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Fraudulent job offer: "Westernpoint Inc." (westernpoint.org)
Westernpoint Inc. (westernpoint.org) is part of a series of fraudulent companies whose only purpose is to recruit job seekers to trick them into assisting in criminal fraud.
Some of the content of the website of this bogus company is ripped off from Xoom, a genuine money transfer company in the United States. An earlier version of this scam was called "Sparta-Trade Inc." which was active in October/November 2004.
With these fraudulent job offers, the "employee" may receive an illegal fund transfer from a bank account or PayPal account that was the target of a "phishing" attack. Or he may collect a payment from an unsuspecting eBay-buyer who will never receive the goods, while the "employee" sends the money to virtually untraceable criminals in another country.
Here is the WHOIS record for the domain (created on 2005-01-13):
As in most of the other fraudulent job offers, the bogus website is based on a real website, of which it is a rip-off. Compare these passages:Request: westernpoint.org Domain ID:D105564084-LROR Domain Name:WESTERNPOINT.ORG Created On:13-Jan-2005 14:56:13 UTC Last Updated On:07-Feb-2005 19:28:13 UTC Expiration Date:13-Jan-2006 14:56:13 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:Tucows Inc. (R11-LROR) Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED Registrant ID:tuTZWxAlhxcBd8ET Registrant Name:Jason Venne Registrant Organization:WesternPoint Inc. Registrant Street1:61 Abbey Mem. Dr Registrant Street2: Registrant Street3: Registrant City:Chicopee Registrant State/Province:MA Registrant Postal Code:01020 Registrant Country:US Registrant Phone:+1.4135945924 Registrant Phone Ext.: Registrant FAX: Registrant FAX Ext.: Registrant Email:jasonvenne29@yahoo.com Admin ID:tuTZWxAlhxcBd8ET Admin Name:Jason Venne Admin Organization:WesternPoint Inc. Admin Street1:61 Abbey Mem. Dr Admin Street2: Admin Street3: Admin City:Chicopee Admin State/Province:MA Admin Postal Code:01020 Admin Country:US Admin Phone:+1.4135945924 Admin Phone Ext.: Admin FAX: Admin FAX Ext.: Admin Email:jasonvenne29@yahoo.com Tech ID:tu7QYIfsFubMzmBI Tech Name:EV1 Servers Domain Services Tech Organization:EV1.net Tech Street1:390 Benmar Tech Street2:Suite 200 Tech Street3: Tech City:Houston Tech State/Province:Texas Tech Postal Code:77060 Tech Country:US Tech Phone:+1.7133337873 Tech Phone Ext.: Tech FAX:+1.7139429332 Tech FAX Ext.: Tech Email:domains@ev1servers.net Name Server:NS1.NS555.BIZ Name Server:NS2.NS555.BIZ Name Server: Name Server: Name Server: Name Server: Name Server: Name Server: Name Server: Name Server: Name Server: Name Server: Name Server:
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WesternPoint Inc. is an online-to-offline international money transfer service. We offer a secure, fast, and inexpensive means of sending money from the UK to offline recipients worldwide. |
Xoom Corporation is an online-to-offline international money transfer service. Xoom offers a secure, fast, and inexpensive means to send money online-to-offline recipients in eight countries, including: Dominican Republic, Jamaica, India, Hong Kong, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, and Sri Lanka. |
Further information:
- As you can see the domain was only registered four weeks ago. That is the first red flag. Any company involved in fund transfers that appears brand new deserves intense scrutiny.
- The website has a "vacancies" link in a very prominent place, as the second menu item. That's unusual for financial companies but standard for fraudulent money transfer schemes, who recruit, defraud and change names in short cycles.
- The website doesn't mention how long the company has been around, who founded it or who any of its key employees are. It doesn't quite sound like it was created by a native English speaker either.
- The contact address on the website lists a top-class Fifth Avenue, New Your City postal address, but the 631 area code goes with commuter-distance Long Island.
- When I googled for the phrase "online-to-offline international money transfer service" used on the website, I came across two older websites that used the same phrase, followed by identical wording. One is called Xoom and that appears to be the legitimate company whose identity was ripped off as a skeleton for the fraud site. The other was "Sparta Trade", apparently an earlier version of the scam, which was mentioned here:
If you have been recruited by "Westernpoint Inc.", contact us and also report it to the police!
