Internet Property Scam - Erich Kofmel

Dear scam warners,

We would be very grateful if you could make your users aware of the following fraud. We have identified several victims already:

Long Url

Mod edit - edited to fix long url which was causing blowout - SP

but we would be very interested in finding more.

The fraudster has used the email addresses [email protected] and [email protected].

He advertises properties on sites including craiglist.com , www.inkiti.co.uk , www.evelez.net , londonpbb.com , www.livetray.com , www.inkiti.co.uk , www.holidayhomeonline.com

The properties have include apartments in London, Rome, New York, Lazio, Paris, Mallorca and other cities around the world. The problem, is that the properties do not exist.

The 2 victims from the bulletin board above paid for a flat 25, when the flat numbers only went up to 24. We know there are victims in the UK, USA, France, Germany and Canada.



From numerous victims we have indentified that the scammer asked for funds to be tranferred to transfer funds by BACS to various UK based accounts under the name "Mr Eric H. Kofmehl" and the address "85 Sommerville Road, Bristol BS7 9AE, England". We believe the mailing address to be false. When asked for a phone number, he has responded to multiple victims "My phone number is ++44 7931 588 634. Sorry, if I don't pick up (work related). I prefer e-mail."

This is where it gets interesting, however. Multiple victims have received bogus booking confirmations. In the AUTHOR information it is listed as Erich Kofmel. [note the different spelling... whoops, slipped up there Erich didnt you). We have further highly credible evidence that these people are one and the same.

This is where it gets interesting, however. Multiple victims have received bogus booking confirmations. In the AUTHOR information it is listed as Erich Kofmel. [note the different spelling... whoops, slipped up there Erich didnt you)

A quick google of " Erich Kofmel " will reveal that Erich Kofmel, a student at the University of Sussex will take you to news articles in the national press about property scams such as this one:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/mortgages/ ... _page_id=8

Oh.... and by some coincidence, the sort codes for the bank accounts above are for bank branches.... you guessed it, in Sussex.

HOW CAN YOU HELP

If you are a victim, we need to hear from you. It seems there are a lots of people investigating Mr. Kofmel, and we would like to try and co-ordinate their efforts.

If you believe you are a victim of Eric H. Kofmehl or Erich Kofmel, we want to hear from you:

Please can you forward ALL email correspondence between this scammer and yourself to


victimsoferich [at] gmail.com



Please do not alter the emails in any way or give any accompanying commentary, simply

* open each email you have received
* press forward
* send it to victimsoferich [at] gmail.com



Please send a separate covering email indicating

your name
telephone number
contact details
Please indicate if you have already reported the matter to the police
which police force / station / country.
Do you have a crime reference number or other reference.
Do you have a named contact within the police?

Thank you all in advance for your co-operation. With your help, this scammer will end up where he deserves.

Information page and picture: http://erichkofmelinfo.googlepages.com

In reply to your post, you are asking people that have had contact with the scammer in question to send you very personal details to a gmail address (scammers also use gmail), but you do not give any information about who you are other than you are investigating this scammer.

If you could PM a mod or admin with your information, it would be appreciated. Please include who you are, and what you do with the personal information that is provided to you by victims.

Interesting... I emailed the OP, and got this:



This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

[email protected]

Technical details of permanent failure:
UNKNOWN_USER: No such user

----- Original message -----

Received: by 10.114.109.1 with SMTP id h1mr1939184wac.35.1208456673256;
Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:24:33 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.114.183.11 with HTTP; Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:24:33 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:24:33 -0700
From: Sheboppe <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Information
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

From my email:

<[email protected]>: host
gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[216.239.59.27] said: 550-5.1.1 This Gmail user
does not exist. Please try double-checking 550-5.1.1 the recipient's email
address for typos or unnecessary spaces. 550-5.1.1 Learn more at
550 5.1.1 http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answ ... nswer=6596
u14si19306325gvf.9 (in reply to RCPT TO command)

The post by the OP is spammed all over the Internet. In some posts he lists more email addresses for the spammer than he does here, in other posts, he lists less.

So, no more from the OP. Erich Kofmel does appear in various places on the Internet, but unless the OP lets us have a bit more information. I would be, personally, be a bit wary about sharing anything with them.

Me too. I choose to ignore people like this that don't post valid contact info.

It appears Kofmel is dyslexic, and it is not the first time he has misspelt his name to hide his past.....

Kofmel was first in the bankruptcy court in Switzerland when he was only 21 years old following the collapse of Methosource Treuhand- und Revisions-AG (Order dated 27.08.1996, Bankruptcy Judge of the District Court of Zurich; Source: SHAB Nr. 157 vom 15. 8. 1996, S. 4895) [http://www.moneyhouse.ch/p/ge/Kofmel/Erich/Deitingen/Kriegstetten/index.htm]. This company was formerly trading as Gemeindebüro Treuhand AG http://www.moneyhouse.ch/u/pub/methosource_treuhand-und_revisions-ag_in_liquidation_CH-020.3.006.853-1.htm). On multiple versions of his online CV, Kofmel has miss-spelt (without the d) this as "Gemeinebüro Treuhand AG" http://www.scis-calibrate.org/images/CV%20Erich%20Kofmel.pdf http://www.enta.ee/baltmob/index.php?page=135 - this miss-spelling yields no search engine hits to the real company name [url]http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=Gemeinebüro+Treuhand+AG&btnG=Google+Search&meta=[/url], and its history. Several years later he was again in the bankruptcy court with his company Kaos-anti-Genesis GmbH (which was previously trading as Gemeindebüro Einkaufsgruppe für Gemeinden GmbH) (By Judgement 09.12.1998 & 21.01.1999; Sources: http://www.moneyhouse.ch/u/pub/kaos-anti-genesis_gmbh_in_liquidation_CH-251.4.000.041-8.htm.).

