Avoid scam with Marcus Evans

Those who read my blog for years now can remember, that I paid special attention to online scams. I’ve added special tag for this criminal activity which covers activites from phishing to hacking. The marcus evans scam website is fighting against business scam abuse and fraud prevention. A lot of useful information on this topic can be found there from scam prevention interest links to the latest news on scam which are frequently updated. The list of scam prevention sites also include conferences that may be of your interest. There is also a number of MARCUS EVANS EVENTS (websites) covering topis such as: fraud, scam, corruption, compliance, ethics, crime and security.

For those familiar with scams and on-line fraud this is an interesting source of getting more information on the subject. But if you are one of those Internet users who don’t know what scam means and what possible ways of on-line fraud, visiting this site is probably must.

The core idea of this conferences is to educate Internet users, especially businesses how to avoid scam, what are possible dangers and how to recognize them. Having knowledge that billions of dollars have been illegally acquired from companies and costumers with online scams is not enough to not become a victim of Internet fraud.

Greens Finance - dirty scammers

Some may noticed that I was not online for couple of weeks. The reason was my business trip I had in Latin America. Most of time I was offline, but I managed to request withdrawal of all money I have in Greens Finance. It has been now 5 days until that and I receive nothing from this HYIP.

Funny thing is that when I am now looking back, this HYIP was certainly noted as scam in my post on this blog: Liberty Reserve - phishing emails - watch out. And yes, I should never ever reinvest in HYIP or any other kind of investing thing when I have at least some doubt about credibility of system, pool, broker or whatever.

But what makes me really angry is, that I received again a PHISHING EMAIL! One day after my withdrawal request I received the following email:

***********Start of copy paste***********
LibertyReserve.com
to block-notice

show details 11 Oct (4 days ago) [Account_Block_Notice.html]

** Liberty Reserve Account Blocked **

Your account has been blocked due to numerous invalid login attempts. You will be unable to send and receive funds until your account has been activated.

Failing to unblock your account will result temporary account suspension. Please read attached account block notice for details.

Sincerely,
Liberty Reserve Customer Service

***********End of copy paste************

In attachment there is a HTML file with faked URL, which links you to fake Liberty Reserve site. This is now another (new) way of how to try to get account credentials from naive people. Since you really did request a withdrawal, you may believe that there really was something wrong with your account, and you go and try to restore your account... And give your information to dirty scammers from Greens Finance.

I wasn't get tricked, but some may get. My question is, how would you punish such scammers?

Liberty Reserve - phishing emails - watch out

After long time of holidays I've checked my accounts yesterday. The best option was Greens Finance , despite I announced it as a scam earlier in on Twitter. Since one investment period was over on GreensFinance, I had profit and initial deposit ready to withdrawal. I requested withdraw and reinvested; up to now, my request was not proceeded yet, but what is most scary - I got a phishing email. My feeling is, that GreensFinance is scam after all, since they are the only one who know, that I made withdrawal request in last hours. Phishing email is very good copy of Liberty Reserve official emails - but link is obvious fake and lead you to phishing site, which is there to take your credentials.

Lesson learned again: DO NEVER CLICK ON URL ADDRESSES FROM EMAILS!!!

This is an email I received couple an hours after my withdrawal request:

Liberty Reserve Payment Receive - Failed additional policy Please Update

Reply to all

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Message text garbled?

Why is this spam/non-spam?

Liberty Reserve to Th0rest

show details 03:49 (5 hours ago)

Reply

============================================
Please note that in all e-mails from Liberty Reserve we will:
Never send you any links (except account activation e-mail) or attached files.
Never ask you to send us your password and/or login PIN.
============================================

Dear, customers

This email was sent by the Liberty Reserve server to verify your E-mail address.
You must complete this process by clicking on the link below and entering form .

This is done for your protection - because some of our members no longer have
access to their email addresses and we must verify it.

To verify your E-mail address and access your bank account,
click on the link below:

https://www.libertyreserve.com/en/verify/step1/

*Important*
We have asked few additional information which is going to be the part of secure login process.
These additional information will be asked during your future login security so,
please provide all these info completely and correctly otherwise due to security reasons we may
have to close your account temporarily.

We thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is a security
measure intended to help protect you and your account. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Security Advisor
Liberty Reserve

Alert: Cropinvcashco website down

Four days ago Cropinvcashco sent out the following email to its users:

-----copy starts here----

	from		CICC Admin		hide details	14 Apr (4 days ago)
	reply-to			NoReply
	to			me
	date			14 Apr 2008 18:31
	subject			Update about payment

Dear members,
Today,all pending withdrawals with EG and LR have been processed successfully now. We are so sorry for the delay.Thanks all.

CICC TEAM
-----copy ends here----

In review Another interesting HYIP - Cropinvcashco I predicted this will program will work until end of April... It is not end of April yet, but it seems to be end of another HYIP. Nevertheless very similar situation already happened - website was down. At the moment I can record more than 24hrs of downtime. We shall not yet completely give up on this one, but investors will start to withdraw and stop investing into this one.

Investing here is not recommended, if it will come back, try to withdraw from it.

Find out why Ad Sense is scam

It may sound very harsh and impossible, that Google AdSense is scam. Especially if you know that I have been always a Google fan. But from my point of view AdSense is special kind of scam, unfortunately. It fits all criteria I have made in my year and a half experience with HYIP and other online opportunities.

Yesterday I received and email from Google, that my Ad sense account is blocked. Here is the copy:
----------copy starts here---------

Google AdSense

to Th0rest

show details

8 Apr (1 day ago)

Hello ,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage
our advertisers in the future, we've decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in
advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions we've
taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information
by visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153&hl=en_US.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team
------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.

----------copy ends here---------

Now where is the catch. Google pays you a revenue from Ad sense when you reach $100. Now over a year since I put Ad sense on this blog and some other not important site, I finally get close to $100. Maybe around $97 at time, when my account got closed. Do you feel a scam moment yet?

Where did I go wrong?

I read out twice the link above from email I received and I found out that there is so many terms and conditions, that virtually every usual blog which has blog roll and some widgets and maybe some other popular applications in world of bloggers will be suitable to be suspended.

That's no good. So scam moment is in fact, that my account was not disabled when my balance was $10, or $30.... but when I was close to be paid off.

Another thing which come on my mind why I get banned from AdSense could be since lately I really doubled my revenue after I followed the instructions on Yeepage - How to double your AdSense earning for doing 5 minutes work? That's an excellent article, but the service providing Adsblacklist claims that using filters is not against the AdSense rules...

The truth
When I read all about Ad sense and disabled accounts I found, that Google gives back money to advertisers from disabled accounts. So that's fine, they are not actually run away with "my money". But I never clicked on ads on my blog or haven't produced bad content. And those readers who clicked on links clicked on them because they were so similar to things I write here.

Alert: FFG sent out email - nothing much to believe

FFG trading website problems are not over yet. Earlier today so called FFG trading support sent out an email to its investors. It is funny to see they claim their domain has been suspended, but at same time they are sending an email from the very same domain name which suppose suspended. Additional, as you can se from copy of an email, they use noreply address, so this support is everything but available for its costumers. I can with high certainty say, that FFG is scam. Stay away. In case they are back, there will be massive withdraw request, which will kill this HYIP.

It can happen FFG by some miracle solve its problems, I strongly suggest not to deposit any money there. If you are an investor please, don't suggest people to invest into this scamy HYIP.

										Reply Reply to all Forward Print Add FFG to Contacts list Delete this message Report phishing Show original Message text garbled?
		from				FFG Trading		hide details	15:44 (6 hours ago)
	reply-to					FFG Trading
	to		me
	date					27 Mar 2008 15:44
	subject					FFG Trading Domain Name Issues

Dear ,

You are receiving this e-mail because you have an account at FFG Trading.

Our domain name ffg-trading.com has been suspended by the domain registration authority due to a number of complaints that our domain name is involved in fraudulent activities.

Currently we are in contact with the domain registration authority to dispute their decision to suspend our domain name and awaiting for their answers.

