The phony Nina Online Gallery and Boutique website, almost identical to the real one
Online scam hits Australian jewellers
4.6 k views | Posted October 26, 2010 |
By Sonia Nair
An Australian jeweller has been hit by a scam that uses an exact replica of the company’s website to fool people into phony business proposals.
Retailers have alerted Jeweller to a sophisticated online scam involving credit card processing. Retailers are receiving emails form a person going by the name of ”Peter Clement” and purporting to be from “Nina’s Online Gallery and Boutique”.
The email makes the offer to form a business partnership with them.
An email received by one Sydney retailer read, “We are in need of a company with a merchant processor in good standing that we can process our credit card orders on. In return you will receive a very agreeable percentage of the total processed dollar value.”
The email from the fake “Nina’s Online Gallery and Boutique” then proceeded to explain how they were unable to process credit card payments due to paperwork discrepancies.
The email ended with Clement saying, “There is a good financial incentive in this partnership, which will well reimburse you for your time and for the use of your credit card processing facilities.”
The email was sent from support@ninarings.com.
The genuine Nina website, belonging to a retailer based in Western Australia, is http://www.ninasjewellery.com.au/ and the phony duplicate website is http://www.ninarings.com/.
The fake website appears identical in nearly every aspect to the original one apart from subtle differences. Under the contact customer service page, the phone number was removed on the phony website, presumably to stop people from attempting to call “Peter Clement” and the email address – orders@ninasjewellery.com.html – was invalid.
The scammers intend all communication to go via support@ninarings.com.
However, in a likely oversight by the people behind the fraudulent website, the telephone number of the genuine website was not removed under the ‘our policies’ section when they replicated it.
Jeweller’s investigations have found that the scam website is registered to a PO Box in Sunnyvale, California.
A spokesperson for the real Nina’s Online Gallery & Boutique said the company was aware of the scam and was seeking legal advice, but they were unavailable for further comment.
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