Final Straw

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Oct 11th,2001

The Final Straw

This site is dedicated to an unspeakably revolting set of crooks.

 

In the aftermath of the carnage at the World Trade Centre and related incidents, these people set up a fraud to extract money from well-meaning folk who wanted to help the victims.
You and I saw tragedy. These people saw a golden opportunity to make money. Their actions could be likened to searching the ruins looking for wallets and valuables belonging to the dead.

This website brings together information from different sources which will help to identify the fraudsters and the services from behind which they operated.
The network of domain names and linked sites, telephone and fax numbers form a web of payment transactions for law enforcement to follow.
YOU can contribute your bit by highlighting this information to your politicians and law enforcement agencies.

 

The morning after the attacks, I received the following spam:

From: expressrelieffund2001@yahoo.com
To: <Undisclosed.Recipients@deadbert.skynet.be>
Subject: Help for the Red Cross and the victims of our Nations tragedy
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 04:23:53 -0500

Express Relief Fund.

A combination of relief funds are available for you to send donations to.

Red Cross: Click here

Victims Survivor Fund. This will go to a combination of victim survivor funds equally disbursed. Click here

Thank you for your help and support.

expressrelieffund2001@yahoo.com

 

Both 'Click Here's led to the same web page at http://www.freewebco.net/viacream/SurvivorFund.html

Here is how that page looked:

Give Blood 1-800-GIVE-LIFE
Red Cross 1-800-HELP-NOW

To the victims and families of this National tragedy are heartfelt thoughts and prayers go out to you.

Click Here $25.00 Red Cross
Click Here $50.00 Red Cross
Click Here $100.00 Red Cross
Click Here $250.00 Red Cross

Click Here Victims Survivor Fund $25.00
Click Here Victims Survivor Fund $50.00
Click Here Victims Survivor Fund $100.00
Click Here Victims Survivor Fund $250.00

The Victims Survivor Fund will go to a combination of victim survivor funds equally disbursed

Thank you for your help and support.

We are not affiliated with the Red Cross or a Survivor Fund. This is a service to help those who want to give and help those of the victims and their families.

10% of your donation will go towards administration costs.

This was a fraud, of course.

  • The email followed a classic spam route
  • www.freewebco.net is a well-known spammer host
    It is also known as www.freewebhostingcentral.com and www.e-webhostcentral.com
    A more recently noted domain for the same host is www.online-ggii1994.com
    More domain names are being registered for use in new spamming runs. Known domains are listed and detailed in the 'Their Domains' page.
  • The proceeds were collected via an anonymous merchant account ( MerchantID=20144 ) at 1shoppingcart.com

You'll note the "10% of your donation will go towards administration costs"
Yeah. Sure! Try 100%

Despite all the warnings that common sense should have offered, I'm sure that emotion drove many people to donate. Why anyone should give money to a completely anonymous entity that uses an 'exotic path' to their mailbox beats me. People get defrauded via normal spam all the time, so I suppose it's not surprising that a spam which manipulated their emotions in these extraordinary circumstances would work.

Brian Walsh
finalstraw@alia.ie

 


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