Scammers are getting more sophisticated!

It is scary how sophisticated the scams are getting nowadays. Compare what I received a year ago (early 2008):

With what a reader submitted as a scam from last month (April 2009)

(image wit mocking bird and advanced text layout)

Be careful out there!

-Michael

More Printing Scams from Ghana

From: mike larry

subject: Order.........

signed-by yahoo.com

Hello Brother/Sister In Christ I start with much Greetings to you and your whole company.Please accept my apology if i have reached a wrong contact, my name is mike larry.I will like to know if you do print banners i want to Inform you that i will need the Following Type and size of the moving boxes Quote me on the following Banners 1,30 x 60 Banner 2,Text :( Helps Save The Children) 3,Quantity: 90 pieces of them. And that is the banners s that i am looking for and also i will like you to go ahead and e-mail me back with the quotes of the Banners excluding shipping and the Types of Payments you do accept so that we can go ahead and Proceed with this Order.and also i will like you to advice me with you contact details and if you don't have this kind of boxes get back to me with what you have in store.Hope to hear from you and have a Nice working day. Best regards Rev.Mike Larry.

Robert Mills Scam - Gains International Co Ltd

from: Robert Mills
to: sales@a****.com
date: Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 2:20 PM
subject: Order

Hello,

Gooday,My Name is Mr,John Hafele and i am the CEO of Gains International Co Ltd.I will like to make an Inquiry on Banners and bellow are the types of Banners i am Interested in:

Size :3 inches by 6 inches
color :white
I will need this Banners Blank
material :Vinyl
Qty:300


Due to some security reasons i asked my friends about any company they know and luckily one of my friend locate me a dealer on a search engine called yellowpages.com and he Provide me with your contact details and i decided to contact you as soon i can so please i will be Glad if you can assist me on this Order.The information i needed now from you is to know the Price of each of the banners  and  also calculate for the 300 pieces of them and let me know what the Total Cost of the 300 pieces will be and most importantly i will like to know the types of Payment that you do accept,Master Card ,Visa ,Dinner , Discover.?.Please Advice.

Kind Regards.

Mr.Robert Mills

Scam Poster Quote Request from Rev. Mark Johnson

Today I received a scam email quote request from 'Rev. Mark Johnson'
from 'rev.mark223@rocketmail.com' and thought I would share. The email
reads:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Rev. Mark Johnson" rev.mark223@rocketmail.com
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 19:56:39 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Quote Request
To: info@*******printing.com

Dear Owner / Sales Manager,

Greetings to you and your whole company. I am Rev. Mark Johnson and I
will like to know if your company can do a printing of Fliers for me. I
would like the Fliers in the following details:

FLYERS – FULL COLOR
Stock: 80# Text Gloss
Ink: Full Color on Front
Size: 8.5
x 11 – 1
Sided
Bindery: Leave Flat
Artwork: Supplied in PDF High Quality Print
Quantity: 90,000

I will be looking forward hoping to hear back from you with the estimate
quote for the 90,000 copies of the Fliers. What type of credit card
payments do you accept? Kindly advise and get back at me with the
estimate quote, excluding delivery...

May God Bless You

Sincerely Yours,
Rev. Mark Johnson

__________________________________________________
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"Christ the King" Printing Scam from Mary Lampo

from mary lampo

to ****@elevateprinting.com

date Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 10:37 AM

subject Order

signed-by yahoo.com

Hello, Good day, I am Mary and i have contact you regarding an order of some Banners printing and i will like to order the sizes of 30 x 60 and i will like you to write on it CHRIST IS THE KING and with the color Blue so i will like you to email me back with the price Quote and that will be pick up from your location and also what method of Credit card do you accept....Please advise Thank you Mary Lampo

Another printing scam!

What helps if you suspect Fraud from Overseas?

We received the following comment over the weekend on our Second Post about The Feed The Children Banner Scam and Fake Company Fraud from Ghana. I am curious to see if anyone else has advice for what to do if you suspect you have already been the victim of fraud?

Let us know if the comments and lets see if we can help each other out.

--Michael

---

pmmb has left a new comment on the post "Another Banner Scam Email from Ghana - "God is Gre...":

Is there anyone who can help me? My husband has sent $115,000.00 or more to a Ghanan guy - to his bank in New Jersey! It's for a computer contract from 21 months back. My husband thinks the guy is legitimate??!!! I can't believe it - how naive do people come? Any advice? I wanted to stay married, but it is hard based on my husband doing this all behind my back and now thinking it is legitimate.

"Printing Of Canvas" Email Scam from nickjns73@gmail.com

We usually do not get too many art printing scams or giclee printing scams but we just received one tonight.

