FOLLOWUP – The Maxwells Fund – SCAM

I blogged before about a scam that was riding off the back of a lottery win here in the UK.

Richard and Angela Maxwell won over £53 million on the lottery, and it didn’t take long before the scammers jumped on this huge win and tried to use it to blag people via email.

My previous post was regarding their initial contact, well “they” replied!

Dear Olly,

How are you doing ? We hope this email finds you well. We sent you an email earlier informing you that your email was one of the email addresses selected to benefit from our donation project as part of events to mark our massive EuroMillions win.

Millionaires, scam or not. Putting a space before a question mark irritates me. Hah.

My wife and I are happy that you accepted to receive this financial support donation of £1million from our family fund. After winning Britain’s 10th biggest EuroMillions lottery jackpot of £53million, Angela and I decided to use part of our financial fortune to fund and support a number of good causes and it’s a privilege to be in a position to provide financial support where we could.

Its like, partially worded well, partially worded with feet in mouth.

The biggest and happiest change in our lives is that we can now support causes close to our hearts in more meaningful ways. My wife and I were incredibly lucky and we will never forget that.
As you can imagine, our donation payments would be handled by our bank in other to reduce the stress on us because it really sometimes can be stressful for my wife and I to do all these things on our own considering our old age.

Nice way of passing the responsibility over to someone that you dont have to pretend to be.

Please email your donation code -[#MaxwellsFundRecipient03] to Mr. Alan Belton, our personal banker, who also happens to be the deputy branch manager of our payout bank for payment. See Mr Belton’s contact details below;

Alan Belton. It even sounds like an English name a Nigerian would come up with.

Piraeus Bank S.A.
Tower 42, 25 Old Broad St., London EC2N 1HN
Deputy Branch Manager – Mr. Alan Belton
Email – abelton@piraeusbank5.co.uk

My bad, its a Ukrainian scam.

Domain name:
piraeusbank5.co.uk

Registrant:
Haim Koik

Registrant type:
Unknown

Registrant’s address:
13 Sheptitskogho St.
Ternopil
Ternopil’s’ka oblast
46008
Ukraine

Data validation:
Nominet was not able to match the registrant’s name and/or address against a 3rd party source on 20-Mar-2015

Registered through:
domaindiscount24
URL: http://www.domaindiscount24.net

Registrar:
Key-Systems GmbH [Tag = KEY-SYSTEMS-DE]
URL: http://www.Key-Systems.net

Owd Haim has gone to some fair trouble here, why he hasn’t opted for the free WHOIS privacy I dont know.

My wife and I would expect you to work in harmony with the payout bank in other to facilitate an immediate release of the donated amount.

Real people dont talk like that.

Best Regards,
Richard and Angela Maxwell.

Email sent from:  Richard Maxwell <r.maxwell@maxwellfoundation.co.uk>

And the WHOIS for that shows different info from the Piraeus Bank one above, however if you pay attention;

Domain name:
maxwellfoundation.co.uk

Registrant:
Maxwell Foundation

Registrant type:
Unknown

Registrant’s address:
13 perth square, highland park
Gold Coast
QLD
4800
Australia

Data validation:
Nominet was not able to match the registrant’s name and/or address against a 3rd party source on 18-May-2015

Registered through:
domaindiscount24
URL: http://www.domaindiscount24.net

Registrar:
Key-Systems GmbH [Tag = KEY-SYSTEMS-DE]
URL: http://www.Key-Systems.net

The registrar is identical on both. Busted.

They seem to be using Google for the email for both, as the MX records are all configured to use Google Apps – its amazing that Google will host a phishing URL and let someone send scam emails from it!

They even included some images in the original email that was sent;

I hope Richard and Angela are enjoying their winnings – its such a shame their name is being dragged through the mud with this horrible scam!

If you get an email from them, it will be a scam!

Let me know if you get anything like by posting a comment below.