I wish to order from your store

As Ralph said, be extra vigilant for possible scams in the future as the scammers may very well try to approach you from another angle, seeing you as a viable target since they almost succeeded.

Since they have a little more information and even documents from your business, another thing you should do is watch for use of your business name in future scams--for example, we have seen an increase in the number of scammers using real businesses, even creating fake websites to support these scams, in collection scams. You may want to periodically search for your company name, or even use google alerts to ensure that your company information is not being used inappropriately.

In this particular scam, an indicator in the initial email is the fact that he is talking about ordering, but he only referred to "products", and needed you to provide the link to your website. If he was an authentic customer ready to order from you, he would have a better handle on what you sell, and he would be very likely to mention your products by name or reference what he was interested in. He would also already know your web address. In reality, he is mass mailing this to a stolen or purchased list of business addresses, and he has no idea if you sell anything, and if so, what you sell. If you respond to his initial email, he considers you a possible target, follows the link to your website, and then proceeds with the fake order.

Thank you for the insight Dotti and Ralph.

We have been able to avoid scams in the past, but in this case the inquiries were not completely far fetched. We're a small book publisher in the USA, and our gift books are sometimes called product by gift retailers; we have processed other legitimate wholesale orders to Australia; and have used legitimate "agents" or freight forwarders... Yet, something did not seem quite right about this order from the start! We "smelled" a scam, but just couldn't see what it was until the request to pay his "agent"... Now we will undoubtedly suspect all overseas orders!

The fact that we provided an invoice and other company information is somewhat distressing - Do you suggest any other proactive efforts to avoid having our company name and contact info used in scams on others? (Should we change email addresses, for example?) Having our business name compromised could actually be more of a problem than being scammed ourselves.

By the way, for others, here is (fake) address/phone of the scammer

Shipping Address:
DRAGO PTY STORE
342 Bourke Street Level 34.
Melbourne, VIC 3000. Australia
Phone Number: 61 3 8641 41600
Email: [email protected]

Scammers do misuse the identity of real businesses even if they haven't tried to scam them.
Personally, I wouldn't go to the trouble of changing email addresses at this stage. Especially if they are linked to your website (if you have one), which would also have to change.
You could follow the example of other website owners, and add a note yours that you have had reports of scammers using your name.

Just a quick one on this phone number;

Phone Number: 61 3 8641 41600

613 is the country and area code, after that there should be 8 numbers not 9 as there is here.

Marker, would you mind confirming the number is as per the email you received

yes, this is the number, which i copied and pasted from his 2nd email.
thanks.

+613864141600 is an invalid number .... I tried calling it, and it failed.

It could be a mistake on the scammers part but it seems very likely he doesn't actually have an Australian phone number

I've only just discovered this site via an enquiry I put into Google.

My experience is just about 100% identical to others listed above. My most recent (15 minutes ago) email from 'Dave Collins' reads as follows: (I've blanked out 12 digits myself, but they are present on his email)


STARTS
Chris See Below,

Here is my Credit cards Details with the below information,and Freight forwarder information,I will need you to process my order now and get back to me with confirmation as soon as my Credit card has been charged.


==========================================================
Card Type. Master Card
Name On Card. Dave Collins
Card Number#. ************2028 -------------------------Charge:£893.75
Card Cvv. 004
Card Exp Date. 06/2011
==========================================================


BELOW IS HOW I WILL NEED YOU TO SEND THE SHIPPING FUNDS VIA WESTERN UNION
Shipping Agent DETAILS...................




Receiver:s Name: Fred Maurice Feiler
Address 43310 Schubert Circle , Unit F 1259
City Stevenson Ranch ,
State California ,
Zip Code 91381
Email: [email protected]


PLEASE I NEED THIS INFORMATION FROM YOU AS SOON AS THE WESTERN UNION TRANSFER HAS BEEN MADE..........
1) MTCN (MONEY TRANSFER CONTROL NUMBER)?
2) SENDER'S FULL NAME AND ADDRESS?
3)TOTAL AMOUNT SENT?

Best Regards,
Dave Collins




On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 8:45 AM, Chris Newman <[email protected]> wrote:

OK Dave, I'm in the office right now.

Chris

dave collins wrote:



Hello Chris,
Thanks for the total quote of my order.The total cost of my order is quite correct and okay by me and I'm ready to pay the bills . I shall inform my freight forwarder who will be coming to pick up the order to hold on and come immediately you inform me that the items are ready for pick up then i can give you a call on that day to get the items packed for pick up and they will call you on their arrival at your address.Also I want you to help me Charge another £450 from my card for the freight forwarder who will be coming to pick up my ordered items from you.

