Escrow-Fraud.com Forums

Hey,

I'm trying to buy a car and I got information that they can ship it after wiring them deposit of 2800EUR, but it looks suspicious, the domain name (www.spedholdingsltd.com) was registered on the day when I started e-mail conversation. The company itself exists in companieshouse, but it does not have a phone number or webpage listed so I can't confirm if it's legit. Are there any other things to look for confirming the seller? If it looks like fraud, could you pleas add the site to your index?

Cheers

From quick inspection of the site I can see that the tracking number search looks suspicious. It posts data to tracking.php, which then redirects to either my record's page like /123456.html or to not_found.html. The weird thing is that when I change the number in the url it shows server's 404 page, so it looks like generated static web page and simple php script which just redirects.

Hello,

it looks like you already did some investigation on your own. Yes, it's fake.

There are various signs; the thing that first jumps out is the WHOIS record:

Code: Select all

Domain Name: SPEDHOLDINGSLTD.COM
   Registrar: PDR LTD. D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM
   Whois Server: whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com
   Referral URL: http://www.PublicDomainRegistry.com
   Name Server: BERRY.GOHOST.RU
   Name Server: NS2.GOHOST.RU
   Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Updated Date: 13-may-2013
   Creation Date: 12-may-2013
   Expiration Date: 12-may-2014

So the domain name was registered a mere 4 days ago. That's at least unusual. Also, the registrant is hidden. In many countries this isn't possible or legal for businesses or at least financial businesses (and offering escrow services is an financial business).

So, the company claims to be located in Liverpool. But http://www.spedholdingsltd.com/about.html reads partly

"are an independently owned freight forwarder who are based in the North East of England"

Liverpool isn't exactly the North East. So, when searching for this particular phrase (including the quotes) you'll find the legit site from which this text was copied - and you'll find another clone:

http://www.gazelletransport.com/

(as far as I can see this is also fake and uses the data from an existing company, too).

There are more things but I think this should suffice for now. Please post a few more details about the deal, especially the name and email address the "seller" is using.

I'll add the site to our database later; and it probably won't last long (the registrar is likely to pull the plug once informed).

Thanks for your reply, here are the details:

Seller: Seiler Dieter Gottfried <g.dieterseiler@gmail.com>

Sender Name: Seiler Dieter Gottfried
Address: Wechloyer Weg 73/A
City: Oldenburg
Zip Code: 26129
Country: Germany

Here is an account, which they tried to use:

Account Name: Albert Alek
Bank Name: Postbank
IBAN: DE92 1001 0010 0485 4481 03
Swift/BIC: PBNKDEFF
Country: Germany

The contact from the company was called: Alan Larson