This last year – like many others – I have started getting involved in cryptocurrency. I kick myself for not getting involved in it earlier but never mind. Anyway, as its a reasonably new thing for me I am still learning the terminology, the technology and the processes of how everything works, so when I got this email I had to do a double take and remember my checks before clicking on anything.
Check number #1 – Is the sender email address, legit?
Err nope!
Check number #2 – Is the reply to address the same as the sender address
In this case it was, but the sender address has already failed to pass the first test so check #2 is kinda not required.
Check number #3 – Do the links go where they should go?
Errr – NOPE!
Conclusion – SCAM SPOOF FAKE EMAIL.
Now imagine this, you are new to Crypto, you are not an experienced internet user but have heard about Crypto and want to get involved. You hear the term Blockchain so you Google it – end up on Blockchain.info and you open an account and start investing.
You then get this email a few days later. You’re just gonna click on it aren’t you!
This email shows to me that the scams are evolving and the people creating them are paying attention to what is happening in the world and reacting to it by modifying their scams. And with Crypto related stuff, once those coins are gone they are GONE. There is no bank to ring and complain to. Thats it!
Be extra careful in 2018 peeps! These scammers are EVERYWHERE!
Is there no place these scummy douchebags won’t go?
I got this email from my work earlier in the month and I was shocked at the angel these guys had gone into this scam, its the same as the traditional 419 nigerian scams but this one uses an old BBC article from the Iraq war to try and legitimise the scam. It starts;
Dear friend,
How are you doing? Thanks for showing interest.I am a senior British military officer , I served in Iraq during and after gulf war respectively and presently I have been deployed for a peace mission in Afghanistan.
Thanks for showing interest? When did I do that then?
During our mission in Iraq 2003, we found stashes of hidden cash that ran into millions of dollars and before returning the money we found to Iraqi government we kept some money which we shared among those that went for the operation and I got about $12.5 million dollars and the money has been secretly and safely kept in a security company because of fear of being questioned about how I got such money because our salaries and details as soldiers is well known.
Lol and a “Security Company” wouldn’t ask where you got $12.5 million dollars from??
Now that American government are pulling out troops from Afghanistan , I want to resign and go into business ,so I want this money to be moved to your country and invested in your care in a profitable business in your country so I contacted you because I need a capable person that will assist in receiving the money then when I return home from Afghanistan, I will travel to your country to meet you in person so that we can discuss in details which area we can invest . You can go through this link below my friend to get a clear understanding of what I am talking about.
Hmm;
Ooookkkkkkk…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2988455.stm
The link does indeed go to a page on the BBC site that talks about US troops finding a shed load of money in Baghdad – the article is from 2003 though! (Wow, how crap was the BBC website in 2003!?)
I need your confirmation that you are able to manage these huge funds.I contacted you because I am looking for a capable foreign partner whom I can entrust this money in his care for investing in a profitable business as I don’t have idea of any business because I have never been engaged or involved in any business activity before.
Take care and hoping to hear from you as regards to my letter of proposition.
I’d love to know why they think im a “capable foreign partner” as Im historically pretty terrible with money management haha.
All in all, a very typical 419 scam, but with a different twist. Dont fall for it peeps.
I’ve replied to the guy of course, but hes not replied yet.
It was sent from;
David Hook – davidhook411@yahoo.com (reply to address was the same)
I have recently written about a scammer called Stuart Paskin, he runs a number of businesses and websites including The White Tent, and has built his entire “empire” up by moving from Digital Agency to Digital Agency scamming them to do work, then announcing the work wasnt up to scratch and moving onto another company.
The White Tent is their current, main website that we worked on in 2016 and the start of 2017 – and from the second we spoke to Stuart at The White Tent we knew he was going to be trouble.
The White Tent had been made in Opencart which is our eCommerce platform of choice – the tasks he asked us to do were all within our capabilities and we were able to complete them as and when we were asked to complete them, apart from on a couple of occasions where things were delayed due to requests from customers who pay us a monthly retainer and get higher priority support. As we started working on things we noticed more and more things that just didnt seem to sit well with us, he had admin accounts set up for 3 or 4 different companies who all seemed to specialise in Opencart development and was always talking crap about the people who had worked on it in the past.
We sent Stuart Paskin our first invoice and heard nothing apart from more demands of work he wanted doing, and we actually got passed over to one of his little henchmen Stewart Stalker – Stewart made excuses for Stuart as to why invoices were not being paid (not in the office, also used a family member’s illness as an excuse) and we were reassured time and time again that they would be sorted.
Halfway through our “Business relationship” Stuart drafted in a lovely lady to do PPC and Social Media marketing, and then started to get her to chase us for updates on tasks he had asked me to do – I later found out she was also not paid a penny for any of the work she did and found it extremely upsetting and demoralising to have to call people like myself and chase us for updates – knowing full well we weren’t being paid on time for our work either.
Anyway – time went on and we did bit and bobs on The White Tent as Stuart and Stewart continued to dangle a carrot, promising we would be paid “if we just…” – but we were growing increasingly frustrated about the whole situation so we started doing some digging.
We found a forum post by someone called Paul over on the Opencart forums, and our bad feeling suddenly turned into a sickening feeling as we realised we were the victim of a serial scammer. I reached out to Paul and his experience was pretty much the same as ours – he also told me of about 9 other people he had spoken to who were in exactly the same boat. Horrifying!