At the same time we are finalizing the preparation of a new temporary domain name which will be provided to you later today.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

Kind regards,

FFG Trading Customer Support
Ferrum Forex Group LLC

ALERT: Another e-gold phishing email

Some minutes ago I received another try to catch my e-gold information. NEVER click on such links. Here is an email I received (clickable links removed), if you got something like that, delete it. And inform your friends, referrals and downline on e-gold with all means possible.

"AccountRobot_donotreply@e-gold.com"

to me

show details

16:49 (2 hours ago)

** Necessary examination of your e-gold account address ** This automatic email notice lets you know that your Account Information for your e-gold account is incorrect and examination of your e-gold account address required. You must as quickly as possible verify your address. To verify your Account Information address please click on this link: Examination of e-gold account This email was sent from e-gold Ltd ( www.e-gold.com ). ABOUT e-gold e-gold is an electronic currency, 100% backed by physical gold in allocated storage, that empowers people to use gold as money. e-gold is integrated into a secure account-based payment system, operating globally 24/7, featuring instantaneous payment settlement with no charge back risk, at lower cost. Shopping cart, automation, and mobile phone interfaces are available. Operational since 1996, e-gold has settled over 79M transactions, serves customers in 165 countries, and has a circulation of more than 2.4 metric tonnes of e-gold. ------------------------------ --------------- Thank you for using e-gold! --------------------------------------------- Please do not reply to this automatically generated email message.

ALERT: Solidcash is not so solid

Maybe I was really a little too optimistic with Solidcash.net . It just seems HYIP times are over. Now just scammers are operating in this area. Solidcash has made last withdrawal couple days ago, so I would say this is another scam in the row.

What to say in this case... We have seen this so many times, and strange, there are still naive people (like me :) who trust in HYIP in hope to get something out of it.

DON'T INVEST IN SOLIDCASH.
DON'T INVEST IN OPENFOREX.
DON'T FEED IGNORANT THIEFS.

If you really have some money to spend, invest it into honest programs, with real goals and vision. For a start if you haven't, go to RTA online investment , make some calculations if you don't trust my signal. And look my first green light for RTA in Review of RTA online investment.
Imagine, on May 14th 2007, I gave RTA an excellent review and yes, it is still online. And my feelings are, that Max is here for long haul.

How could we avoid the bet-funds.com scam?

One thing which I learned in my one year activity in HYIP is, that it is crucial to get the feeling, when certain program will go down. There has been numerous signals we can learn - from some suspicion very attractive new offers to selective payments (no, I can't forget Privatefin SCAM). Let me show you, what I've learned from Bet-funds.com scam.



First signal, that something is going wrong was, when they announced, that Moneybookers is no longer a way of payment - what is very strange, since they suppose to operate with bets, and many bookies uses MB.

Second signal is something completely new to me. If one would check the date, until when domain name bet-funds.com was registered, a very exact date of when site will go down could be announced. So when you invest, check also this rather small but seems important detail.

Today I did domain check again, similar as I did over a month ago in September, when bet-funds was down. What I found is, that domain name has been paid a week ago. What that means? Was original administrators so lame, that they forgot to pay for domain? Maybe this is not a scam after all, but rather unprofessional team with insufficient Internet knowledge?

Those questions will be clear soon. All records show, that today some guys from Italy are behind this. This is what I found on www.checkdomain.com:

Registrant:
Andrea ralli
via damiano chiesa, 5
roma, rm 00136
Italy

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: BET-FUNDS.COM
Created on: 11-Sep-06
Expires on: 11-Sep-08
Last Updated on: 25-Oct-07

Administrative Contact:
ralli, Andrea  revenuedriver@gmail.com
via damiano chiesa, 5
roma, rm 00136
Italy
0635404810

Technical Contact:
ralli, Andrea  revenuedriver@gmail.com
via damiano chiesa, 5
roma, rm 00136
Italy
0635404810

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.FASTPARK.NET
NS2.FASTPARK.NET

So if you lost some money on bet-funds as I did, maybe it is time to stop losing your assets on scam HYIP. I closed all my HYIP activity or better, their admins scamed away. Therefore I suggest you my dearest reader, invest into proven programs. At this moment I can suggest you only one, RTA online investment, which will soon be online for a year, with honest and cooperative admin Max Willis behind. I remember how he was fighting when he came online with his Invest pool, that his program is not HYIP. Maybe I didn't understand him completely, but now I do. RTA may not have the highest profit, far from that, but it has stable daily profit, which will survive for a long time (while all those HYIP scams will die).