Here is information on the "Sparta-Trade" earlier incarnation of the scam, from Code Fish Spam Watch in Australia:
"Sparta-Trade" Job Scam Warning
Articles / Warning
Date: Oct 20, 2004 - 09:13 PM
A big thank you to the great person that sent us this one. It seems that the same people who were running the "Plasma Connection" Job Scam preteding to be involved with the job site company Seek.com.au have now brewed up another one that targets Careerone.com.au. The email that was sent to us reads:
Subject: RE: Recent ApplicationThe "job" is of course a scam. This is another attempt to recruit mules to help launder money (unwittingly) from exploited bank accounts in Australia. The mule helps the phishers by wiring the stolen money overseas and thus when the money is tracked the mule is left holding bag and any "wages" they have earnt from the "job" they certainly do not get to keep.
We have received your contact information from Careerone.com.au employment agency. We thought that you might be interested in part time position to work from home with our company. My name is Chris Mathew, project coordinator and your direct supervisor at Sparta-Trade. Please read the information bellow about our company and your job description.
Sparta-Trade Inc. is an online-to-offline international money transfer service. Sparta-Trade Inc. currently offers a secure, fast, and inexpensive means to send money from any of 38 countries to recipients in 8 countries. Sparta-Trade Inc.'s headquarters is located in New York City, U.S. For more information, please visit our website: www.sparta-trade.com
There are 5 openings for a representative to assist in creation our virtual local presence for the back office functions. Person, who is accepted for this position, will perform these tasks:
1. Establish a virtual office: receive the correspondence from our company or clients to his/her residential address, answer project related e-mails, and perform a limited number of phone calls / customer support.
2. Facilitate the financial transactions from the clients. Sparta-Trade Inc. will organize the sales and marketing campaigns. Our manager will inform you when the transaction is expected to arrive.
3. Report to our manager on arrival of the payment.
4. Forward the payment to the customer at the destination. The instructions will be provided on the case-per-case bases.
5. We pay the compensation of 20 AUD per hour for all coordinated transactions. Your wages will be paid every two weeks from the start of your employment by direct deposit to your bank account. You must have a bank account to receive wages from us. Plus you will receive a commission for the completed transaction. This commission will be paid out after every transaction. Also we have a rating system and bonus systems for the quarterly review. Dependant on your work results, you might be promoted to the management positions within 3-6 months.
To continue the application please fill in our online application:
http://www.sparta-trade.com/index-2.html
Your information will be used only within Sparta-Trade Inc. Every employee, who satisfies our requirements, will be contacted by our manager to conduct basic phone interview. At that time you will be able to ask any questions you might have.
Good luck!
Chris Mathew
The domain being used for the scam has only recently been registered (7th of October) and some quick checking shows that whilst the look of the site doesn't appear to be ripped off from anywhere (seems to be a generic business site template) the content certainly has. Some digging shows that a majority of the content was stolen and altered from Xoom.com, a real and reputable online transaction agency.
It is imporant to note that Careerone.com.au is not in legaue with the scammers and judging by the fact there is no warning on the site about this email they probably are currently unaware of this spreading scam. We hope to inform them by email today and no doubt other people have also been reporting it as well.
WHOIS record for "sparta-trade.com":
This farudulent domain used the same name server as westernpoint.org does now.
Request: sparta-trade.com
connected to whois.opensrs.net [216.40.33.170:43] ...
Registrant:
Sparta Trade Ltd
320 Clermont Ave
Brooklyn, New York 11205
US
Domain name: SPARTA-TRADE.COM
Administrative Contact:
Miller, Jake jakemiller73@hotmail.com
320 Clermont Ave
Brooklyn, New York 11205
US
+1.718623-1041
Technical Contact:
Miller, Jake jakemiller73@hotmail.com
320 Clermont Ave
Brooklyn, New York 11205
US
+1.718623-1041
Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 30-Oct-2004.
Record expires on 07-Oct-2005.
Record created on 07-Oct-2004.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.NS555.BIZ
NS2.NS555.BIZ
NS3.NS555.BIZ
NS4.NS555.BIZ
Domain status: ACTIVE
GlobalTransfer (globaltransfer.net, globaltransfer.us and globaltransfer.org) is part of a series of fraudulent companies whose only purpose is to recruit job seekers to trick them into assisting in criminal fraud. This scam is a repeat of the Westernpoint Inc. scam (see above). The .net and .us domain were registered using the same (probably fake) postal address.
