Most of our projects has a requirement of funding, so communication with investors or VC are more or less our daily routine. Usually we find a scam schemes, that surprises us each time we find it. It’s sad, but most of all situations when we get into the scamming schemes it’s on LinkedIn. This post will be dedicated to offset companies and persons which we believe are scammers.
Scam #1 – Cheap and easy funding (Loan for business)
This is one of the scam schemes that we have also found on LinkedIn. We went quite with communication and reached final stage – contracting. Scheme is quite simple. Communication is very professional, as usual fake company and person names and even passports are being used. Company they represent is from Kuwait, then we moved to communicate with a guy at UK, money transfer was expecting from USA and contract was build by a law or Romania.
Here is a sample of content you could receive from these guys:
I acknowledge the receipt of your mail and your interest in our project funding to expand your business. I am a financial consultant registered with the Kirnaf Capital Saudi Arabia and wish you to take part in the company’s funding scheme through the UAE office.
Very absolutely the Kirnaf Capital can grant you the loan amount that you require ranging from US$1 million to USD$4 Billion or more than depending on your project/ Company capacity but we need to know and have details of your project to be able to send it to the Company FACL for appraisal and once the approval is issued, you will be required to fly down to Kirnaf Capital meeting office in UAE for final signing of the loan contract and release of the loan amount to your account.
Meanwhile the Kirnaf Capital are experts in their field of loan processing and have helped many like yours in funding with a high quality and swift services as you will also be in UAE to get your own wonderful experience with Kirnaf Capital.
Please kindly take note also of the following procedure for the loan and if you are ready and qualified for the loan, we can proceed.
Note that the presence of the borrower and CEO of the borrowing company is required at the Kirnaf Capital office Saudi or meeting office UAE preferably for submission of Project and Company relevant documents and signing of loan contract/release of loan to borrower’s account. (Terms & Conditions applies)
You have to understand that your meeting with Kirnaf Capital is the very vital point for the loan process, and as the Mandate to the company, I have to advise on all you will need to know.
The Kirnaf Capital is a reputable company that provides one stop automated solution for your financial need, depending on the size and field of your organization; they have different financial services to meet your requirements. They provide the optimum and customized solution made for your organization.
Finally, the Kirnaf Capital will give you the term and condition for your perusal and as well give you the MOU to sign and return back to them. Thereafter, they will give you a meeting appointment for you to book your flight itinerary to Dubai UAE and hotel reservation respectively and send to them for confirmation and for them to know your arrival date as this will enable them pick you up from the airport for your meeting with the Kirnaf Capital.
Finally, let us know if you are ready to proceed and we shall direct you to the Company for follow ups on the Term Sheet.
The interest rate is at 2% for 2 to 15 years term or more.
Indicators
- They always have dummy websites with non-working links and communicating from “Outlook.com”, “Yahoo” or other non-domain emails.
- Company website doesn’t have a SSL sertificate.
- Secondly you are being transfered from one person to another and etc. At the end 3rd or 4th person keeps communication with you.
Proposal from scammers
They offer a quick and easy loan with a veeeeeery flexible and acceptable conditions. By the way we asked for 1.000.000 Eur – and we got approved.
Dead-End. After we received a loan contract we saw, that there was 8496 Eur was calculated as contract and legal fee and this amount must be paid before fake LOAN will be transfered to us.
Here is the final answer from scammers after we sent a inquiry to deduct legal fee from our loan transfer:
We write to inform you that after a very careful review of your status, standing, profiling, etc this office has decided to cancel the financing of this project as it deems you as unqualified for same.
We regret any inconvenience this new development might have caused you.
Should you feel that this decision is not supposed to be taken against you, kindly do give us reasons why it must not be applied as you have refused to abide by the mode of our operations and terms and conditions.
Related persons ant companies
Rashid Yaqoub Al Nafisi from Al Mazaya Holding Company
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rashid-yaqoub-al-nafisi-2525661a2/
Ali Darab from Federal Access Credit Union (https://www.facuonline.com/)
Frank Koswell from company Kirnaf Capital Consultancy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-koswell-1788a7182/
Scam #2 – Real estate purchases
This year we have started to receive emails from persons interested in buying real estate in our country/region. We started to dig deep in the proposal and to be honest everything was fine.
This is how first interactions looked like:
I allow to contact you because I have a customer who know the location
very well of your hotel, and as it is the person who wishes to
invest in your country, he asked me to know you if your hotel would be
for sale, either to make a management with him.If unfortunately you would not be ready for the sale we would like to
know if you have some projects professional as to develop your channel
or to open it other one in other regions.My customer is also a very serious financial partner, who has already
invested in several real estate and other projects with my company and
private persons.I wait for your answer, to let you know more about my customer, his
request and his interest.Looking forward to hear from you soon, you can contact me.
Indicators
- First of all we receive a quite intensive push to come to Paris or Milan to meet in person.
- Proposed video call was not acceptable for them, so that was a first indicator that this case could be a scam as well.
- Company website doesn’t have a SSL certificate.
- I have truly confused trying to understand who is who and who is manager and who is superior.
- Communication with representative person was only on WhatsApp
- Everyone knows that getting “Hello, my friend” from person having Arabic accent, usually means only one thing – Trouble.
Dead-End
To be honest cut the communication after we asked them for couple of regarding company and personal information to make further step more transparent, but we never received answers just excuses and evasion. If I could guess what’s going to be next I would say two scenarios could happen:
a) Similar to scam scenario #1 – some pre-payments of fees could appear on later communication
b) Real estate purchase could be real, but one of money laundering schemes could be used.
Related persons and companies
David Salter from Geo. Salter (Management) Limited
Recommendations
- Play with scammers (If only you recognized it’s a clear scam). Find out how their scheme works and share with community, share with us (we will post it here).
- Never share your IDs copy or your personal data. Thief or personality is quite usual activity scammers do. They can use it to less risky activity like registering accounts or creating social profile, but also they can do damage by doing different kind of financial criminal activity.
