How to report an attempted web designer scam? I am a freelance web designer; I have a website and a Facebook page to find new clients. A few days ago I received an email inquiring about web design that immediately sounded fishy: Good Day, Am Tom Williams i wanna know if you can handle (Website Design) for a new marketing and also if credit card is fine to make payment with you kindly get back to me ASAP so i can send you the job details. The bad grammar and immediate mention of credit cards was strange, but I need all the work I can get so I decided to prod for more details. He told me he was located in Texas (I am in Arizona), told me about his business (agriculture products), gave me a link to a competitor's site as reference and a list of job requirements as well as a budget of $4000 to $6000. Now, that price range is not out of the ordinary for a professional business website but I myself am I young, self-taught freelancer and I don't usually make anywhere near that per project. And if he's in Texas, why choose an Arizonan web designer? There's got to be hundreds or more that are closer to him. So I really wanted this to be real but I'm now 99% sure that it's a scam. After a couple more emails back and forth I decided it couldn't hurt to give him a price and ask for a deposit; and if I received the money with no funny business I'd make the website. I told him I wanted $1000 up front and then he replied with this: I have my credit card available for the payment . But first I want you to pay attention to this .I have been advised to take a long rest for an easy and fast recovery,hence the reason why I need your favor. I haven't payed the project consultant that has the text content and the logo for my website he does not have credit card facility. Regarding this fact,I will be giving you credit card for the total of $5,080. Once the funds clears to your account $2,000 will be deducted as an upfront payment for the design of the website,$80 for yourself as tip and the remaining $3,000 will be sent to the project consultant that has the text content and the logo for my website. Be rest assured you will be charging everything on my credit card including the 3% CC charges. Below is the final break down of the total charges i will be authorizing you to charge on my credit card. Website-Deposit: $2,000 - Consultant-fee: $3,000 - Tips &amp; Gratitude: $80 - 3% CC charges? Basically, it sounds like he wants to transfer a bunch of money to me, and then have me keep my cut and transfer the rest to someone else. I don't know how, exactly, but I imagine that somehow I'll get screwed out of everything and possibly the funds already in my account (jokes on them, I'm broke). Anyway, I found this article confirming my suspicions that stuff like this does happen: https://www.alvalyn.com/email-scams-target-web-designers/ And I wonder if I should report this somehow? Or if there's any other legal action I could take? Thanks.
Short Answer This is a variation of the classic Nigerian Prince Confidence Scam a/k/a 419 Scam and you are their mark. The goal of this con is theft and abscondence. Not necessarily money laundering as others have suggested. Because, ultimately, there is no money on their end except what they seek to steal from their mark. As others have pointed out, variations on this also include the Overpayment Scam and hat tip to the Spanish Prisoner Scam of the 16th century for historical context. Banking asymmetry is the key The basic idea is that funds clear U.S. banks faster than foreign banks. More specifically, money transfers to points inside the U.S. from points outside the U.S. take longer to clear than transfers from points inside the U.S. to outside the U.S. The ongoing success of this confidence scam rests upon that single feature of the global banking system. This asymmetry will eventually land you in a situation where your funds clear (leave your account) but theirs don't (i.e., never enter your account) — yet at first appear to do so — until you find out later their funds "bounced." By that time, they will be long gone but the bank will come after you for the bounced funds. And, of course, your money will be gone. Thereby leaving you holding the bag. Best response: stop communicating The best thing to do is to just stop communicating with them. You can try reporting it to your state's Attorney General but, quite frankly, I wouldn't bother. These are so common you just have to treat it like "background noise." Cautionary tale: sad and common This is really sad. But I used to work in a retail location of a large national bank. Our clients were mostly members of a small suburban neighborhood. At least once per week, and sometimes two or three times per week, like clockwork, we would always see a different person coming into the bank asking to withdraw all their funds to send out of the country. After asking a couple questions it was always clear that this was another variation of the 419 Confidence Scam. The marks were usually older people (who are more gullible and trusting of strangers than the average population. Something to do with simpler times in the past, I guess.) Often times the marks were so convinced by the con that we could not explain to them what was happening in a way they would believe us and got conned anyway. Losing all their money. It's all very sad, but a cautionary tale and an example of how convincing these cons can be. Also, to illustrate how common it all is, imagine that this probably happened in every retail location serving every neighborhood in the U.S. Very sad. And very common.
In case a company is flooded by such &quot;asymmetric&quot; requests, how should a company react? Although article 12.5 refers to singular &quot;a data subject&quot;, it can be inferred that exposing the controller to significant expenses is not part of the legislative intent. Accordingly, the company may have requesters choose between paying a reasonable fee for the ensuing administrative costs or withdrawing the requirement that delivery be by postal mail. The bad faith scenario you outline seems to be a non-sequitur, since generally a pattern (or a high number) of requests for postal mail delivery should prompt the controller to suspect that some or many might not be legitimate. A requester with bad intentions would be unable to prove the identity of the various data subjects he impersonates or alleges to represent.
From what I can see on the USPTO registry, &quot;tweet&quot; is still not trademarked for the purposes you're talking about. Twitter has been working to secure that trademark, but I can't find any record of them having actually secured it. Just the same, I'd predict that using it will get you at least a cease-and-desist letter, and possibly a lawsuit. Whether you'd win that case seems to be a very open question, but that presumes you have the resources to litigate.
