Euro Business Guide / European City Guide SCAM

Euro Business Guide sends out spam emails of the following nature:

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Subject: European company registration 2007/2008

Dear Sirs,

If you like to have your company registered in the registry of European companies;

Please print out the enclosed form (PDF file), fill it and send it back to:

Euro Business Guide
P.O. Box 2021
3500 GA UTRECHT
The Netherlands

Updating is free of charge!!

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Attached is a PDF form that one can fill out.
Again, you will notice that the form states in bold "Updating is free of charge".


However, when you read the tiny small print, you will see that you are actually signing a contract for 3 years, and they charge you 990 Euro per year, see enlargement here:



This is a variant of the same scam as the "European City Guide".
If you mistakenly signed one of these forms, DO NOT PAY.
As the following web sites show, these scammers are after easy cash and not after law suits, although they use bully tactics to intimiate their victims. Check out Stop The European City Guide and Stop the European City Guide. In fact, they have already been convicted of fraud. To evade the law, they just move from one place to another.

aa419 back, CastleCops under paypal reputation attack

aa419 is back again, though still under DDoS attack, according to their web site on a CastleCops server. CastleCops itself has been and is still under DDoS attack. As of 18.September they are down, but supposedly because of a hardware failure, according to a comment posted in a washingtonpost blog. In that blog they also report that CastleCops is now subject to a different type of attack. The crooks use hijacked PayPal accounts to make donations to CastleCops. To users this makes it look like CastleCops are the crooks. CastleCops is working with the FBI, and they are working on returning the defrauded money.

Cyberwar for real.

aa419 under attack.

aa419 (artists against 419 scams) is under serious DDOS attack, and mostly not accessible. In a cache at google, I found some of the following forum notes:

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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:13 pm
As some of you may have noticed, aa419.org has been under a severe DDOS attack the last days. The attack is still ongoing. Our fabulous tech specialists were able to block thousands of IP addresses. As a result we can keep the website online despite the attack.

We strongly suspect that a Russian crime syndicate is behind this - apparently they are a bit upset about many, many shut down job scam / money mule scam websites. So in a way this DDOS attack is good news, because it certainly means that we cost these people a LOT of money.

We absolutley intend to keep aa419 online and not give in to them. And we think this is a good time to get some more money mule / job scam websites shut down.

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Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:42 pm
SumYunGai wrote:
Botnet time is expensive. I suppose you've passed the IP addresses on to ISPs so they can take the appropriate action, whether that's warning the user or shutting down their Internet connection.


Yes, we are passing the IP addresses on to the relevant ISPs. But we are talking about several thousand blocked IP addresses so far.

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Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 4:52 pm
Allright, the hoster temporarily took down our server. The criminals were pounding our server at 400GB/h. That means, they severaly increased the attack after our excellent tech guys were able to keep aa419 online the last days despite the attack.

We will keep you updated.

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Also, 419eater.com and Scamwarners.com appears to be under attack (see this blog). And according to CastleCops, which is another anti-phising/malware/spam site, several other sites, including CastleCops are under severe ddos attacks.

Virus and Anti-Spam software that gets you...

BBC News had a piece on virus and hacking tools that have become a commercial commodity for criminals to purchase. Apparently all kinds of hacking tools are now offered commercially and as kits. Expect more SPAM, phishing, and other types of attacks in the future.

Another threat to personal computers stems for poor or even fraudulent anti-virus and/or anti-spyware software. There is plenty of anti-spyware software out there that really only makes the problem worse. Bad and dangerous programs posing as security software are certainly not good. Therefore, buy your products only from large, established, reputable companies.
A notorious case of such rogue software is/was SpyLocked or SpyWareLocked. Searches with google turn up lots of sites with instructions how to remove it. See, e.g., these removal instructions.
It even got its own entry on Wikipedia. Another fake program is VirusLocker (see these removal instructions).
The imagination of fraudsters is unlimited. Check out this huge list of bad software sites on the Spyware Warrior Site.

Storm worms enters blogs

The BBC had a report that the Storm worm is now invading blogs. Messages are posted to blogs that link to web sites that try to inject the worm into your computer. Subject lines for these messages are for example:

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are you kidding me? lol
Dude dont send that stuff to my home email...
Dude your gonna get caught, lol
HAHAHAHAHAHA, man your insane!
I cant belive you did this
LMAO, your crazy man
LOL, dude what are you doing
man, who filmed this thing?
oh man your nutz
OMG, what are you thinking

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A search with, for example, "HAHAHAHAHAHA, man your insane!" turns up many google blogspot sites. Be extremely careful with such sites. Some of them are just full of Storm Worm spam messages.
However, some of the google sites have now been blocked, most likely by Google or the blog owners, and only registered users can log in.

In any case, this does not bode well at all. This hacker group has now a system of probably over 1 Million infected computers under their control, and I am sure in a short time there will attempts to flood other popular sites.

Insights into 419 advance fee frauds

Here is a Web site, scambusters419.co.uk, that will give you plenty of insights into the workings of 419 advance free fraudsters. If you have some spare time, read how the owner plays and fools with the scammers.

Another Web site with some hilarious pictures of scammers is at 419eater.com. Have a look at this site.

These sites are operated by "scambaiters". They respond to SPAM emails of the advance fee fraud (419) type and make fools of the scammers.
See for example this exchange between a scammer and a baiter, where the scammer claims to be Samuel Eze from a bible ministry. I don't want to give away the punch line, but the pictures the guy sends are hilarious.

Enjoy both sites!

More info on HYIPs and scams

Catty Shaq has more infos and discussions of HYIPs and other online money making scams. It also has information on the e-Gold court case.