Greystar Apartments PPC Scam

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Firstly, I am not suggesting Greystar Apartments are a scam, but this scam itself is doing the rounds and these people are pretending to be Greystar Worldwide LLC. This is the Greystar Apartments PPC Scam.

It started with an enquiry, the domain looked a bit dodgy but I actually thought it was another marketing agency at first. This is a tactic used by them sometimes, like “Oh we are looking for agency partners for a big client” but all they are really trying to get you to do is join their super secret lead-gen club.

I replied, with the utmost professionalism;

As I knew this wasnt a legit request.

Hmm, I Googled the name and this guy is the managing director, but this screams scam to anyone that knows what they are looking at. That said, I wasnt sure how they were gonna try and scam me yet – I still knew this was dodgy AF.

Its written to literally make a small digital marketing agency owner weak at the knees – $70,000 budget a month?! That management fee will be the equivalent of someone’s WAGE! Oh SHIT!

Also the Greystarppc.com domain name was registerd 7 days prior to me writing this article.;

Anyway, like I always do, I baited them;

My new friend Christopher replied;

And I got this email through;

Email it was sent from was adspromonoreply@googlemail.com – Greystar Apartments PPC Scam

The email they have sent from is wrong, although fairly convincing. Also, the Fwd: bit at the end of the subject is something you would not see. These emails are auto generated, not forwarded.

The button itself also shows us our next clue, as it links here;

Again, they have done a good job with this planning, they used a Googlemail email to send a Google email, and have hosted a fake Google ads page, on Googles server.

This scam WILL trick innocent people.

Clicking the CONTINUE button and Nord stepped in;

It was trying to send me to google.accounts-signin.com – again, looks convincing, but the domain is www.accounts-signin.com and that doesnt look like a Google domain.

I bypassed Nord but it looks like the page has been taken down now anyway.

In short, this is a fairly well thought out scam, they are trying to get you to add your Google credentials into a fake login page I suspect – and then once they have your Google login they would proceed to ruin your life.

There may be more to it along the way – but if you are a digital agency owner, dont fall for these scams. There are a few variations, a few where they get you to quote for work and, and a few other variations.