Scam Types dot Com

This evening whilst i was at work I received a telephone call to my mobile phone from a number I didn’t instantly recognise - 08450229900. As I was waiting for a call from a bank I thought it may be them so when I had a break I called the number back, only to find out it was for a company called Prize Direct.

Thinking it may be a scam I hung up immediately - some of these numbers you get missed calls from redirect you to a high cost per minute number. When I got in I decided to look prizedirect.net up on the internet.

It turns out that they are a ‘game’ website. Seems that it is some sort of turn based affair played via SMS. Strangely, on the terms and conditions page they go to great lengths to explain that it is not a lottery. Why, I don’t know.

They mention something about awards for less than 10000 Euros being paid in gift certificates that allow you to buy from over 100 items in the UK World Gift Catalogue, another scam I shall be coming back to in the near future. Needless to say, this catalogue offers Siny televisions and Pinasonic electricals that are worth less than the postage costs of receiving them!

Also, under their “winning claims” section they mention that you have to apply for an award if you are a winner and then they will tell you what the award is. Their decision is final and there will be absolutely no correspondance!! Not sounding too good for prizedirect so far is it?

Ok, so next I do a whois lookup for prizedirect.net to see who is behind this obvious scam -

Whois info for, prizedirect.net:

Registrant:
Prize Direct
137 Earls Court Road
London, London W1 5QL
UK

Domain name: PRIZEDIRECT.NET

Administrative Contact:
Smith, George  icecold59@hotmail.co.uk
137 Earls Court Road
London, London W1 5QL
UK
+442073732364  Fax: +442086550202

Technical Contact:
Smith, George  icecold59@hotmail.co.uk
137 Earls Court Road
 London, London W1 5QL
 UK
+442073732364  Fax: +442086550202

Registration Service Provider:
Serverstream, support@Serverstream.net
+44 20 7517 0606
+44 20 8728 2867 (fax)
 http://www.Serverstream.net
Serverstream - Managed Hosting Services
Register1 : Low Cost Domain Names - £49 Dedicated Xeon Servers
support@Register1.net
http://www.Register1.net

Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 20-Apr-2007.
Record expires on 09-Sep-2007.
Record created on 09-Sep-2005.

Domain servers in listed order:
NS2.REGISTER1.NET 
NS1.REGISTER1.NET 
NS0.REGISTER1.NET 

Domain status: ok

Ok, so George Smith resides at Earls Court in London and has a hotmail email address. Perhaps I should send him an email and ask how his company got my ex-directory phone number in the first place. (My guess : my mobile phone operator has been illegally selling my details).

Oh hang on, London doesn’t tally up with the details on the prizedirect.net website -

ThePrizeDirect is the trading name for Casey Worldwide Ltd whose registered office is 3rd floor Omar Hodge Building, Road Town, Tortola, BVI.

Now Tortola is in the Virgin Isles, West Indies. If you search for ‘Tortola + Scam’ on Google the you will see that the place is quite famous for premium rate phone number fraud, with O2 seeming to be the operator most widely linked to it.

Searching for Casey Worldwide Ltd has yet to yield any results so I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has any experience of them.