Work-at-Home Scam - 09/04/2006 Example (Stock Trading World LTD)

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Things I Did, Below

I, personally, receive email in HTML format. The following was received (and looked) like I received it. At the time, I was more interested in the message than the headers and do not have the original. This is a copy I forwarded to myself as I sent it to my father.

• I removed my email addresses. These came to various accounts and some no longer exist. There are places on this site you can get hold of me if you wish or need to. They are protected from spambots using JavaScript, but all you have to do is click on them.
• All scammer and related email addresses, and any actual website links have been changed, at least putting spaces into them. They appear as underlined blue links, though they aren't.
• Any notes I added in the actual letter are in square brackets ("[" "]"), are bold, red in color, and highlighted. If what I found "behind the links" (email or website) are different than what was displayed, I will include them in this type of note.
• All spelling, spacing, line-wrapping, and punctuation errors are the ones that appeared in the original received email. (I may or may not analyze some or all of these.)

Scam Example
Received 09/04/2006

Email Headers
Received 09/04/2006

Notes

Problems I see:

• Stock-Trading-World.com appears to be a valid website, though, at this time (08/07/2007) it only contains Google Ads, a few reviews, one article, and a "Stock Trading Directory Index" which is basically a link directory. I didn't notice any dates on the site, so it may just be an email address used for emails, or it may be a "stub", like many other sites, with associated articles and ads, though it is owned:

  Registrant:
  H Eldridge-Doyle
  Rue De Hotel De Ville
  Nantiat 87140
  France
  
  Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
  Domain Name: STOCK-TRADING-WORLD.COM
  Created on: 16-Jan-04
  Expires on: 16-Jan-08
  Last Updated on: 16-Jan-07

  [source: GoDaddy.com, Inc.'s WHOIS database]

   

• A search of London Online shows no listing for "Stock Trading World"
• The address "HACKNEY E5 0hx LONDON" was used in other scams - a Mr kenneth tyler(CEO) president/founder of Con Oil LTD; Mr.Zhang Weng. STOCK TRADING WORLD; MR JOHN WOO. STOCK TRADING WORLD; Mr Kiri Hong, STOCK TRADING WORLD, and, I'm sure, many others. And, here, it appears they are recruiting. (Wonder if it's a version of the same scam, or for more scammers?) Please note: It appears that www.stock-trading-world.com doesn't have anything to do with this scam, nor does the owner. At Crime-Online.Info's blog, they state: "On top of which the domain owner has nothing to do with this. The crooks just found the domain name and used it."
• While "44" is the Country Code for the UK ( Fone Finder International phone query results), the rest of the phone number was only found on scam sites, by Google, and on a Coca-Cola Lottery Scam letter at what appears to be the now-defunct Internet-Fraud.com blog (this is a cached copy).
• From the email proper (the part we read):
  • Spacing, grammar, and capitalization errors abound. (I will not delineate them here. If I do, they will know what they did wrong.) And, I believe that a professionally typed email would be formatted much cleaner than this was!
• From the email headers:
  • NOTE: There doesn't appear to be any "To" email, meaning this was probably sent to a batch of emails, and probably using the BCC (blind-carbon-copy). In fact, notice that BCC (though blank) DOES appear in the headers.
  • The email address from which this was ostensibly sent to me is a Katamail account, apparently, from Italy - one of the free, and many would say "throw-away" email accounts. Why would a valid business offer come from a free account? Shouldn't the email address have been something like "RMichael @ stock-trading-world.com"?
  • fwqwe.com could not be found in Google. If they authenticate email addresses, don't you think they should be?
  • Squirrel Mail appears to be a legitimate open-source email system. Crooks will find the cheapest, but best for their purposes, software. My guess is they configured their copy to put a couple of fake headers in the email.
• Quick check of IPs:
  • The "originating IP" (213.52.234.202) could not be found using GeoByte.com - IP Address Locator
  • 66.178.40.82 is in Asuncion, Paraguay. Kinda outta the way for an email from London to the US, isn't it? Yes... I realize that it could be valid, since emails use the fastest servers, and the most direct ways it can to perform its function, but Paraguay?

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