Recovery Scammers - ifwglobal.com

[AlanJones]

Fake website ifwglobal.com claiming to be able to recover funds stolen by Internet scammers

From the fake website:

AUSTRALIA
Level 32 BT Tower,
1 Market Street,
Sydney NSW 2000
P: +61 2 9275 8725
F: +61 2 9275 8800
PHILIPPINES
Level 40, PBCom Tower,
6795 Ayala Avenue Corner V.A.,
Rufino Street, Makati City,
Manila 1226
P: +63 (2) 7890 9127
HONG KONG
Unit 503, 5/F Silvercord
Tower 2,
30 Canton Road,
Tsimshatsui, Kowloon
P: +852 262 238 68
F: +852 302 047 18
UNITED KINGDOM
50 Liverpool Street
London, EC2M 7PR
P: +44 (0)20 7206 2702
F: +44 (0)20 7256 4050

The address in the UK is a serviced office.

Ken Gamble
Executive Chairman
Ken Gamble is the co-founder and current executive chairman of IFW Global. He is a professional cybercrime investigator and surveillance specialist with 30 years’ experience in the private sector. Ken has consulted to an array of government, corporate and foreign based law enforcement agencies. Clients include the Australian Commonwealth government, large insurance companies, multinational corporations, high-net-worth individuals and foreign government agencies. Ken has also worked alongside regulatory and anti-corruption bodies in every continent of the world during this career.

Allan Watson
Director of Global Investigations
Allan Watson is the Director of Global Investigations and has 35 years’ experience in varying fields of investigations. These include serious investment fraud, asset tracing and recovery, business intelligence and security and crisis management in both the corporate and government sectors. Allan is presently in charge of coordinating complex investigations in many continents across the world including Asia, Europe, Africa, Middle East and the Americas.

Alana Maurushat
Director
Dr Alana Maurushat is a Director of IFW Global and in Professor of Cybersecurity and Behaviour at Western Sydney University. She has a B.A. in Communications (University of Calgary), B.C.L. (McGill), LL.B. (McGill), LL.M. with Concentration in Law and Technology (University of Ottawa), PhD (University of New South Wales). She is an expert in cybercrime, privacy, telecommunications, and cybersecurity. She has worked on projects for both the Canadian and Australian governments, advises to industry, and is often in the media.

Darren Kelly
Senior Investigator
Darren Kelly is IFW’s leading Senior Investigator and has 10 years’ experience as an investigations specialist in both criminal and civil proceedings, Darren's experience focuses on identification and investigation of fraud-related crime. Darren has developed a proven track record of reliable relationship management and customer service across a diverse range of internal and external business stakeholders, working in busy team environments to deliver exceptional customer service, with a continuous approach to improving ways of working, no matter the environment he is in.

Mod Note: This appears to be a case of stolen identity - Ken Gamble, Alana Maurushat and Internet Fraud Watchdog are mentioned on a number of legitimate websites - but not in the context of recovering lost funds. Also, the photograph of Alana Maurushat on the fake website does not appear to match photographs on other trusted websites.

Darren Kelly [email protected]

Darren Kelly
Senior Investigator
IFW Global
e: [email protected] | p: +61 435 807 869 | w: ifwglobal.com

[AlanJones]

Here's a few extracts from an email from one of the scammers, Darren Kelly ([email protected]), trying to claim his legitimacy:

Our staff are licenced investigators, digital analysts and in-house counsel located in Australia, Philippines, UK and Canada.

There is no trace of any registrations for the company or licenced investigators, etc that they claim to have located in the UK or Canada. When asked about their registrations in the UK "Darren" just ignored the question.

We have serviced officers all around the world catering to our international clients. Why are our officers remote? As you guys can appreciate, we’re in the business of getting our clients’ money back and locking up criminals

So apparently, this Australian company who has no connections with law enforcement can arrest people and have them locked up, worldwide.

We aren’t government funded so we do charge engagement fees, which is always a hard sell as there are fraudulent companies out there pretending to be asset recovery agents, however are usually the same crooks that took their money in the first place.

And here is where "Darren" admits to charging victims, who have already lost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, fees in the hope of getting their money back. They charge those fees because they know that they don't have a hope in hell of getting any money back, because as "Darren" says, the recovery scammer is usually " the same crooks that took their money in the first place". Around here, we call that an advance fee fraud recovery scam.