OMC
Computer Crime
Australian Federal Police
PO Box 586
West Perth
WA 6872
Australia
Dear Sir/Maââ¬â¢am
I am writing to letter to you on behalf of myself William Sherman, over the period of approximately the last 6 months I have been subject to a regular occurrence of fraud on my PayPal.com business account.
In about 6 months I lost approximately $4000 USD from people ordering e-goods off my two websites
www.GoldTraffic.com (now sold) and my other website
www.iNeedTraffic.com.
From these two websites I specialise in the following:
1. Search Engine Submission e.g. to search engines such as Google.com and Yahoo.com
2. Website marketing and
3. Providing Traffic / Hits / Visitors to website owners throughout the world
To explain this rather simply, people come to my websites, order visitors, pay me through PayPal.com and then once I receive payment I then deliver the visitors to their websites.
What has happened is that once I receive the order via PayPal.com, I will deliver the visitors to the customerââ¬â¢s websites having checked to ensure that the websites are ââ¬ÅLegalââ¬Â i.e. do not promote illegal pornography, spam, illegal weapons, illegal gambling and so forth.
Then I will deliver the traffic/hits/visitors to the customer over a period of 30 days.
So whatââ¬â¢s the problem you may ask?
Well usually after about four weeks after the e-product has been delivered to the customer, they write an email to PayPal.com saying that someone has ââ¬Åfraudulentlyââ¬Â used their credit card on PayPal.com
But I got very suspicious because it continued to happen to me on a regular basis, so I investigated the matter by myself and I found that certain things did not add up.
For Example:
Every single ââ¬ÅReversalââ¬Â from my Paypal.com accountââ¬Â¦ it told me that the customers email originated from a free based email website called
www.Another.com to explain this better please refer to the cover sheets on each order I have supplied as follows
A.
Paypal.com reversal from Mathew Bubar
Paypal.com account email:
[email protected] (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $1050
B.
Paypal.com reversal from Daniel Aguilar
Paypal.com account email:
[email protected] (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150
C.
Paypal.com reversal from Steven Loyd
Paypal.com account email:
[email protected] (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150
D.
Paypal.com reversal from
[email protected]
Paypal.com account email:
[email protected] (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150
E.
Paypal.com reversal from Charles Bowen
Paypal.com account email:
[email protected] (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150
F.
Paypal.com reversal from Pete Lloyd
Paypal.com account email:
[email protected] (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150 dispute won by my protest to paypal.com, money was refunded back to me
G.
Paypal.com reversal from Richard Hill
Paypal.com account email:
[email protected] (unknown)
Amount Lost: $50
So after doing this research I have found that it is quite obvious that the orders above that their email addresses are registered at
www.Another.com a free email based website similar to
www.hotmail.com so with my websites I have only take around 50 orders in total this year and that means that approximately 10% or my orders came from someone registering their email address at another.com and then signing up to PayPal.com with these email addresses.
To sign up to PayPal.com all you need is an email address, anybody can sign up there for free, simply by registering with their email address, so what I have figured is that these orders what are fraudulent are probably coming from ââ¬ÅOne Personââ¬Â or ââ¬ÅIndividualsââ¬Â working as a team from one main Paypal.com account
To fund these other accounts, all they need to do is to send money from their main account into these other accounts, and then when they place their orders like they did at my website GoldTraffic.com, after I delivered the e-product to them, they write to PayPal.com saying someone fraudulently used their PayPal.com accounts, thus getting their money refund from my account and then the product for free.
So all up from this Scam, I have lost approximately $2000.
I would also like to report to you the main Scam that I have been ripped off by this year, and I have been waiting to receive an email from Paypal.com to tell me that another lot of money was going to be deducted from my PayPal.com account.
Approximately two to three months ago I was watching the News on television, and they had a special report on two websites that were disguising themselves as legitimate business partners of the following banks: ANZ, Westpac, National bank, and New Zealand banks, ASB and BNZ.