---

from: nickjns73 -- nickjns73@gmail.com
to: company01@sympatico.ca
date: Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 8:13 PM
subject: Printing Of Canvas
signed-by gmail.com

February 8th, 2009 8:13 PM (2 hours ago)

Hello
Attached is my art-work for this project. However i want the canvas photo printed with the following specs,

1. Measures 8x10
2. Provide quote on 1000 and 2000 Copies
4. Do u accept credit card.

note:
IF YOU PRINT ANYTHING APART FROM THIS LET ME KNOW
God Bless you - please quote according

---

The Comic Sans was preserved from the original email for the true scam feeling. This scammer didn't even bother to send it to the right email (we were on the BCC list, along with I'm sure a whole lot of other printing companies). There was no attachment to the email. We have also never heard from this person before.

This e-mail does not even deserve a reply.

Stay Safe,

Michael

International Fraud Signs and Order Redflags

This advice serves as a general list of things to look for and red flags (things that should indicate a scam, raise concerns, or trigger a deeper investigation). This serves as a good list of things businesses should look for when conducting international business to avoid scams. This is meant for Small business, Entrepreneurs, and any business who doesn't primarily deal internationally. Please feel free to add your own advice and best practices in the comments.

Important things to look for in international business transactions:

Email address the request is form:
While many people have Gmail (user@gmail.com) or Yahoo accounts (user@yahoo.com), most use their business emails with their company web domains (user@yourcompany.com) to conduct large business. The sign the customer has a real webdomain is a good sign, as this usually requires some kind of investment. The use of a free email provider is simply something to look for, as many people have all their emails forwarded to their Gmail account for productivity. If something is mailed from user@yourcompany.com on behalf of user@gmail.com, that is probably the case (Outlook has an issue with Gmail) and is not necessarily cause to worry. In the case of the Feed the Children scam, however, the original banner printing scammer was John Kennedy (depella0124@gmail.com) and the fake shipper was Evans Williams (mcdanielshipping@yahoo.com). These combined should raise suspicion. Keep in mind, however, a lot of legitimate businesses do have companyname@gmail.com.

No websites offered / the person's names not on them:
As previously mentioned, an email of yourcompany@gmail.com is fairly common, especially among small businesses; so don’t let this throw you off. However, if there is no company website at all this would be a red flag to me. Perform a quick search in Google to determine if the company has a website, or try companyname.com. Today domains cost under $6 to register, and monthly hosting is as cheap as $3 per month, there is no reason not to have some type of website for your business. If the company does have a website, check the ranking of it on Alexa (www.alexa.com) and Google’s PageRank (download the Google Toolbar) to make sure the site is actually in use and not just set up temporarily as part of the scam (some current scams are very elaborate). For Alexa, the lower the number is the better. For PageRank, the higher the number the better (always between 0-10). Low traffic sites and PageRank aren’t necessarily a red flag, but should warrant a more thorough investigation if this is the case. If there is no information for one or both of these, that is not a good sign. If there is an email address listed on the company website, feel free to contact them and verify that the individual you are working with is in fact a legitimate employee.

Misspellings in CRITICAL elements of an email:
While perfect English, grammar, and spelling should not be expected from foreign contacts, there are some simple things that in a serious request they would take the time to double check. In our example, this includes what is actually going to be printed on the banner and the message subject. For example, one email had a subject of “Bannera Request” and they wanted to have the banners printed with “Feed the Chidren” on them.

They only will pay with credit card and can’t provide any supporting documentation:
While paying with a credit card might also seem like a legitimate request, it really isn’t with new customers overseas. Once your product leaves, you have very little power if the customer claims to never receive the goods or simply decides they don't want or like them. When dealing overseas with first time customers, you should require a bank wire transfer. If you are accepting credit cards, make the buyer send you a scan of the following:

1. the front and back of the card
2. their Government issued ID
3. their last Credit Card billing statement

The first two are the most important. This step alone will eliminate over 95% of the problems you have when dealing abroad, especially in online or website situations. While in advanced and professional scams the con artist could take the time to duplicate these documents, most unsophisticated scam artists will not.

Seller can’t choose shipper & Seller must pay shipper:
The shipping policy I prefer in dealing with international transactions is that both the buyer and the seller request quotes from their preferred shipping agents and exchange this information. This helps you get the most competitive rate and shows a little good faith in the transaction. While the buyer should has the right to choose what company to go with, if they choose their preferred shipper they should pay them directly. Obviously you must make sure they pay you for the products before they are shipped out or picked up. You also should help coordinate the shipping arrangements, but you should not be required to pay for a buyer arranged shipping agreement with a buyer arranged shipping company. In the original banner scam, they try and mislead you into thinking you are making the shipping arrangements by having you request the quote from their preferred shipper (read, Fake Shipper). However, by not letting you chose the company you are requesting the quote from they are ultimately the ones in full control. The scammers in this case suspiciously don’t ask for any other quotes or ask if you currently work with a local shipper. Requesting you to forward money via Western Union to anyone is generally fraud.