We managed to get 80% of our invoices paid and cut ties with The White Tent, but there are some of the people before and after us that are still struggling to get paid for the brilliant work they did.
A word of warning to anyone doing due diligence on this company or these scammers – STAY AWAY FROM THEM!
If you’ve been screwed over by these conmen then I would love to hear your story. COmment below or fill out my contact form.
Never before have I actually encountered someone with such a blatant disregard for peoples livelihoods as Stuart Paskin, from Lux Level Ltd. I have heard of Serial Scammers, but never witnessed one first hand.
We were contacted by Stuart Paskin – the conman – in November of 2016 as he wanted Opencart eCommerce work doing and that’s something we have specialised in, in the past. I spoke to him on the phone and he seemed like he may run a decent company and could have been someone we could have worked with reasonably well. However, from the 3rd or 4th phone call with the guy I started to dislike his tone and how he seemed to expect a premium level of “realtime” service from us pretty much straight away.
He would frequently call at 6pm and 7pm and even called me in the evening on a Sunday once, as the site (which we had not made, and did not host) got hacked and he *needed* it sorting there and then.
Everything he ever rang about was always the most important, business critical thing in the whole world. He expected me and my team to drop everything we were doing whenever he called. When we were working on his stuff, half the time he wouldn’t even know what he wanted and he continually moved the goalposts or “dangled the carrot” with comments like “ok thanks for that, can you now just…” which any web or IT professional will know is the start of the dreaded scope creep.
After a month of working for him, we sent our invoice which he instantly challenged – I had not clocked my time on the phone to him but it was upwards of seven hours, but in the rush to get the bits done for him I just didnt clock my time properly and I made him aware of this when he was questioning the invoice that I’d sent. From that moment I decided to clock my time fully and make sure I charged him the full amount of time we spent on his website(www.thewhitetent.co.uk)
The next month things went from bad to worse. Stuart just could not seem to understand we worked for multiple people, and whenever he rang with something that was “business critical end of the world I need it now” and I said we would look at it as soon as we could, either he would get someone that worked for him, his business partner Stewart Stalker (yes, thats his real name) or he would call himself, after 15 minutes from submitting the original request – asking if we had done it yet and how much longer it would be before we would have it done. It was infuriating.
I did give him a few times/dates when things would be finished and we did miss the deadlines, but this guy was a brand new customer and no matter how he spoke to us or how big a customer he claimed he was going to be – we already had big customers and im afraid they would always have come first.
We got through a second month taking his constant phone calls and emails, and I had to put up with him talking trash about my team and my company and how things were never right and always had bugs. The web industry and websites that you end up inheriting from other people often come with problems. The website we worked on had been with at least 3 development companies before us and everyone does things differently so we would often add things and it would knock other things out, or we would do the exact task and because we were unable to read minds and didnt do something he never asked for, but assumed we would just “do” – he was an impossible person to work with.
I sent his second invoice – despite his first one STILL not being paid – and he really kicked off this time. I put my hours on the invoice but didnt charge for them initially as by this point I wanted to get my staff members time and our direct costs paid for. I can live with a few hits to my own hours (even though I shouldnt have to!) and I knew by putting them on the invoice he would just throw his toys out the pram and vanish into the ether. I also wanted my first invoice paying so didnt want to rock the boat too much!
From this point we had a few heated phone calls and then they went quiet on me and stopped getting back to my invoice reminders. I went in one morning to finish something off and my access had been removed, and Stuart eventually got back to me to say they were getting someone else to finish the work off. I wasn’t upset to be honest, I just wanted my invoices paying and when I eventually got through to him on the phone he said his father in law had been in hospital, and that he would “pay what he felt he owed us” as soon as he was back in the office. Pay what he thought he owed us??? What the hell is that??
I decided to try and reach out to the guy that originally built the site, and sent him an email via his website. He got back to me and to my horror he had been screwed over to the tune of £4500. I spoke to another company that I found was linked to the website, and shock-horror – Stuart Paskin left them behind owing them over £1500!
As the days went on, I uncovered more, and more people that Stuart Paskin and Stewart Stalker at Lux Level Ltd had screwed over. So far, in the Paskin Fan Club there are 7 companies, 3 of them are full digital agencies and the rest are independents but we have all spent hours and hours and hoursdealing with Stuart Paskin and his constant nagging demands, we had ALL neglected our core, existing customers to try and satisfy Stuart Paskins requests. And we had ALL been left behind, doubting our own capabilities with unpaid invoices on our accounts packages – I will blog about these stories separately.
A few months have passed now since we dealt with these con men but the pain of having to deal with them is still with us – A quick check on Companies House reveals he is still very much in business and is in fact linked to a children’s charity! INSANE!
Ourselves and some of the other victims have been paid (we never got what we were actually owed, we ended up being paid the bare minimum but technically we got our invoices paid) but there are still people out of pocket including the person who originally built the website for them.
I am going to do a series of posts relating to the brand & company names these scammers use, and also (with permission of the victims) I want to write about the individual horror stories left behind by Stuart Paskin’s devious business practices and his repeated attempts to rape and pillage small creative agencies all over the world.
Lux Level Ltd Logo
If you’re contacted by this loser – then run for the hills!
Stay tuned for more blog posts about Stuart Paskin and his team of internet bandits.