Keep your money safe and stay away from HYIP.

ALERT: Phishing letter to e-gold users

I have just received a phishing e-mail with subject: Notification e-gold Accounts User Agreement Update, which is a very very dangerous. It is pretending it is official e-mail from e-gold, but it is not. If you'll enter your data on link, they will hack your account. BE AWARE! Always be sure you are logged to correct webpage. E-gold is using https protocol, while site you are forwarded on this pshising e-mail is under http. Spread the word!!! Protect your e-gold.

The messageI received is pasted here:

e-gold Users.
This is Letter from Dr. Douglas Jackson; Chairman, e-gold, Ltd.

e-gold and its Operator, Gold & Silver Reserve (G&SR®), including G&SR
exchange service OmniPay® in cooperation with the United States Government
and pursuant to a lawfully issued written request, from now we starting
verification of all our e-gold accounts.

e-gold operates legally and does not condone persons attempting to use
e-gold for criminal activity. e-gold has a long history of cooperation
with law enforcement agencies in the US and worldwide, providing data
and investigative assistance in response to lawful requests.

Click here to start verification of your e-gold account

I hope to have additional and useful facts shortly and will communicate
them when appropriate. I can assure you e-gold is up and running,
supporting its customers, and continuing to grow.

Dr. Douglas Jackson

This automatic email notice lets you know that modifications have been
made to the Account User Agreement for your e-gold account.

Please do not reply to this automatically generated email message.

Alert: What is wrong with Bet-funds?

A rather solid program, which was looking promising, has severe problems. After some days of unavailability of their website, they were back on Friday, with explanation of being bombed by ddos attacks. Everything fair and cool, but from yesterday site is down again. All signs shows that their domain name has expired a week ago.

To be honest, if this site goes down, I really have NO trust in either HYIP. Sooner or later they all die or better, escape with our money. In a way it sounds very pessimistic and also against HYIP of any kind, but yes, it looks that there is scam everywhere. And those, who try to be honest, are disqualified (case of RTA, where e-Gold deliberately tried to destroy reputation of honest admin) or they are too small to be seen in a huge box of scam junk.

I will continue to monitor the HYIP playground, where I've been over a year now. But my opinion on HYIP and other Internet money making has been very crystal by now:
It is better to lose your money yourself, then to leave some unknown scammers to take it away from you - just because their site looks nice!

Alert: Is Roninvest.com connected with Blue People?

Some may remember one of biggest scams this year, Blue People, the HYIP in which I invested significant value, but my feeling was right and I escaped soon enough to get away with profit. Today I received an email from Roinvest.com - the site I never opened nor clicked on the link.

Since I do strongly believe, that this site is connected with Blue People. Similar as their database linked once (or they sell it), this author is using similar writing style, similar spelling errors and email domain name country origin is same as Blue People had and most likely GHip too..

I suggest to stay away from this HYIP.

The email contents:

	from		join@investor.de		hide details	14:21 (9 hours ago)
	date			16-Aug-2007 14:21
	subject			New HYIP! Whant to join private investment group?

Hello,

Join New private investment group!
And earn profits from your e-gold!
http://roninvest.com/?ref=Farn

Program stats at this time:
Accepts: e-gold
Started: Jul 17, 2007
Online days: 29
Members: 328
Invested: 54,276.00 USD

RON INVEST is an offshore company in Panama with a financial
license to manage 3. parts money. That means that we have legal
right to invest money on behalf of our members. RON INVEST is
owned by a Foundation in Panama for safety reason.

They invest the funds that receive from investors. The funds are
invested into high growth securities on all major stock markets
of the world. They also trade actively on the Forex market. They
do not limit theys operations only to online trading, they are
also involved in a number of offline investment sources that even
thought they are not as profitful as securities and currencies
trading, are worth investing in.