This smells strongly of "bait and switch" fraud: offer a product at an attractive price, then "discover" that the product is not really available at that price. By that time the customer has sunk costs and is therefore willing to accept an alternative product with a lower quality or higher price than was originally promised. Looking at the homepage for ".club" it seems that they do indeed offer different prices for different names. I see "examples.club" listed at $101 while "model.club" is listed at $19,000. From your post it sounds like your hosting company have cancelled your purchase and will not actually charge you the higher fee. This is, as you say, a very dodgy practice. You might want to move to another company which is more up-front about unknown costs for such domains. If you have already paid the £7.99 then you are entitled to that money back. You do not have to accept a different name: that would be a classic bait-and-switch scam. They are NOT entitled to charge you a higher price unless you agree to it. If they won't return your money or try to charge you more then you should drop them like a hot brick and report them for fraud. Edit in response to question edit The situation is not clear-cut, and will probably depend on the exact wording in the company's terms and conditions to determine exactly when the contract was formed. An article about a similar case in The Telegraph had this to say: The legally binding contract is complete when a retailer accepts an order. However, acceptance does not necessarily happen at the point of order. Even the confirmation email may not be an acceptance. Some retailers reserve the right to cancel an order up to the point of delivery. It is therefore important to carefully check the retailer’s terms and conditions (which must be available on their website) and emails – if a retailer simply acknowledges an order, there may be no contract at that point. Lots of companies have T&amp;Cs saying that there isn't a contract until they actually deliver the item, so if they don't deliver then they are not in breach of contract. The company may also be able to argue that its offered price was so grossly disproportionate that it was an obvious mistake and therefore they should not be held to it. UK contract law is based on the concept of a "meeting of minds" where two people have the same view of the contract and agree to it, but this is rather problematic when one of the minds was represented by a buggy computer. You might be able to counter this by showing that they are still doing it, and hence this is an ongoing business practice rather than an honest mistake. Ultimately your only options, assuming they decline to honour the purchase, are to either accept the refund or take them to court requesting an order of specific performance.
Yes a company can be sued (since anyone can sue anyone). But in order to win a lawsuit, you have to have damages as a result of some action, AND you must prove that the action was done with intent to harm or was otherwise negligent. So following your website example, a lot of things would have to happen: The website would have to be hacked. If the passwords are encrypted instead of hashed (which still qualifies as "plain-text" once they email it to you), the hacker would have to figure out how to decrypt the passwords. (Which a good hacker could probably do.) The hacker would have to take those passwords and do something with them that causes damage to their owners. Even if all of those things happened, you would still also have to prove negligence on their part which would be pretty difficult to do because the flaw that was hacked would be the focus of negligence discussions moreso than what was stolen. That being said, if your goal is simply to get them to fix the problem, rather than receive monetary damages, then you could still sue for an action to be taken. You'd have to pay by the hour for the attorney since they wouldn't have a chance of winning monetary damages. But in all likelihood the website owner, upon seeing the lawsuit, would fix the problem before it gets to court, so I could see that having the desired effect. That is if you think it's worth the cost of filing the lawsuit in the first place. Perhaps you could save yourself the cost of an attorney and just threaten to sue if they don't fix the problem.
They must give you a refund By saying they don't give refunds that are required by law they are engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct which will expose them to some serious fines. Report them to the relevant Italian authority. Presumably, you paid for this service with a credit/debit card. Contact your card provider and dispute the transaction - they will put the money back in your account and that will probably the last you hear of this company.
To paraphrase the Princess Bride: "I don't think those words mean what you think they do". The "truther-activist", "sovereign citizen", and "Citizen vs. Human Being" concepts will only hurt you. It has never succeeded, to my knowledge; It has failed multiple times. Let me tell you a little about myself to illustrate what I mean: I am a software developer (and it seems from your profile, you are at least somewhat computer inclined, so this will hopeful make sense to you). The business side of the company I work for think that myself and my team write "magic code", and having the system do whatever they ask for is just a matter of pressing enough buttons in the correct order. It totally insane, and it completely analogous to what you are propose. The court is a carefully designed system, and you don't have the power to make arbitrary changes to it. Certainly not through the "arbitrary button presses" of "legal fiction". Some things to note Legal fictions are never summoned. People are. Organizations are. See initial paraphrase with regards to "legal fiction". Your legal fiction has not been summoned, you have. You will be appearing as yourself, not a straw man. I'm sorry to break it to you, but whomever you have heard this from is wrong, and in the most best case scenario, they are confusing what they want to be true for reality. If they have received any money from you in relation to this opinion, then they are almost certainly a scammer and a liar. If you insist on going further with this nonsense, then you WILL lose, regardless of what actual facts you have. My condolences. Now, to answer the question you asked: Yes, you can file a monition for discovery before first appearance (but not before pleading). You can file by mail, and in some jurisdictions, online. Source: https://www.nycourts.gov/courthelp/goingtocourt/caseBasics.shtml.
Is it illegal to ask a company for money in exchange for information on a bug in their software/website? That in itself is legal. Indeed, the company would incur unjust enrichment if it coerced you to disclose your discovery for free. Only if you threatened the company to divulge to others your discovery unless the company pays you, it would be illegal and trigger charges such as extortion (likewise, legislations outlaw the unjustified delivery of programs or instructions for hacking a software/network/etc., although this goes beyond your actual question). Can the company take legal action against me? That seems doubtful, futile, and it could backfire (please note I have not done any research on legal precedents about this). Although the terms and conditions of the website or the End User License Agreement (EULA) of software might prohibit you to reverse engineer (RE)/decompile/etc. the application, anti-RE clauses are unenforceable and the remedies therefor are indeterminate because the sole act of conducting reverse engineering does not subject the company (or third parties) to any losses. The company's decision to take legal action for your discovery could backfire from two standpoints. First, it calls attention to the fact that the software at issue is defective and unsafe. And second, the bug is likely to be detected by someone else anyway, thereby potentially compromising customers' systems.