The post by the OP is spammed all over the Internet. In some posts he lists more email addresses for the spammer than he does here, in other posts, he lists less.

Please, please, please... do your homework. Look at the dates and times of the posts. See how the additional email addresses became available as more victims came to light. Please don't rubbish our very considerable efforts across numerous continents.

Noone has "spammed" anything, anywhere. Do you exist to help other victims and prevent further crimes, or not? Numerous websites have taken the postings down (following much hot air by Mr. Kofmel) - that is their choice. This is the only reason for the multiplexity of posts.

We are not experts in cybercrime, nor do wish to be. We are united by our unfortunate dealings with Mr. Kofmel, and our desire to see this brought to a satisfactory and legal conclusion. As you will see in other postings, our advice has simply changed to contact your local police with whatever information you hold. At this stage we are unable, through the large volume of information already obtained, to process further information at this time.

Now, if you want to help, and not hinder, we are very interested in finding out more about the email address [email protected] which was the one of the first email addresses used in the frauds. It is an unusual email address and we can find very little on the domain. We suspect it might hold vital clues.

Please, please, please... do your homework. Look at the dates and times of the posts. See how the additional email addresses became available as more victims came to light. Please don't rubbish our very considerable efforts across numerous continents.

I did my homework, and what I found was various formats of your posts all across the Internet, some sites had it clearly marked as spam. No one is trying to rubbish anything that you are doing, but you don't sound legitimate. If you are, I apologize, but there are posts everywhere regarding your activities and if you are who you say you are.

Noone has "spammed" anything, anywhere. Do you exist to help other victims and prevent further crimes, or not? Numerous websites have taken the postings down (following much hot air by Mr. Kofmel) - that is their choice. This is the only reason for the multiplexity of posts.

Understood; however, we have no way of knowing in advance what you have stated, especially when some of us tried to contact you and the email bounced as "user unknown" and "no such user."

We are not experts in cybercrime, nor do wish to be. We are united by our unfortunate dealings with Mr. Kofmel, and our desire to see this brought to a satisfactory and legal conclusion. As you will see in other postings, our advice has simply changed to contact your local police with whatever information you hold. At this stage we are unable, through the large volume of information already obtained, to process further information at this time.

Actually I have not seen more of your postings. I saw hundreds the first time. It is good that you changed your posts to reflect that the local police should be contacted. That is a step in the right direction.

Now, if you want to help, and not hinder, we are very interested in finding out more about the email address [email protected] which was the one of the first email addresses used in the frauds. It is an unusual email address and we can find very little on the domain. We suspect it might hold vital clues.

Now then, if you want to seem legitimate, please don't post a non-working email address and say "contact me." Anyone who posts what you posted and then email to you bounces is just asking to be thought of as a scammer. If you want information about Eric Kofmel, and you are asking for our help, we will need a working way to contact you. You hinder your own investigation when you provide inactive contact information.

Erich Kofmel was arrested, on suspicion of Fraud, by the Economic Crime Unit (Fraud) of Sussex Police at approximately 17:00hrs 7th May 2008. Kofmel was due to give a lecture at 17:30 entitled "Comparative Political Theology" at the London School of Economics. Kofmel was arrested on his way to the lecture which was subsequently cancelled.

Potential victims of these frauds are advised to contact the Economic Crime Unit (Fraud) of Sussex Police via their main switchboard. [Source: Sussex Police Spokesperson].[/u]

Another fascinating development for those of you following this since Mr. Erich Kofmel's arrest in London on suspicion of fraud (in relation to the property frauds).

You may have read how Mr. Kofmel had been in the Bankruptcy Court in Switzerland (over his companies Gemeindebüro Treuhand AG and others). Note the spelling very closely.

We reported that he had MISSPELT this company name in a CV for potential investors of his more recent companies Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) and SCIS Technology Ltd.....

By misspelling the name of his previously dissolved company Gemeindebüro Treuhand AG as Gemeinebüro Treuhand AG investors would not be aware of his history.... the reason.... a Google search for the latter did not reveal Kofmel's dirty past.

Since reporting this, that copy of his CV his website has now mysteriously disappeared as well. What is Mr. Kofmel trying to hide?

Fear not you can still see that it was on Kofmels website by Googling "Gemeinebüro Treuhand AG"... and indeed the CV itself remains on Google's cache by clicking on VIEW AS HTML

If you are a law enforcement agency and require any original documents, or a victim, feel free to get in touch shorttermEK "at" gmail.com

please don't post a non-working email address and say "contact me."

Sorry the old email got deleted. Complex reasons due to Kofmel.

Anyway, new contact details above.

Thank you.

STOP PRESS: The frauds have continued well into April 2008 and sadly we have identified a new email address used by the fraudster:

[email protected]

Note that the "Staff Profile" on Erich Kofmel's University of Sussex Page has been taken down, the significance of which in uncertain.

Google Result:

Mr Erich Kofmel : Centre for Social and Political Thought ...University of Sussex staff profile for Mr Erich Kofmel.
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cspt/profile184128.html