Investment group url is:
http://roninvest.com/?ref=Farn

______________________________

______________________________________
This is not spam
You have received this email because you visited our site or one of
our partnered sites and commenced registration to receive our newsletter.

Back from vacations

Today I've returned from summer vacations. It was nice and I must say that computer free zone can be sometimes even healthy. Neverthelss it seems I haven't get over Privatefin scam. My decision was clear, to keep on telling the truth through this blog and I also contacted e-gold support for abuse issuse. I received very fast response, they are asking me to send details of batches spent on their e-gold account.

I feel bad

Lately I've been so depressed after unsolved issue with Privatefin, that I lost quite some motivation to write some useful information in my blog. Sorry for that. But over $1000 lost in Privatefin don't give me any positive thought. I am not negative person, but it really pisses me off such events as this one. And what hurts the most is, Privatefin is operating, majority of users are getting paid, monitors are showing green light, status paying. GIVE ME A BREAK!

And it is quite the same on forums. Now follow my advice, when HYIP has some kind of problems, when you see one user is not getting withdrawals, when site is going down to often, stay away. You may miss the timing sometimes, but hey, sooner or later, every HYIP ends. I badly judged one HYIP, but most scams I left before they shutdown their doors. If you check my posts back, I had bad feeling about Privatefin already. I should quit when they come back after one weekend downtime for their site. But.. what is done is done. Now I can wait to get back money on other programs...

Details on my Privatefin account

Since there have been quite unclear, if Privatefin is scam or not, I decided to post my case backed up with current screenshots from my account. Normally I wouldn't do that, but I believe it is in common interest of you, my dear reader, to keep you informed. The message is clear: STAY AWAY FROM PRIVATEFIN. So far I've sent 3 emails, on three different addresses from their support. I received no reply so far. Think about it... it could be you, and your $900.

It could be a technical mistake, I don't know, but it would be fair they fix it up and inform investors.

1. First screenshot - my account; things to watch there ACTIVE DEPOSIT $914.70 and also take a look at AVAILABLE WITHDRAWAL $0.01.
2. On second screenshot you can see my latest deposits. Last is from Jun-7 and all are made in special plan, what means 9 days. Now we are Jun-14 according to Privatefin server. So if everything would work ok, only last two deposits should count for active deposits, right? Based on that, this should be around $300 . Remember, on my account active deposit is over $900 for 5 days now. I did not receive any daily profit.
   
3. Last screenshot are my withdrawals. You can clearly see, that my withdrawal request from Jun-10 had never been processed. Description there is empty. Last larger sum withdrawed was on Jun-7. Withdrawal on Jun-13 was test, when I successfully got paid $0.40 from referral deposit.
   

I hope I was clear enough. And it really is all about the money and if they took mine, please don't give them yours. Unless this issue is resolved.

ALERT: Privatefin - scam

After waiting for today, nothing turned out to be positive for Privatefin. This time I misjudged HYIP program, it went down a way too soon. Nevertheless there were some signs this is a scam, but everything looks like technical problems. Anyway, another school for next time. I need more strict timing in here.

The situation at this moment is, that Privatefin are not giving daily profits and they are holding withdrawals. DON'T DEPOSIT IN HERE!

Possible scenarios:

1. They will come back, paid everything, give back missed interested for 2 days. And after some days, they will disappear.
2. They won't come back (most likely), but they will still take deposits.
3. Third most unlikely scenario is, that they had some problems over weekend, and they'll come back and everything will turned back to normal.

Either way, I am out of here. If I will get withdrawals back, I definitely won't invest in here.

ALERT: Blue people 2nd time

I sincerly hope that all readers of this blog didn't make any further investments since my last Alert on BluePeople. I haven't been paid now for over 24 hours, what was normally not a case. My belief is, that BluePeople is down. There is still possible to deposit money, so watch out and don't get scammed by this one.

UPDATE: Site is unavailable at the moment...

E-generation is down

For some time there has been indicated, that Egeneration website is not working, and even longer they are not paying. My signal when to left this program was perfectly set, even tough site was surprisingly long online - at least one month after I withdrawed my last deposit, they were still paying.

Generally I can say, that current programs under recommended HYIP are quite safe. Especially RTA would be my first choice at the moment.