From: "sc Robertson" <emailaddress1> To: <emailaddress2> Sent: Wednesday, 27 April, 2005 13:55 Subject: Expanding company has immediate work This opportunity is great for people looking for extra income. We are looking for people that want to make money working from home! We are looking for people who share one common goal, the burning desire to make a change. Your personal instructor will teach and train you how to put the internet and your computer to work. We are looking for people that want to make money working part time. We will need 3 hours per day from you. You can work part time or full time. Our company is designed to take advantage of the exploding internet technology market. We provide continuous support from the team of successful people. Remember there are no costs to start working with our company. You can try it on for size without jeopardizing your current position! We will need 10 - 15 hours per week commitment. No fee to join our company! We will train and mentor you one- on-one if you are serious and remain teachable. Please provide us your contact information to get more details about this job offer! To proceed with application, simply fill out the form at: http://www.globaltransfer.net/vacancies.html
Dear Firstname,
Thank you for your interest in joining our company.
Globaltransfer Inc is global funds transfer service. GlobalTransfer Inc
offers safe, sound and economical ways to send funds from any of
8 countries to recipients in 6 countries for private individuals and
mid sized companies.
Globaltransfer Inc.\'s head office is situated in New York, U.S. To find
out more about our company please visit www.globaltransfer.net There are
5 positions full- time and part time available for right candidates
to work as our representatives in your region.
Someone, who is accepted for this position, will perform these initial
tasks:
1. Set up an effective local office: receive the correspondence from our
company or clients to his/her residential address, answer project
related e-mails, and perform a limited number of phone calls / customer
support. This office could be your residence; the only requirement is
that you should be able to receive mail and phone calls.
2. Assist general managers to make the financial transactions from the
clients. GlobalTransfer Inc. and our customers will organize the sales
and marketing campaigns. Our manager will inform you when the
transaction is expected to arrive.
3. We offer the reimbursement of 20 AUD per hour plus commission for
each serviced transaction. Your salary will be paid out every 2 weeks from
the start of your employment with our company through wire transfer to your
bank account. You should have a bank account to receive compensations
from our company. Besides you will get a commission for every finished
transaction. This commission will be rewarded after every transaction.
If you are interested please let me know. We look forward to hear
from you soon!
Mike Wilt
Business Development Manager
Here is the WHOIS record for "globaltransfer.net" (created on 2005-03-20):
Request: globaltransfer.net
connected to whois.godaddy.com [63.241.136.46:43] ...
Registrant: Global Transfer Inc.
356 Deer Ridge Place
Gray, Georgia 31032
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: GLOBALTRANSFER.NET
Created on: 20-Mar-05
Expires on: 20-Mar-06
Last Updated on: 14-Apr-05
Administrative Contact:
Bowe, Mike m_bowe2000@yahoo.com
Global Transfer Inc.
356 Deer Ridge Place
Gray, Georgia 31032
United States
(478) 986-5217
Technical Contact:
Bowe, Mike m_bowe2000@yahoo.com
Global Transfer Inc.
356 Deer Ridge Place
Gray, Georgia 31032
United States
(478) 986-5217
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.GLOBALTRANSFER.NET
NS2.GLOBALTRANSFER.NET
Registry Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Here is the WHOIS record for "globaltransfer.us" (created on 2005-03-21):
Request: globaltransfer.us whois server for *.us is whois.nic.us ... from whois.nic.us:43 [cached Thu Jun 9 06:17:30 2005 UTC] Domain Name: GLOBALTRANSFER.US Domain ID: D7476863-US Sponsoring Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC. Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited Domain Status: clientRenewProhibited Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited Registrant ID: GODA-010808319 Registrant Name: Mike Bowe Registrant Organization: Global Transfer Inc. Registrant Address1: 356 Deer Ridge Place Registrant City: Gray Registrant State/Province: Georgia Registrant Postal Code: 31032 Registrant Country: United States Registrant Country Code: US Registrant Phone Number: +1.4789865217 Registrant Email: m_bowe2000@yahoo.com Registrant Application Purpose: P3 Registrant Nexus Category: C21 Administrative Contact ID: GODA-210808319 Administrative Contact Name: Mike Bowe Administrative Contact Organization: Global Transfer Inc. Administrative Contact Address1: 356 Deer Ridge Place Administrative Contact City: Gray Administrative Contact State/Province: Georgia Administrative Contact Postal Code: 31032 Administrative Contact Country: United States Administrative Contact Country Code: US Administrative Contact Phone Number: +1.4789865217 Administrative Contact Email: m_bowe2000@yahoo.com Administrative Application Purpose: P3 Administrative Nexus Category: C21 Billing Contact ID: GODA-310808319 Billing Contact Name: Mike Bowe Billing Contact Organization: Global Transfer Inc. Billing Contact Address1: 356 Deer Ridge Place Billing Contact City: Gray Billing Contact State/Province: Georgia Billing Contact Postal Code: 31032 Billing Contact Country: United States Billing Contact Country Code: US Billing Contact Phone Number: +1.4789865217 Billing Contact Email: m_bowe2000@yahoo.com Billing Application Purpose: P3 Billing Nexus Category: C21 Technical Contact ID: GODA-110808319 Technical Contact Name: Mike Bowe Technical Contact Organization: Global Transfer Inc. Technical Contact Address1: 356 Deer Ridge Place Technical Contact City: Gray Technical Contact State/Province: Georgia Technical Contact Postal Code: 31032 Technical Contact Country: United States Technical Contact Country Code: US Technical Contact Phone Number: +1.4789865217 Technical Contact Email: m_bowe2000@yahoo.com Technical Application Purpose: P3 Technical Nexus Category: C21 Name Server: NS1.THEDNSSERVICE.COM Name Server: NS2.THEDNSSERVICE.COM Created by Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC. Last Updated by Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC. Domain Registration Date: Mon Mar 21 00:43:15 GMT 2005 Domain Expiration Date: Mon Mar 20 23:59:59 GMT 2006 Domain Last Updated Date: Wed Apr 20 08:22:42 GMT 2005
Here is the WHOIS record for "globaltransfer.org" (created on 2005-03-21):
Request: globaltransfer.org whois server for *.org is whois.publicinterestregistry.net ... connected to whois.publicinterestregistry.net [129.33.96.137:43] ... NOTICE: Access to .ORG WHOIS information is provided to assist persons in determining the contents of a domain name registration record in the PIR registry database. The data in this record is provided by Public Interest Registry for informational purposes only, and PIR does not guarantee its accuracy. This service is intended only for query-based access. You agree that you will use this data only for lawful purposes and that, under no circumstances will you use this data to: (a) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission by e-mail, telephone, or facsimile of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations to entities other than the data recipient's own existing customers; or (b) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes that send queries or data to the systems of Registry Operator or any ICANN-Accredited Registrar, except as reasonably necessary to register domain names or modify existing registrations. All rights reserved. PIR reserves the right to modify these terms at any time. By submitting this query, you agree to abide by this policy. Domain ID:D105923671-LROR Domain Name:GLOBALTRANSFER.ORG Created On:21-Mar-2005 00:43:14 UTC Last Updated On:22-Jun-2005 08:52:37 UTC Expiration Date:21-Mar-2006 00:43:14 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:Go Daddy Software, Inc. (R91-LROR) Status:OK Registrant ID:GODA-010808321 Registrant Name:Mike Bowe Registrant Organization:Global Transfer Inc. Registrant Street1:356 Deer Ridge Place Registrant Street2: Registrant Street3: Registrant City:Gray Registrant State/Province:Georgia Registrant Postal Code:31032 Registrant Country:US Registrant Phone:+1.4789865217 Registrant Phone Ext.: Registrant FAX: Registrant FAX Ext.: Registrant Email:m_bowe2000@yahoo.com Admin ID:GODA-210808321 Admin Name:Mike Bowe Admin Organization:Global Transfer Inc. Admin Street1:356 Deer Ridge Place Admin Street2: Admin Street3: Admin City:Gray Admin State/Province:Georgia Admin Postal Code:31032 Admin Country:US Admin Phone:+1.4789865217 Admin Phone Ext.: Admin FAX: Admin FAX Ext.: Admin Email:m_bowe2000@yahoo.com Tech ID:GODA-110808321 Tech Name:Mike Bowe Tech Organization:Global Transfer Inc. Tech Street1:356 Deer Ridge Place Tech Street2: Tech Street3: Tech City:Gray Tech State/Province:Georgia Tech Postal Code:31032 Tech Country:US Tech Phone:+1.4789865217 Tech Phone Ext.: Tech FAX: Tech FAX Ext.: Tech Email:m_bowe2000@yahoo.com Name Server:NS1.GLOBALTRANSFER.ORG Name Server:NS2.GLOBALTRANSFER.ORG