Refusal to compromise:
International scammers (particularly the ones from Africa) will usually refuse to compromise on any aspect of the deal. In our original example, if you contact the original scammer and ask to use another shipping company, even telling them it is half the cost, the African scam artist will insist they use their fake shipping company or cancel their order entirely. This does not make any business sense. They cited that no other shipping company in the world knew how to find them. What is a better policy in dealing with international transactions is that both the buyer and the seller request quotes from their preferred shipping agents and agree on one to use. There are very few monopolies in the shipping industry, and the reasoning they one can avoid import / export tax or that only one company can find there location is a clear red flag.

Billing Address & Shipping Address:
A quick search on Google revealed that the billing address the first banner scammer gave for the credit card payment was actually a used car dealership in central Illinois. Ironically, it wasn’t more than an hour or so away from where I’m located, yet the person requesting the banners was in the UK. Both should alert you that something weird is going on. I called the car dealership to see if they knew anything about this; they were elated I called and assured me they did not order the banners. If you are given a phone number for the billing address, feel free to call that as well. A quick Google search of the address they give you should yeild some local businesses at or near that address-- feel free to call them to verify as well.

Refusal to use your website or shopping cart software:
One thing I noted about scam artists were the scam perpetrators would avoid using my company’s website any more than absolutely necessary. This is probably in an effort not to have their IP address and other information recorded on our server logs, which would most likely be investigated once we discovered the fraud later on. The scammers' emailed my info@domain.com email address instead of using our website’s “Contact Us” form and emailed us their credit card information instead of inputting it into our secure web store as I advised. After being contacted, I checked my traffic history with Google Analytics and I had received one visitor on that day from Ghana (who claimed to be in the UK). Ultimately, I confirmed their location by forcing them to an “invoice” page to print their receipt that grabbed their IP address after I refused to email them one. More sophisticated scam artists and con men will route to your website using a local server and IP address or an onion router (such as TOR), masking their true location. However, to save time on my end and prevent lower level scams, I have blocked IP domains from high risk countries around the world (article coming soon) using .htaccess commands.

In Conclusion:
These are just some of the things to look out for when dealing with quote or proposal requests from foriegn countries. Use your best judgement and realize that for every 4 or 5 fake requests (scam attempts) I recieve one legitamate overseas business deal (usually they can be lucrative). I have however only had a handful of printing requests from overseas actually pan out, as the cost of shipping often times prohibits your cost from being competitive. However, with the current low exhange rate and the weak US dollar, overseas companies and individuals are finding all kinds of American products and services suddenly extremely more affordable.

Best of luck.

aheadcargodivision.com - SCAM & FRAUD ESCROW

Update from a previous post -- the site aheadcargodivision.com or www.aheadcargodivision.com is a scam. They have a FAKE Verisign logo, they claim their company is registered in Philadelphia, and their website domain is registered in Chicago. This scam usually involves tickets, motorcycles, or high valued items. The site is pretty much a fake escrow service. Don't let their fancy, professional looking website fool you. They also have no phone number on their website -- another bad sign. Company claims to be Ahead Division (PVT) LTD.

Fraud email reads:

Here is how i sell the tickets so you can inspect them before i receive payment and so we can both be protected . Go to www.aheadcargodivision.com , register with them, and get back to me when you have done that. Also read their pages so you know how they work. I will start a transaction with them as soon as you agree. They will take care of the shipping and of our transaction.
I will explain you how it works in steps :
1. I give them the tickets for packing and shipping
2. You send them the money
3. They send you the tickets
4. You receive the tickets and you will have a 3-30 days inspection period to inspect them and check the name on it ( i will receive the money ONLY if you agree to keep the tickets , if not you will be fully refunded by the shipping company )
5. If all is OK and you decide to keep the tickets I will receive the payment

Thanks ,
Robin

They refuse to use any other escrow service, also a red flag!

aheadcargodivision.com - SCAM & FRAUD

Has anyone ever heard of or used aheadcargodivision.com ? From the best I can tell this is a scam website as well. They claim to have the name a registered trademark, but the US Patent office search does not support this. Any reviews of A.D. - Ahead Division (PVT) LTD would be helpful. Thanks!

***UPDATE - THIS SITE AHEADCARGODIVISION.COM IS AN ELABORATE SCAM
***READ THE UPDATED POST HERE:
http://digitalprinter.blogspot.com/2008/07/aheadcargodivisioncom-scam-fraud-escrow.html