Abcat Finance Fraud

Don't Bear Internet Fraud

Abcat Finance scam screenshot - 02-Apr-2009

This fraud should not be confused with any other company of the same or similar name - the above website screenshot and the following fraud evidence define and refer to this fake company alone and no other.

Abcat Finance is just another fake financial site used as a vehicle for money laundering fraud and phishing for personal details as part of the recruitment process. The only reason it looks so glossy and professional is because the website content has been stolen in its totality from the website of the genuine financial organisation Custom House. It's not the only scam website this fraudster has produced, he has previous frauds under the names of First Rate Finance and Paramount Finance. In the above screenshot, "The PF Advantage" refers to Paramount Finance, his previous alias - his 'search and replace' operation understandably seems to have missed it. The website fraud domain abcatfinance.com was only registered with BIZCN.COM, INC. on 25-Mar-2009 for the usual criminal domain minimum period of one year and the payload of the fraud site is a clear money laundering mule job under the 'Careers' tab. Why would an Australian company use a Chinese registrar and a Latvian host? They wouldn't, of course. The telephone number and the hosting details are the same as for the Range Financial Corporation fraudster - they are clearly the same crooks.

Evidence of Criminal Fraud:

i) From the Corporate Profile page on their website: "Founded in 2000, Abcat Finance enables clients to make payment transactions quickly, efficiently and securely". However, the fraudster's domain abcatfinance.com was only registered with BIZCN.COM, INC. on 25-Mar-2009 for the usual criminal domain minimum period of one year. A clear indication of fraudulent misrepresentation.

ii) The fake website content has quite clearly been stolen from the genuine company Custom House and modified to suit the criminal purposes. Clear evidence of fraudulent misrepresentation.

iii) As is usual for these criminals, they have no Google internet presence at all apart from their own fake website and fraud website listings, despite their claim on their Corporate Profile page to be a "global payments company", but no doubt there will shortly be many other fraud site listings as they spread their spam, (sample below).

iv) The website carries the following clear money mule criminal solicitation via the 'Careers' tab:

Escrow Agent
Our services

      When buying-selling operations via the Internet are concerned, the buyer and the seller don’t know each other and are placed in different corners of the world. Therefore, it is important both to the buyer and the seller for their transaction to be made safely. Escrow means receiving money, documents, goods (it might be both the seller’s and the buyer’s) concerning the transaction by a reliable, experienced, impartial person - our Escrow agent. The agent will hold all the money and documents until all the terms of the deal are satisfied and only then release them to the intended receiver.

Why we need Escrow agents

      Having a Escrow agent in every country we can quickly transfer funds inside a country without wasting time on the international bank transfers, and continue our rapid growth rather than overwhelming our own bank account with inbound and outbound transactions leading to severe hold times and possible service interruption. It is time that is of significant importance to our clients.

Career and Benefits

      Your main task will be receiving money transactions to any bank account you would like to use for the purposes of this job; and then forwarding these transactions to the next party of the Escrow process according to our instructions. You will benefit from the commissions, which are 5-7% of each transaction and depend on the quantity of the completed transactions and the speed of your work. Besides, you will be paid a basic salary of 1500 GBP per month. For your convenience there will be no paychecks, your commission will remain in your account after every successfully completed transaction. The money transfer fee is not included in your commission, meaning that you will deduct it from the received amount, not from your commission. Also you receive 5-7% of the transaction amount. Normally the amounts that we process vary from 2,000 GBP to 10,000 GBP, but can go higher on special occasions.

Job details

      The Escrow agent will be processing approximately 1-2 transactions per week. Each transaction requires approximately 4-5 hours of the agent work. Our manager always calls the agent beforehand to provide all the instructions. Therefore, with the due time management, the agent is able to combine this job with other activities (e.g. primary job or studies).

      If you interested in partnership please feel free to contact us here.
      After receiving your request we process and answer as soon as possible.

v) You do not get a much clearer definition of the illegal part time money mule function "Your main task will be receiving money transactions to any bank account you would like to use for the purposes of this job; and then forwarding these transactions to the next party of the Escrow process according to our instructions" via Moneygram or Western Union less a percentage commission - that on its own defines the company without doubt as criminal and bogus and is clear evidence of criminal fraud.

vi) No legitimate company is going to advertise for this sort of illegal part time, 'work from home' money transfer position among the untrained, inexperienced and uncertified general population overseas.

vii) 'Contact Us' Details from website:

The only contact with the company is via a webform, which in itself is suspicious. However, there is the following registered office address from the above page footer:

Abcat Finance Pty. Ltd. ABN: 19 002 794 345. Tel/Fax: +61-88-1256-653
Registered Office Address 13 Church St, Parramatta, NSW 2150, registered in Australia

• - The telephone number +61-88-1256-653 is also now being used by the Range Financial Corporation fraudster.
• - The address "13 Church St, Parramatta" returns no Google results apart from the criminal's own website.

viii) The Spam

Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 14:15:51 -0400
From: staffmanager@recruitabcatfinance.com
Subject: Job offer
To: xxxxxxxxx

Abcat Finance Pty. Ltd.
13 Church St, Parramatta,
NSW, 2150, Australia.

