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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.

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.

Greystar Apartments PPC Scam

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.

Greystar Apartments PPC Scam

Greystar Apartments PPC Scam

UPDATE: I had to restore the Greystar Apartments PPC Scam article due to a software glitch, and in doing so I had to take some of the screenshots again. One of them was the WHOIS lookup, and when I did the first one it seemed to show me more information that it should have done – i’m not sure what is happening here but i’m sure this info should be redacted;

Contact Information
Registrant:
Name: bui van Dong
Organization: None
Email: lskfoods@gmail.com
Status: active
Phone: tel:+84.898402000
Kind: individual
Mailing Address: bach nga, xa nga son, tinh thanh hoa, 100000
ISO-3166 Code: VN
Administrative:
Name: bui van Dong
Organization: None
Email: lskfoods@gmail.com
Status: active
Phone: tel:+84.898402000
Kind: individual
Mailing Address: bach nga, xa nga son, tinh thanh hoa, 100000
ISO-3166 Code: VN
Technical:
Name: bui van Dong
Organization: None
Email: lskfoods@gmail.com
Status: active
Phone: tel:+84.898402000
Kind: individual
Mailing Address: bach nga, xa nga son, tinh thanh hoa, 100000
ISO-3166 Code: VN

Registrar Information
Name: Nhan Hoa Software Company Ltd.
IANA ID: 1710
Abuse contact email: hdung@nhanhoa.com
Abuse contact phone: tel:+844 73086680
DNSSEC Information
Delegation Signed: Unsigned

So that’s interesting!

I’ve emailed lskfoods@gmail.com to see what they have to say for themselves. I will update the post if they reply.

UPDATE 2: Their email has been disabled – this lead is dead 🙁

Comments

7 responses to “Greystar Apartments PPC Scam”

  1. Paul avatar
    Paul

    Hey Olly,
    Thanks for sharing…!
    Had this email too and thought something was off looking at the age of the domain…
    But your deeper dive confirms everything.

  2. Bec avatar
    Bec

    Thanks for sharing! I’ve just been investigating, this ‘lead’ from their Head Of Marketing had my spidey senses tingling. We’re lucky we know when something feels off… others – not so lucky 🙁

  3. JT avatar
    JT

    got similar email today. I always look up websites when something seems phishy and scammy. No web at greystarppc.com. Red flag. deleted and blocked email domain.

  4. Bryant avatar
    Bryant

    The scam persists, thank you for sharing this.

    They added a meeting to one of my agency emails, which I sometimes allow for biz dev purposes, and in this case I actually had an opening so I took the unsolicited meeting. I also thought this was another agency trying to collab, then when they didn’t show (surprise, surprise), I emailed fairly snarky message thanking them for scheduling time on my calendar and not showing up.

    They promptly replied with a script similar to what you shared in the thread. Seemed fishy enough, and thankfully came across your post quickly.

    Thanks for fighting the good fight!

  5. David avatar
    David

    Same same

  6. David avatar
    David

    Thanks again

  7. Aydin avatar
    Aydin

    Thanks for sharing. Got similar email today from matt@greystarppc.com saying:

    “We are looking for a team or agency to create and manage Google Ads campaigns for our real estate business. If you’re interested, please get in touch matt@greystarppc.com“.

    Got suspicious. Checked the domain before replying, nothing! Then searched the company name seperately and landed here.

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