The websites were online as
www.Avantyx.com and
www.Devancy.com
Quote from this website:
http://www.police.govt.nz/news/release/1044.php
QUOTE
New web banking scam targets New Zealanders
National News Release, 10:10, 29 August 2003
A slick new online banking scam is fooling New Zealanders into losing large sums of money says Police E-Crime National Manager Maarten Kleintjes.
The site
www.devancy.com, running since late July, has a very professional look and is customised for New Zealand readers. A sister scam site called
www.avantyx.com is customised for Australians.
Both sites claim to be business partners with all the leading banks including ANZ, ASB, BNZ, National Bank, and Westpac. Curiously the New Zealand site also lists the old Countrywide Bank which was sold to National Bank 5 years ago.
New Zealand Police has contacted the banks and has confirmed that they are not in partnership with these web sites nor were they aware that their names were being used in the scam.
Investigations by the E-Crime Lab have established that the scam is running from Denmark via USA. An international effort will be required to find those behind the sites.
The scam works by convincing people to accept deposits into their bank accounts which they then forward to a third party minus a transaction fee. The initial deposit is then retracted.
"Devancy deposit, say $10,000 into your account, then you send $9,500 on to someone else the same day. Devancy then quickly cancel their $10,000 deposit. You just sent $9,500 of your own savings to a Devancy associate," Mr Kleintjes says.
"The key to this scam is building a very convincing web site that looks just like a real financial services web site."
Mr Kleintjes advises people visiting the site not to be taken in by its authentic appearance. "It can't be true if they offer money for free," he says.
If members of the public do believe they have been prey to this scheme then they should immediately contact their bank.
The Consumers' Institute compiles information on all manner of scams at
www.consumer.org.nz.
Police are publicising the scam as a warning for the public to steer well clear. Given the international nature of this scam the likelihood of Police taking successful prosecution action and recovering money for victims is not high. It really is a case of advising people to avoid being ripped off in the first place, Mr Kleintjes says.
UNQUOTE
Once again I received an email from Paypal.com saying that I receive another traffic order, I went to the customers website
www.avantyx.com and verified with them that their site was legimate.
I then delivered the e-product to them and a month or two later, once again I received an email from Paypal.com saying there was fraudulent credit card use and this time they took $1600 USD from my account, visa card.
I have included with this letter all of the paperwork, emails, order/transaction numbers with Paypal.com.
I am convinced that when you investigate this Avantyx.com and Devancy.com fraud from my Paypal.com account that you will be able to trace exactly who these people are, where they are located and hopefully I may receive some of my losses back.
These people need to have a credit card on Paypal.com to send large transactions, and I know for a fact that with the help of Paypal.com you will easily be able to locate these ââ¬ÅScammersââ¬Â
The two Avantyx.com ââ¬Åreversalsââ¬Â came from the following Paypal.com accounts:
A.
Paypal.com reversal from Todd Sudek
Paypal.com account email:
[email protected]
Amount Lost: $900
B.
Paypal.com reversal from Carol Lutjens
Paypal.com account email:
[email protected]
Amount Lost: $700
Regarding the two above orders, I am 100% certain that if you investigate these email addresses registered at PayPal.com you will find out who the true owners were of both websites
www.avantyx.com and
www.devancy.com
They paid me $900 and $700 respectively and when the money was refunded (Reversed) back into their PayPal.com accounts, they would have most likely withdrawn the money into their ââ¬ÅDenmarkââ¬Â Danish based bank accounts.
To conclude this letter I would like to say that I pray to god, that you will decide to investigate these scams on my behalf and all of the other people that may have been ââ¬ÅScammedââ¬Â by these con-artists.
I have sought legal advise from my Defence Force Lawyer (I am in the Royal Australian Navy), and he suggested that I report this crime to your investigations department in Perth Wa, I spoke to Darren Oââ¬â¢Neil at the computer crime department today on the telephone, who was extremely helpful to me.
Darren informed me that a committee decides which cases to work on; once again I am certain that with the proper dedication and investigation by your expert staff, that you will arrest and convict these culprits.
I appreciate your time in reading this letter and all of the other information that I have provided
Yours Sincerely
William
