Design 2 Studio LLC scam

Design 2 Studio LLC Fraud

Don't Bear Internet Fraud

Design 2 Studio LLC screenshot 14-May-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 refer to this company alone and no other. The above website has been stolen from a genuine company.

Design 2 Studio LLC is just one of the numerous fake Russian hosted scam sites that exist solely to ensnare the unwary, whether it is to 'phish' for bank details or mainly to recruit money mules. The complete fraud website content has quite clearly been stolen from the verified genuine Russian company Home Design and modified to suit this criminal's purposes, in particular the addition of a 'Careers' menu option that doesn't exist on the genuine website and leads to the criminal's money mule job. The fake website was only recently set up, (for instance, the initial domain design2studio.com was only registered with MELBOURNE IT, LTD. (Yahoo as reseller) on 11-May-2009) and contains a clear money mule solicitation of U.S. Representative/Financial manager under the Careers tab. Notice the illiterate line in the above screenshot "a member of the Europen Chamber of Commerce" - the 'Runglish' style of poor English and grammar is a common thread of these Russian criminals. Their previous identical fraud aliases were Vidal Architects, Inc, Design Resources, Inc and Design Build Studio, Inc.

Evidence of Criminal Fraud:

i) This criminal's website has quite clearly been stolen from the genuine genuine Russian company Home Design so any claims made in it are not relevant to the criminals, although they do carry the claim "Since our company’s founding in 1998, we have assisted numerous corporate and some private individuals around the world" under this 'Careers' menu option. However, the fact that their initial domain design2studio.com was only registered with MELBOURNE IT, LTD. (Yahoo as reseller) on 11-May-2009 is clear evidence of fraudulent misrepresentation.

ii) As is usual for these criminals, Design 2 Studio LLC have no Google internet presence at all, (zero hits as I write this as their fake website is presumably too new to register in Google), but there has clearly been no company of that name actively trading since 1998 or it would certainly register in Google even if only from trade listings etc.

iii) The payload of the fake website is the following clear money mule criminal solicitation under the Careers tab:

Why do we need U.S. Representative/Financial manager?

When we initially started operations in the United States, we experienced some issues with US trade laws that can be summarized into two different problems:

   1. All financial services operations have to take place inside the USA
   2. Customers cannot make payments to a company don’t have offices inside the US, even if the company is an industry leader around the world. Our Home Office is located in Russia, which is why customers are not able to directly transfer money (payments for our designs) to our office in Russia. Under US law, the funds must be deposited into the account of the Financial Manager of Staffing Solutions that resides in the USA. Then, it is the Financial Manager’s responsibility to transfer the funds to our business in Russia. The company has to be registered in the US tax administration, which we have already finished. By maintaining a Financial Manager in the US, we are able to solve both of these problems and continue to help the companies that need us in the USA.

Main duties include receiving payments from customers:

   1. Bank checks
   2. Wire transfers
   3. Certified funds

Compensation:

The Financial Manager will be entitled to 5% of all completed transactions. The maximum turnover handled by a single manager is limited the by company’s policy and is set at $100,000 per month. Thus the maximum monthly pay will constitute $3,000-5,000.

Type of Employment:

Agreement

Time Commitment:

2-4 hours per week

Important:

We also have a business proposal for US company owners and managing directors. Private US businesses can accept funds from our customers with no limitations with a monthly turnover of up to 500,000.00 US dollars. Their profit is set at 7.5% of the turnover and may constitute $40,000.00 monthly. Please apply if you have a legal running business and are interested in this offer.

You can combine this job with your current job, because you'll spend no more than 3 hours per week. This job can become perfect addition to your current job.

iv) You do not get a much clearer definition of the illegal 'part time' money mule function of receiving stolen funds to a personal checking account and transferring a balance back to these criminals via Western Union or Moneygram which on its own defines the company without doubt as criminal and bogus and is clear evidence of criminal fraud. The potential for absolutely massive fraud is self evident from the "business proposal for US company owners".

v) 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. The additional 'business proposal' shows the potential sheer scale of this criminal fraud operation - don't be part of it or you will lose a lot of money and perhaps your liberty.

vi) This 'Team' doesn't change between the criminal's aliases, (except the name of the so-called director - this time it's Zverev Pavel Urevich)
team

vii) The Spam:

Dear xxxxx,

My name is Vadim Ignatev.

As Design Build Company' personnel manager I am in charge of our performance control and further business development in the US. I have reviewed your resume and believe you have a good chance to receive the position of a Financial Manager.

Please read below for more information about our company.
Main web-page: www.design2studio.org
Company Services: www.design2studio.org/index-6.htm
Business Licence: www.design2studio.org/index-12.htm
Our team: www.design2studio.org/index-11.htm

We may offer you U.S. Representative/Financial manager position.

For more information about current position please visit this page: www.design2studio.com/careers.htm

Please feel free to e-mail me for the next step of the process.

Respectfully,

Vadim Ignatev Personnel Manager Design 2 Studio LLC

viii) A site contact who replied to the above spam received this response:

Dear xxxxx,

You have successfully completed the first stage of recruiting process.

However, there are more of them including the following checks that our HR department will carry out:
- Your credit history
- Your criminal record
- Your track record with previous employers
- Reliability of information you provided (your name, place of residing, contact phone numbers).

In order to perform these checks we need you to submit us the following information ASAP:
- A copy of your signed Employment Agreement
- A copy of your signed Employment Application

You may send a copy of of your signed Employment Agreement and Employment Application two ways:

1. To my Fax: 1-(727) 216-8829 OR

2. You scan this document and after that you send it to my e-mail.

You will be appointed for the position of the Financial Manager only if all the information verifies and your application gets approved. This will immediately entitle you to start receiving and processing customer's payments.

