United Swiss Trading Group Fraud

Don't Bear Internet Fraud

United Swiss Trading Group screenshot - 25-Feb-2009

This fraud should not be confused with the 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 United Swiss Trading Group scam appears on the face of it to be a pretty standard money laundering mule fraud website, but it isn't - it's an identical scam to the 'Rockphish/Asprox' Infobite Software Ltd. (strawberry websites), and the subsequent AlfaCor criminal fraudsters who try to persuade you to set up your own limited company complete with merchant account for the purposes of laundering stolen funds from credit card fraud on the bogus pretext of a website and website template franchise operation, exactly as before. Lots of information regarding this particular type of fraud can be found here. The website is a particularly annoying, barely readable Flash website which are often used by these crooks to render the website content invisible to search engines. They claim to have been established in 1999, but as per usual the initial website domain, (ustgroup.biz), was only registered with ENOM, INC. on 19-Dec-2008 and is hosted on the currently unresponsive host of many of these criminal fraudsters, Yahoo hosting. Their location details are fraudulent and they have no internet presence whatsoever - Google only finds their own website and nothing else about them. They are not a registered company in Switzerland which demonstrates beyond doubt their fraudulent nature.

United Swiss Trading Group Ltd : Evidence of Site Theft and Criminal Fraud

i) The United Swiss Trading Group criminal fraudsters claim on their website above to have been in operation since 1999, however, their website domain, (ustgroup.biz), was only registered with ENOM, INC. on 19-Dec-2008 for a period of one year - a clear indication of a fraudulent registration.

ii) If they were a genuine company that had been trading since 1999, they would have a considerable Google presence with all sorts of referrals and trade listings, however, a Google search for "United Swiss Trading Group" returns just the criminal's own fraudulent website and nothing else - clear evidence of fraud.

iii) There is no such company by the name of United Swiss Trading Group registered with the Swiss Federal Commercial Registry - clear and irrefutable evidence of a fake company.

iv) This is the bogus website job, (Career Tab), converted from the original flash format page into plain text:

As a result of expanding our business United Swiss Trading Group needs a Partner willing and able to perform as Payment Processing Manager.

The main objective of the partnership program:

United Swiss Trading Group specialists From Marketing Department made an extensive research, which proved that the most effective way of increasing sales volume of e-documents is creating a number of subsidiary companies. The advantage of having such subsidiaries lies in having different business names selling our e-documents. It is very simple, imagine you already have a registered business (if not, do not worry, the process of incorporating is easy and we have a few very helpful hints on how to do it), United Swiss trading Group will create a website in the name of your business, which will be selling our products online. As a president of subsidiary company you will be entitled to 10% commission on gross sales realized via your subsidiary website. I would like to emphasize that once you are done with registering business and opening business and merchant accounts at bank your only responsibility will be subtracting 10% commission from all funds incoming to your business bank account and transferring the rest to United Swiss Trading Group .

I would like to draw your attention that United Swiss Trading Group offer is for those busy people who wish to work full time in some other company and at the same time have a side income which will require minimum of time and effort. Let me emphasize the fact that NO special talent is needed from you! NOR will you do any retail operations! Your mission in the whole undertaking is just to register the business and open business and merchant accounts. It is going to take some time at the very beginning, it's true, but in the long run you will only have to care about withdrawing money From the business account. You will never have to advertise or sell anything.

Should you have any questions while working as United Swiss Trading Group Payment Processing Manager you will be provided with our professional guidance and exhaustive instructions.

Required skills
We DO NOT require any particular skills or Facilities From you as our Payment Processing Manager though you must be over 21 and have a computer to communicate with your Personal United Swiss Trading Group Manager.

Our professional formula will allow you to increase your income easily, moreover, the position of Payment Processing Manager is aimed to be a part-time occupation which means it will enable you to work on your other projects simultaneously. You are sure to enjoy the fact that during your enrollment you will be released from solving any technical or customer service questions for we have specially-oriented departments to deal with them. If trust and efficiency is what you value the most in business our program is designed for you!

The whole purpose of the above operation is to persuade unwary potential victims to enrol in money laundering fraud derived from phishing operations carried out against the real victim's credit cards.

How the scam works: Small, easily overlooked amounts are stolen by the criminals from victims credit cards by making unauthorised charges for non-existent products supposedly provided by the fake "subsidiary company" that has been set up in the mule's name and are paid into the mules associated merchant account. The mule then refunds 90% of all amounts that are paid into his merchant account back to the criminals via Moneygram or Western Union, keeping 10% for himself. This is a classic money laundering operation and the stolen money will be traceable directly to the mug who has been suckered into setting up the fake company and merchant account in his/her name. The first thing they will know about it is when the police come knocking at their door and their nightmare will begin - they will lose a lot of money and end up facing criminal charges - don't say you haven't been warned.

v) Fake location details from the website:

United Swiss Trading Group
Avenue Wendt 15
1203 Geneva
Switzerland

• - A Google search for the address "Avenue Wendt 15 1203 Geneva" returns only the criminal's website - there is no third party evidence that the criminals are at that address which is not surprising as they are not a registered company in Switzerland.
• - They do not appear to have a telephone number

There will be associated mule websites involved in this fraud and also probably other main website domains. If you know of any other domains or any of the 'subsidiary company' websites, please let me know about them.

The above indisputable evidence clearly demonstrates that the United Swiss Trading Group website is a criminal website set up with intent to deceive and defraud. 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 fraud - 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.

United Swiss Trading Group Ltd Fraudsters - current hosting details.

Main Domains, Hosts and Registrars

Domain

ustgroup.biz

Status

Suspended

Registrar (Date)

ENOM, INC. (19-Dec-2008)

Host

Yahoo

IP Address

68.180.151.74

If you've either received an active website link in a spam, or know of an active domain and it is not listed in the domain tables above, then please let us know by reporting it using the 'Report Active Domain' option in the title bar above.

The Spam Content
Copy of fresh spam required, please.

DNS Data - ustgroup.biz
How I am searching:

Searching for ustgroup.biz A record at l.root-servers.net [199.7.83.42]: Got referral to h.gtld.biz. (zone: biz.)
Searching for ustgroup.biz A record at h.gtld.biz. [199.7.77.126]: Got referral to YNS2.YAHOO.COM. (zone: ustgroup.biz.)
Searching for ustgroup.biz A record at YNS2.YAHOO.COM. [66.196.84.168]: Reports ustgroup.biz. Response:

Domain	Type	Class	TTL	Answer
ustgroup.biz.	A	IN	1200	68.180.151.74
ustgroup.biz.	NS	IN	86400	ns8.san.yahoo.com.
ustgroup.biz.	NS	IN	86400	yns1.yahoo.com.
ustgroup.biz.	NS	IN	86400	yns2.yahoo.com.
ustgroup.biz.	NS	IN	86400	ns9.san.yahoo.com.

Looking up at the 2 ustgroup.biz. parent servers:

Server	Response
yns2.yahoo.com [66.196.84.168]	68.180.151.74
yns1.yahoo.com [98.136.43.32]	68.180.151.74

The host for this domain is the currently unresponsive host Yahoo on IP address 68.180.151.74 . They are so unresponsive that they are effectively accessories to these criminals.

***Latest News*** Initial entry 25th. Feb 2009

***Latest News*** 11th. March 2009
News from Simon Bear - Yahoo have finally disabled the domain ustgroup.biz. Please notify me of any active domains for this criminal.