The £450 that will be sent to the freight forwarder is for the shipping of my order and other items i ordered from different part of the country which is to be picked up by him and should be deducted from my credit card.Also, I'm compensating you with the sum of £150 for the transfer fee and for your efforts. Please note that i should have given the shipping agency my credit card for him to deduct the freight charges but he told me that he doesn't have the facilities to charge or debit credit card , so that's why i bring my vote of confidence in you and i want you to assist me in this measure, so i want you to transfer the funds to him after you have make the charges and the money charged from my credit card is in your account,then you can now make the transfer to the agent via western union.i will have love to do this my self but there are no western union here around me cos i am out of town to monitor my estate construction at a remote village,So the charges you'll make on my credit card will be:

Order Fee:£293.75
Agent fee with shipping fare:£450
Transfer Fee plus Your Compensation: £150
Total: £893.75

Note that my credit card will be charged for the amounts above.Please do get back to me if you are in the office right now so that i can forward my credit card details to you , then you can charge full amount and transfer the agent funds to him via western union or money gramm.

Thanks for your co-operation & understanding.
Hope to read from you ASAP.
Thanks and God Bless you

I await your quick response.
Kind Regards
Dave
ENDS

Thanks Scamwarners!

Chris

Just had a phone call from 'dave collins' asking whether I'd received the cc number. I told him yes, but no, I hadn't processed it as it was obviously a scam

He hung up, so I dialled 1471 to check where the call came from:

0234 7026011504

I just found out that 0234 is Bacau, Romania.

Welcome chrisatobm

We are pleased that you were alert to this scam.

Can I suggest that you contact the card issuer (Master Card) and explain that those card details are in use by a Internet Scammer .

The chances are that they do not belong to the scammer, but to an innocent third party whose account has been compromised - probably by phising.

By the way ... the number you have given us is more likely to be +234 7026011504 which is a cell phone number issued by Visafone Communications Ltd - Nigeria.

Thanks Michelle,

I already contacted www.mastercard.com who gave me a phone number of the issuing bank that turned out to be USAA somewhere in the US. I called them and told them their card was being mis-used - they seemed pleased to receive the information and said they would contact the cardholder forthwith. At least 'dave collins' will get no further with this card. I'm sure he has plenty of others though!

^^ No doubt he does

Thank you for reporting the card

He will also now change his name to the name appearing on his new card, this is inconvenient to them but it will not stop them from attempting the same scam using a new stolen credit card.

Of interest, scammers can buy compromised credit card details for about $1 each

Another one from "Drago Store"

We just received an email identical to the "Drago" one above, from the same:
Douglas Patti.
DRAGO PTY STORE
1253 High Street Road
Wantirna South,
Victoria 3152.Australia
Tel: 03 9871 8335 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              03 9871 8335      end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Email: [email protected]

I immediately thought it strange that he'd want to order our products, yet needs the URL for our store in order to see what they are! (even if he were to have seen our company name elsewhere, a simple search on crazy4flavour would have brought crazy4flavour up as #1 on any search engine from anywhere in the world!)

Another "bad flag" was that, from Eastern Australia, he would have sent the email at about 8:00 pm - well after normal office hours.

I've responded to him, in "surprise at how he located us" and confirmed that we do take credit cards or PayPal (but without mentioning that we take credit cards only via Google Checkout - which would probably refuse to take any "dodgy" card), asked what products and quantities he would like a quote for, but "forgetting" to give our URL (let's see if he knows how to use Google!!)

Will report back if I get any response, but I expect he will smell that he has been "spotted" when he gets my reply.

I'll add you to my Twitter - a very good service provide to businesses!

Stu

I'd not noticed the 2nd page when I first posted this. I'll take the advice to add a warning on my email address on the site.

Oh, you'd be surprised at how much these scammers won't see when it comes to sarcasm. There's a very good chance he will attempt to continue the "transaction."

Be aware--you cannot count on Google checkout to flag the card in situations like this. Often the scammer is using a real phished credit card (There is another thread here at scamwarners showing a couple of the actual scammer-to-scammer emails selling credit cards/bank accounts). If the card owner does not realize he was phished (which happens quite often) and has sufficient credit available, the card will not raise any flags.

Don't worry Dottie, I'll not even think about shipping against any card that he might give me. In fact (especially now that he has my info anyway) I'll probably lead him on, just to get the card details, so that I can advise Visa/MC about the possible (probable) attempt at fraudulent use.

Stu