Impersonator Warning to Affiliate Programs & Webmasters

[Nocturnal]

Dear Affiliate Program Managers and Webmasters,

First off I'm not sure this e-mail is being drafted in the correct forum if a moderator can please have it moved to the appropriate forum it would be greatly appreciated.

For those of you who know me hopefully you know me as a credible source and someone with a number of years of experience in the gaming industry. For those of you who don't know me I operate CasinoAdvisor.com among other like portals.

Today I was contacted by an affiliate manager of one of the groups I work with to inform me of what would appear as an attempted phishing scheme of sorts.

The impersonator registered a domain name rather close to casinoadvisor (the domain name they used was casinoadvisior.com (note the added letter "i" after the "s" in advisor)). Then they perform a 301 redirect on the fake address.

The impersonator used information found on CasinoAdvisor including the name of one of our writers along with our contact details and address of our registered holdings company in Belize. So it's possible that one who doesn't know me and is trying to get exposure on CasinoAdvisor could possibly be fooled into believing this is in fact someone from the real site contacting them.

I've posted the e-mail received by one of the affiliate programs we work with for you all to see below:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Adam Baker adam@casinoadvisior.com
Date: Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 9:38 AM
Subject: CasinoAdvisor
To: ****

Hello,

It's Adam with casinoadvisor.com. I'm setting up a few more test positions for various markets and was looking to work with this brand in the upcoming months. If you're interested, can you email me back or add me on skype to discuss a potential deal?

Best regards,

--
Adam Baker
Phone (USA): 1-(954) 889-6827
Phone (UK): 44-20-74931232
Skype: casinoadvisor

60 Market Square | P.O. Box 364 | Belize City | Belize

It's my belief that the impersonator is trying to do one or more of a few possible things:

1. Attempt to gain the trust of an affiliate manager and try to put together a deal where there would be a pre-payment for the promise of exposure.

2. Hi-jack an affiliate account (ie. by having an affiliate manger manually change username or password data).

3. To simply discredit CasinoAdvisor and create a bad name for us.

---

Of the above I believe that the motivations in these attempts are purely financial driven in attempts to scam affiliate programs out of money.

Both affiliate managers and webmasters need to be aware of the situation to prevent one or the other side from being scammed.

Best regards,
NOC

[Anthony]

Thanks for the PM. I will move this to the public area where affiliate managers can see it.

[Zuga]

I hate these wankers. the same thing happened to us few times...and they actually managed to scam few of our partners.. could be the same ppl but i reckon there is quite few doing this sh*t

[Renee]

Heads up I posted this earlier today
I also posted in the aff managers section to alert other aff mgrs.

https://www.gpwa.org/forum/fraudster...om-208586.html

[Maria F]

Thank you Nocturnal. I think this guy pops up every now and again.

[Nocturnal]

Thanks guys... yeah pretty bold move whoever is doing it.

In order to avoid being scammed I advise that affiliate managers that are structuring pre-paid or advance type deals first of try to ensure they're communicating with the legitimate site owner. If there's uncertainly I think it would be wise to request that positions / placement being paid for are actioned first before any payments are issued.

Something else worth mentioning is that I received several failed login attempt messages from the GPWA board yesterday which may or may not be related. Since I've ensured that my passwords are strong across the board which I suggest other affiliates consider doing as well.

[Topboss]

Thanks for the Heads up Nocturnal.
It is scary how many people are out there that cannot be bothered to earn an honest dollar and always have to try and ride on the backs of someone who is earning money honestly.
The ironic thing is that some of their methods are quite clever so many of them have the brains, so why not put their brains to use in an honest way rather than a dishonest way.....

[Nocturnal]

So it appears as though this fraudster has defrauded EuroPartners.

It's funny to have received a payment which I was one way or the other obligated (even just for good conscience) to send back to them which I've done now but more importantly that the fraudster activity ended up being one that resulted in my getting the payment. I probably should have kept the payment to teach them a lesson but I'm better than that.

Anyways affiliate programs really need to be aware of this as the next payment issued could actually go to the fraudster in which case there's no chance they'll have the opportunity to recoup such payment.

My name is Hanan And i 'm in charge of your account with Europartners. I am really sorry to bother you on your FB profile, however there's something urgent we need to discuss: there's someone who's trying to scam your partners and ask for new deals + flat payments under your name. please approve me on Skype or answer one of my emails i would like to give you the whole story.

----------------------------

Yeah I'm aware I posted about this on the GPWA and CAP and e-mailed all the affiliate managers.Here's my post on GPWA about this:
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/impersona...ight=nocturnal

Obviously it's not my responsibility if affiliate programs get defrauded by not doing a sufficient amount of their own due diligence. Most affiliate managers that I work with know my correct e-mail address so anything not coming from that should be ignored.

----------------------------

Thanks for the prompt reply,and thanks for the alert you sent to the whole Industry.
I totally agree with you that it's not your responsibility to protect us from such fraudulent affiliates, We sent $7,5k to your moneybookers account ( we agreed with the scammer on a prepaid Hybrid deal.. I'm really embraced to talk about it...) Please tell me if you can refund the payment before the end of the week. would like to establish a better business relationship with you and see if we can agree on a new deal (with a better revenue share deal for you).

----------------------------

Ah that payment was from you guys I just figured it was earnings. That kinds of sucks though as that payment has now been worked into my budgeting, etc... Anyways none the less I'll do the right thing here and send back the payment. Please note that the amount received because it was converted into CAD was $7262.61 which is the amount that I'd be able to send back to you minus any processing fees moneybookers charges.
Please let me know where to send the payment to. Also I'm going to post this thread of messages up on GWPA and CAP just as a further reminder to other affiliate programs about these sorts of issues.

[RyanH]

I rarely post on here but wanted to congratulate you on handling this situation with honesty and integrity. Very impressed.

[Marit VS]

That's really awful! I did read this thanks to Renee's post, but I still don't get what these people get out of it?

Other than trying to scam you out of a CPA deal I suppose?

One word: Idiots.

[Renee]

That's really awful! I did read this thanks to Renee's post, but I still don't get what these people get out of it?

Other than trying to scam you out of a CPA deal I suppose?

One word: Idiots.

Usually they would set it up so that the money is sent to them, then disappear with it leaving the aff program out the money for having sent it to someone who doesn't even own the site.

[grem]

Am I reading it correctly that europartners is giving away money? I thought they only take money.