Hello,
my name is John Nguen and I am Abcat Finance Pty. Ltd. Staff manager. We have found and reviewed your CV at totaljobs.com and decided to offer this job to you.

Our services
When buying-selling operations via the Internet are concerned, the buyer and the seller don’t know each other and are placed in different corners of the world. Therefore, it is important both to the buyer and the seller for their transaction to be made safely. Escrow means receiving money, documents, goods (it might be both the seller’s and the buyer’s) concerning the transaction by a reliable, experienced, impartial person - our escrow agent. The agent will hold all the money and documents until all the terms of the deal are satisfied and only then release them to the intended receiver. Please, visit our web-site for more information. (http://www.abcatfinance.com/)

Why we need escrow agents
Having a escrow agent in every country we can quickly transfer funds inside a country without wasting time on the international bank transfers, and continue our rapid growth rather than overwhelming our own bank account with inbound and outbound transactions leading to severe hold times and possible service interruption. It is time that is of significant importance to our clients.

Career and Benefits
Your main task will be receiving money transactions to any bank account you would like to use for the purposes of this job; and then forwarding these transactions to the next party of the escrow process according to our instructions. You will benefit from the commissions, which are 5-7% of each transaction and depend on the quantity of the completed transactions and the speed of your work. Besides, you will be paid a basic salary of 1500 GBP per month.

For your convenience there will be no paychecks, your commission will remain in your account after every successfully completed transaction. The money transfer fee is not included in your commission, meaning that you will deduct it from the received amount, not from your commission. Also you receive 5-7% of the transaction amount. Normally the amounts that we process vary from 2,000 GBP to 10,000 GBP, but can go higher on special occasions.

Job details
As the financial activity in your area is not too high, an escrow agent will be processing approximately 1-2 transactions per week. Each transaction requires approximately 4-5 hours of the agent work. Our manager always calls the agent beforehand to provide all the instructions. Therefore, with the due time management, the agent is able to combine this job with other activities (e.g. primary job or studies).

If you are ready to proceed, please provide your AVAILABLE phone number to our hiring manager (Colin Kendall) at hiring@abcatfinance.com

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need more information.

--
Sincerely yours,
John Nguen,
Abcat Finance Pty. Ltd.
visit us at http://www.abcatfinance.com/

In other words a completely standard money mule solicitation spam typical of the millions flooding the internet every day. Clear evidence of criminal fraud.

The above evidence clearly demonstrates beyond any doubt that the Abcat Finance website has been set up very recently by money laundering criminals purely for the purpose of spamvertising an illegal money laundering 'mule' job. If you are an abuse team that has received an abuse report regarding these fraudsters, please consider immediate termination of their services in view of the absolutely undeniable evidence of criminal activity - please don't delay - these criminals will not respond to any communication from you, (all their whois data is false), but will simply take advantage of any attempt at communication as a delaying tactic to allow them time to carry on their criminal activity and prepare their next network.

Known Website Domains

abcatfinance.com

Registrar

BIZCN.COM, INC. - 25-Mar-2009

Active
Suspended/Disabled
Parked

Network Data (Valid for domain abcatfinance.com)

How I am searching:

Searching for abcatfinance.com A record at g.root-servers.net [192.112.36.4]: Got referral to K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. (zone: com.)
Searching for abcatfinance.com A record at K.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. [192.52.178.30]: Got referral to ns1.abcatfinance.com. (zone: abcatfinance.com.)
Searching for abcatfinance.com A record at ns1.abcatfinance.com. [80.233.221.253]: Reports abcatfinance.com. Response:

Domain	Type	Class	TTL	Answer
abcatfinance.com.	A	IN	14400	80.233.221.253
abcatfinance.com.	NS	IN	14400	ns1.astongroup.org.
abcatfinance.com.	NS	IN	14400	ns2.astongroup.org.

Looking up at the 2 abcatfinance.com. parent servers:

Server	Response
ns1.abcatfinance.com [80.233.221.253]	80.233.221.253
ns2.abcatfinance.com [80.233.221.253]	80.233.221.253

The criminal's host is listed as S7P-TELIALV/S7P-TELIALV (Telia Latvija) on IP address 80.233.221.253
These are the same hosting details as for the Range Financial Corporation fraudster - they are clearly the same crooks.

***Latest News*** 2nd. April 2009
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