Apr
21
I Nearly Fell For This Small-Business Scam
You know about the Nigerian-royalty bank-scam letters, right? Here’s a new one that I nearly fell for tonight.
The scam involves an entity that poses as the “department of registration service in China.” The email I received tonight, signed “Howie Gao, Senior Consultant” tried to convince me that my trademark for “The Solopreneur Life” was under attack overseas, and I needed to respond within 7 days in order to protect it.
I was vulnerable to the fraud because I received the trademark three weeks ago, and I’m still excited about having gotten it. My heart rate jumped immediately after reading “Mr. Gao’s” email. I wanted to respond right away, but I had the good sense to do some digging first.
I did about 15 minutes of online research, starting with the domain name in the email. I looked at domain-name records and discovered the name of the entity behind the fraud: ShangHaiFengWangWangLuoKeJi CO.LTD. I learned that it owns at least 59 other domains and has sent the same letter to other businesses worldwide.
Excellent Advice From Will Chen of Wise Bread
The scam followed the pattern described in this article written by Will Chen of Wise Bread. Chen’s extremely informative article, published at OpenForum.com, describes scams that pose as governmental entities.
I heeded Chen’s advice, which is to not respond to the emails: “If you respond to one letter, you might be marked as an “easy target” and receive additional –- and perhaps more dangerous –- solicitations in the future.”
The writer of this article didn’t have the good fortune of reading Chen’s advice. The writer describes what happened when he responded to the same letter I received.
Below is my letter from “Mr. Gao,” in its entirety.
You are now forewarned. Please alert your network of business friends to this scam and send them to Chen’s article.
The Chinese Government Scam Letter
From: howie.gao@nic-web.org
Subject: Concerning ” thesolopreneurlife” Application
Date: April 20, 2011 10:41:40 PM CDT
Reply-To: howie.gao@nic-web.org
Dear CEO,
We are the department of registration service in China. we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application on April 20, 2011, One company which is called “Oalie Trading co. ltd” is applying to register “thesolopreneurlife” as brand name and domain names as below :
thesolopreneurlife.asia
thesolopreneurlife.cn
thesolopreneurlife.com.cn
thesolopreneurlife.com.hk
thesolopreneurlife.com.tw
thesolopreneurlife.hk
thesolopreneurlife.net.cn
thesolopreneurlife.org.cn
thesolopreneurlife.tw
After our initial checking, we found the brand name and these domain names being applied are as same as your company’s, so we need to confirm with your company. If the aforesaid company is your business partner or your subsidiary company, please DO NOT reply us, we will approve the application automatically.
If you have no any relationship with this company, please contact us within 7 workdays. If out of the deadline, we will approve the application submitted by “Oalie Trading co. ltd” unconditionally.
Best Regards,
Howie Gao
Senior consultant
Have You Had Encounters With Small-Business Scams?
If so, tell us about them in the comments below.
Are you new here? This is a good place to start.
Related Posts:
Comments
I had this exact scam email sent to me, except of course targeting my domain. It made me stop for a moment, too, but I quickly realized it was a scam. I’m glad you didn’t get snared. Thanks for sharing this info. I’ll pass it along.
Hi Revka, I’m glad you didn’t get taken.
As Will Chen’s article points out, incorporated businesses are a target. The brilliance — if you want to call it that — of the scam is that they use public records and time their mischief well.
Ditto. The other related scam you will no doubt be the target of is via direct mail letters (snail mail) that come from trademark registration offices that request anywhere from $1,500 – $4,000 to register your trademark. They target folks who have just filed a TM and they look very official. When I received the first letter I sent it to my attorney asking if they had already taken care of this payment. That’s when they told me of the scam. But yes – filing trademarks and copyrights opens you up to a whole bunch of potential scams.
As far as the ones that come via snail mail, seems to me the FTC could easily go after them for mail fraud.
-A
Yep, I’ve gotten quite a few of these. Howie Gao sure gets around. Upon Googling all of the information contained in his email (which he sent with the greatest of urgency to every email address for the website he could find), there wasn’t even a hint that his company or the company referenced in his email were valid. Gotta love ‘em for trying, though.
And yes, we got hit by this scam too! Our email was dated 6/30/2011. It was marked urgent. It appears almost legit. After I read it a couple of times, I decided to google Howie Gao. What a scammer!! Not to mention that this one email has cost me a good hour or so of my morning, when I have so much work to do. I wish the FTC could do more. If any of you work on foreign due diligence on a routine basis, let others know of this scam.
Yes, I received one of these emails too. Your post is a good reminder that I need to share this with my students. Thank you!