A new fraudulent escrow www.avantbus.com

[G3oF]

A guy named Sebastian Herber proposed me to make a deal on http://www.avantbus.com , I check this escrow on whois and I saw the domain have been created 12 days ago and use a design known as fraudulent.

whois record for: avantbus.com

Current Registrar: MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE
Click here if this is your domain and you would like to switch registrars.

registrar: MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE
whois: whois.melbourneit.com
referrer: http://www.melbourneit.com
Nameservers:
NS2.CNCHOST.COM
NS1.CNCHOST.COM
status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
expires: 29-apr-2006


Registrar Data:

Domain Name.......... avantbus.com
Creation Date........ 2005-04-30
Registration Date.... 2005-04-30
Expiry Date.......... 2006-04-30
Organisation Name.... avantbus security
Organisation Address. 5926 Cedar Lake Dr.
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. Indianapolis
Organisation Address. 46254
Organisation Address. IN
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

Admin Name........... Teresa Durham
Admin Address........ 5926 Cedar Lake Dr.
Admin Address........
Admin Address........ Indianapolis
Admin Address........ 46254
Admin Address........ IN
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... avantbus@msn.com
Admin Phone.......... 3173292777
Admin Fax............ 3173292777

Tech Name............ XO Comm
Tech Address......... 4800 Concentric Boulevard
Tech Address.........
Tech Address......... Saginaw
Tech Address......... 48604
Tech Address......... MI
Tech Address......... UNITED STATES
Tech Email........... hostmaster@cnchost.com
Tech Phone........... +1.888-575-6398
Tech Fax............. +1.866-885-2912
Name Server.......... ns1.cnchost.com
Name Server.......... ns2.cnchost.com

[peg]

Indded I have found this site's layout very similar to those in http://escrow-fraud.pgardner.net/images/sites/Layout8/ and that is where I have added it's image.

Thanks for pointing this one out.

More proof that they are a fraud... On their ABOUT US page ( http://www.avantbus.com/AboutUs.asp ) They claim to be located in BELGUM

Avant Business Solutions is fully licensed and accredited as an escrow companyGovernment agencies perform regular audits of independently licensed escrow companies. The audit examinations serve to protect public funds, determine safety and soundness of operations and determine compliance with escrow statutes and regulations.

Avant Business Solutions , located in Belgium, is audited regularly by the following entity:

Belgium Department of Corporations
license #452-6833
The Belgium Department of Corporations conducts the most stringent examination of all government agencies.

but as we see in the WHOIS above, they are registered in IN (Indiana). That seems odd. Oh, but wait, they also have a us office....

http://www.avantbus.com is also licensed in other states in accordance with our business practices.

Us Office

350 Fifth Avenue,10118, New York

Ahhhhh, but it's in New York. (Can't even dig up a zip code? Or even put the NY after the New York for the state? )

So what about Indiana? And curiously enough the Phone number points to a PAGER!!! (http://www.thedirectory.org/pref/search/317.htm enter the prefix of 329 on that page )

Now I did a bit more searching and find that Teresa Durham DOES exist in Indianapolis, IN but her number is actually listed as 317-329-2766 NOT 77 ( http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=+3 ... gle+Search ) And I have NO DOUBT that Teresa does not even KNOW about this site. (I used to call the people and verify it but people get upset about that and think that I am the one pulling the scam on them).

and again on the ABOUT US page

Avant Business Solutions is hosted on secure servers using the latest in encryption technology. Alternative BS , the operator of this online system is a licensed and accredited escrow company that operates in compliance with currently applicable escrow regulations, and is also subject to the Financial and Business Code of Belgium.

OK, I see 2 main issues here. First they claim to be using the LATEST encryption technology which on the internet is SSL (Secure Socket Layering) for most of us. That means you should be able to go to the site via httpS but if you go to https://www.avantbus.com/ you will see that they indeed are NOT SSL capable. (To get a valid SSL Certificate from a VERIFIED source like Verisign, you MUST validate your Identity, thus... They don't want to do this so no SSL)

NEXT I can't help to wonder about the SECOND statement in the quote above "ALternative BS , ........." Makes me think they wanted to put some prompting in for what to modify but forgot to actually modify it.

That was just 3 suspicious things alone on one page (the about us) not to mention the similarities of the other sites

Then I love the logo's. Especially the eBay logo. If you click on it, it takes you to a page that makes you think that eBay recommends avantbus.com by stealing the page from ebay and modifying it. If you look close though the link takes you to http://www.avantbus.com/help/community/escrow.htm which is hosted by this fraudulent site. the actual site should be http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/escrow.html and if you search ebay's help for escrow you will end up with http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/p ... scrow.html and you will see very clearly that eBay does NOT recommend avantbus.com as an escrow site. In fact they are very adamant that you use ONLY http://www.escrow.com (in the US) and only a handful other for international trade.

Enough of this rant, this site is definitely a

[aabrahkadabrah]

Just helped my neighbor out selling something on eBay and he got an offer to pay more than the amount he was requesting to end the auction early. Oh,
"Tommy" from Spain wanted to use advantbus.com. I did a search of the domain and found it was created last month, then we did a search for fraud escrow and found this site, listing them, describing exactly what we were going through. Thanks for the information, I am just glad it was caught before we went too far.

Oh, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.