Our HR Department will prepare and send to your specified address the Employment Package including:
- Hard copy of your Employment Agreement duly signed by both parties
- Employee ID card. This is a plastic picture ID card having your full name, address and position with our company. It has several PROTECTION LEVELS and will serve as a proof of your identity when accepting payments in cash.

IMPORTANT: It's highly recommended to have a business/corporate account since it's most suitable and meets all the financial requirements. If you already have a valid business/corporate account please use it for accepting payments. And send me full name of your business. Otherwise you will have to use your personal checking account at the first stage. Please note that if you run a small business or have a bad credit history your bank may apply certain limitations and restrictions in regards to the amounts being transferred. Make sure you check with your bank on the maximum amount that can be transferred per single transaction and specify this maximum limit in the Employment Agreement.

To sum it up, your next step for getting the position with our company is submitting the requested information for verification purposes. We already have some 10 applicants and the time limit is short, so please do your best to provide it ASAP. Your application will be automatically voided if you fail to submit the requested documents within two business days. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Yours faithfully,

Personnel Manager

Vadim Ignatev

Work e-mail id: manager@design2studio.org
Personnel e-mail id: vadimdesign2studio@gmail.com
tel: 1-(919) 709-0277 fax: 1-(727) 216-8829

ix) Although they claim to be located in Pembroke Pines, Florida, the above telephone number 1-(919) 709-0277 locates to Fremont, NC and the above Fax number 1-(727) 216-8829 locates to Clearwater, FL (about 150 miles away from Pembroke Pines, FL). They must have a big office... Clear evidence of fraud.

The above evidence clearly demonstrates beyond any doubt that the Design 2 Studio LLC website has been set up very recently by money laundering criminals purely for the purpose of spamvertising an illegal money laundering 'mule' job of receiving 'customer's payments' to a personal checking account and transferring a balance back to these criminals. 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

design2studio.com
design2studio.org

Registrar

MELBOURNE IT, LTD. (Yahoo as reseller) - 11-May-2008
MELBOURNE IT, LTD. (Yahoo as reseller) - 28-May-2008

Host and IP Address

Yahoo (216.39.62.191, 216.39.62.189, 216.39.62.190)
Alta Vista (Yahoo) (216.39.62.192)

Key:

Active
Suspended/Disabled
Parked

Network Data (Valid for domains design2studio.com)

How I am searching:

Searching for design2studio.com A record at c.root-servers.net [192.33.4.12]: Got referral to L.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. (zone: com.)
Searching for design2studio.com A record at L.GTLD-SERVERS.NET. [192.41.162.30]: Got referral to yns1.yahoo.com. (zone: design2studio.com.)
Searching for design2studio.com A record at yns1.yahoo.com. [98.136.43.32]: Reports design2studio.com. Response:

Domain	Type	Class	TTL	Answer
design2studio.com.	A	IN	1200	216.39.62.191
design2studio.com.	A	IN	1200	216.39.62.189
design2studio.com.	A	IN	1200	216.39.62.190
design2studio.com.	NS	IN	86400	yns1.yahoo.com.
design2studio.com.	NS	IN	86400	ns9.san.yahoo.com.
design2studio.com.	NS	IN	86400	yns2.yahoo.com.
design2studio.com.	NS	IN	86400	ns8.san.yahoo.com.

Looking up at the 2 design2studio.com. parent servers:

Server	Response
yns1.yahoo.com [98.136.43.32]	216.39.62.189 216.39.62.190 216.39.62.191
yns2.yahoo.com [66.196.84.168]	216.39.62.189 216.39.62.190 216.39.62.191

The criminal's host is listed as Alta Vista (Yahoo), presumably another of their "small business networks" so well used by these criminals as Yahoo's response to abuse reports is abysmal and Melbourne IT don't want to know - their response is simply to shuffle the responsibility on to Yahoo so these crooks have an easy ride for their criminal activities and keep using them.

***Latest News*** 14th. May 2009
Webpage created

***Latest News*** 28th. May 2009
Information from site contact - the domain design2studio.com has been disabled and the criminal is now using the domain design2studio.org on the following network:
Network Data (Valid for domain design2studio.org)

How I am searching:

Searching for design2studio.org A record at e.root-servers.net [192.203.230.10]: Got referral to B0.ORG.AFILIAS-NST.org. (zone: org.)
Searching for design2studio.org A record at B0.ORG.AFILIAS-NST.org. [199.19.54.1]: Got referral to yns2.yahoo.com. (zone: design2studio.org.)
Searching for design2studio.org A record at yns2.yahoo.com. [66.196.84.168]: Reports design2studio.org. Response:

Domain	Type	Class	TTL	Answer
design2studio.org.	A	IN	1200	216.39.62.192
design2studio.org.	NS	IN	86400	yns2.yahoo.com.
design2studio.org.	NS	IN	86400	ns9.san.yahoo.com.
design2studio.org.	NS	IN	86400	ns8.san.yahoo.com.
design2studio.org.	NS	IN	86400	yns1.yahoo.com.

Looking up at the 2 design2studio.org. parent servers:

Server	Response
yns2.yahoo.com [66.196.84.168]	216.39.62.192
yns1.yahoo.com [98.136.43.32]	216.39.62.192

The criminal's host is listed as Alta Vista(Yahoo) on IP address 216.39.62.192