money but the account had been emptied and I wasn’t able to get any money back.

Below is an update by Wikipedia.

Lloyd Loom of Spalding Ltd. and Lloyd Loom Weave Ltd., a subsidiary, entered Creditors voluntary liquidation at Companies House in February 2016. The factory in Wardentree Lane, Pinchbeck, was emptied under the instruction of company director Anthony Draxler just before Christmas 2015, with production machinery then apparently shipped to Romania.

Staff who have been laid off say they are owed up to 14 weeks’ wages and some ex-workers claim agreed redundancy terms have not been settled.

Several firms are owed money by Lloyd Loom Furniture Ltd – a subsidiary of Lloyd Loom of Spalding.

Lloyd Loom Furniture Ltd. was placed under a HMRC Winding up Petition and is now in liquidation.

A police investigation has been undertaken into Anthony Draxler due to unfulfilled customer orders. A Lincolnshire Police spokesman said: “There is an enquiry under way in relation to this business and an individual involved with it.”

As of 20 January 2016 a new company Lloyd Loom Spalding Limited was registered at Companies House.

BE WARNED Anthony Draxler is believed to be behind this latest venture.

Please note that Lloyd Loom is a style of furniture making and that there are other Lloyd Loom companies that are respectable and have no connection with Anthony Draxler and his companies.

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August 25, 2016

Fake Text Messages From Loved Ones

This fake message is designed to overcome your natural suspicion by using a name you may be familiar with and that the person needs help.

If you don’t know a Sarah then you’ll probably guess it’s either a fake or intended for someone else.

But if you have a daughter or sister or wife or friend named Sarah then you might fall for this and text back.

If you do, the text will cost you a lot (premium number) plus the return message will go about what happened and how she desperately needs money for hospital bills or some such thing. It probably will also have some story about why she’s not on her normal phone number – broken phone, lost phone, confiscated phone etc.

If the scammers have been watching your social media then they know your child or siblings name and that they are away on holiday somewhere and can use that to make the texts realistic.

Think before you respond.