Progold Investments

Progold Investments Fraud

Don't Bear Internet Fraud

Progold Investments is another money laundering fraud scam from the same stable as the Eden Financial Group, BestTradeSolutions and previously the Royal Finances & Consulting Group and they also seem to be the same fraudsters as behind Expressdeal judging by similar use of text. The dead giveaway that these are exactly the same fraudsters as Eden Finance & BestTradeSolutions is that they have the same stolen photographs for the bogus 'Board of Directors' as do Eden Financial Group etc., albeit with different names... How do I know they are stolen photographs? Well, one of them, ('Tony Alexander' in this scam - other names in the others) is actually the UK ex. Home Secretary - John Reid, who is probably a bit hard up now, but I don't think he's a money launderer, but then he is a politician.... The one thing all of these scam sites have in common is a job vacancy, and this one is no exception.
I'm not aware of any legitimate company with exactly the same name as these criminals, but this fraudster should not be confused with any other site that may have a similar name - the above webgraphics, the evidence below and the spamvertized money laundering position give the fraudulent site away.

Evidence of Criminal Fraud:

i) Consider this claim on their website: "Founded by Alexander Sokolov in 1996, it soon proved to be one of the Asia’s most successful companies in precious metal brokerage. Sokolov’s grandchildren continued his successful business and developed a brand new scheme of investments, based on precious metals". The fact that this company, like all such scammers, has no internet 'presence' and no internet information on the founder 'Alexander Sokolov' gives the lie to the above blurb. If that wasn't enough, consider the fact that the domain progold-inv.com was only registered with ESTDOMAINS, INC. on 21-Nov-2006 and progold-inv.biz was only registered with Estdomains on 21-Aug-2007. Progold-inv.org was only registered with Enom on 20-Nov-2007.

ii) The 'job' (from the website):

Company:
Progold Investments

Status: Remote representative to companies

Salary:
$ Must be negotiated / DOE payment % from deals with clients

Job Category:
Financial Services

Job Responsibilities:
The purpose of Investment Manager (IC) is to provide high quality service to customers, while retaining and attracting assets for new accounts. Investment Consultants are highly knowledgeable in their discipline and are able to effectively convey said expertise to customers. Investment Consultants will be skilled in maintaining and generating client relations, ensuring that customer satisfaction is at the forefront of all interactions. Additionally, the Investment Consultant will maintain productive internal relationships through the active participation in developmental activities.

A Successful Investment Manager

Provides high quality of customer service through outbound calls generated through customer leads.
Assesses, assists, and advises clients as they choose services.
Transceiving the money remedies for client so and investments from large companies
Maintains and deepens relationships with customers.
Acquires profitable new customers.
Helps clients in transferring funds
Utilizes sales skills to determine and meet customer/prospect needs.
Channels guidance based on client needs.
Proactively develops solutions.
Works effectively in a team, maintaining productive internal relationships.
Will know and adhere to industry/company performance sales and service delivery standards.

i.e. the usual work at home money mule function.

iii) What reputable company would employ private individuals working unsupervised and uncontrolled at home as money transfer agents? Apart from being illegal, the whole idea is ridiculous.

iv) Please look at their 'Board of Directors' for absolutely definitive proof of fraud. All appear under different names on the BestTradeSolutions fraud website, and under more names on the Eden Financial Group scam site. I can tell you who one of the photos is - the one they call Gerry McDonnell on their Eden Financial scam site and Michael Hudson on the BestTradeSolutions site and Tony Alexander on this Progold Investments site is none other than our own (UK) ex. Foreign Secretary John Reid, same picture here in the Bournemouth Echo. I'd know that face anywhere.

v) This fraud company posts on numerous jobsites, (Google for "progold-inv") - typical ML fraud job advert seen on MyCanadaJobs.com:

Hello, our company searches for work of the removed representative. A direction of activity of the company: Investments and broker activity in precious metals (gold, platinum, etc.) Our problem consists in helping the clients to increase their well-being to keep actives and to avoid risks for itself and the future generations.

We invest means under high % in the largest funds of the world. Work as employment of 1-5 hours per day (it is possible at leisure from your main work) payment of 7% from a turn of the company depending on the order. Main function of the workman, Transceiving the money remedies for client so and investments from large companies

DNS Data

Let's have a look at the DNS structure for the known main domains progold-inv.com and progold-inv.biz:

Looking up the 2 progold-inv.com & progold-inv.org parent servers:

NameServer	Nameserver Host	'A' Record Response	Website host
ns2.leaderhost.ru [195.209.41.139]	Garant-Park-Telecom	194.176.118.39	LeaderHost Ltd.
ns1.leaderhost.ru [194.176.118.10]	LeaderHost Ltd.	194.176.118.39	LeaderHost Ltd.

Looking up the 2 progold-inv.biz parent servers:

NameServer	Nameserver Host	'A' Record Response	Website host
ns1.shokran.biz [88.255.90.51]	AbdAllah Internet Hizmetleri	88.255.90.50	AbdAllah Internet Hizmetleri
ns2.shokran.biz [88.255.90.52]	AbdAllah Internet Hizmetleri	88.255.90.50	AbdAllah Internet Hizmetleri

Once again we see the RBN criminal network of so many of these criminals including Cronos Investment - AbdAllah Internet Hizmetleri
The nameservers ns1.shokran.biz and ns2.shokran.biz are the same ones used by other scam & phishing websites such as unitedfinancegroup.org.

Known Website Domains

progold-inv.com (Suspended)
progold-inv.biz (Unhosted)
progold-inv.org (Suspended)

Registrar:

ESTDOMAINS, INC. (21-Nov-2006)
ESTDOMAINS, INC. (21-Aug-2007)
ENOM Inc. (20-Nov-2007)

Spam Headers: [To follow]

Spam Body: [To Follow]

October 16th. 2008 - no active domains known - consign to archive. Please notify me of any active domains.