I just became a victim myself.

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Master Baiter Joined: 28 Sep 2009 Posts: 100

Today, I was shocked. I, a seasoned baiter have lost €80 with online fraud. I bait lads all the time. I never thought this could happen to me.

The story: I needed birth certs for my kids in a hurry. I had never done this before but thought I could order them online. I was looking to get the order off quickly. I googled what I thought was an irish government site. I was too quick in fairness. up first came irishcerts.ie. Look legit - asking for all the right info so I ordered and paid €80 for 2 certs from my credit card to a paypal account, 'Highbird'. I reviewed it last Saturday and figured it was a private site as the certs can be got from offices for €30. So this guy saw a business in going in to get certs for €30 and selling them for €40. Fair enough.... No certs after 1 week. I rang the number ( a mobile) and it was disconnected. No response from their website enquiry form. The company Highbird Ltd. Was disovled in 2012. I got that from the Companies page for Ireland solocheck.ie. The directors were Oscar and Cormac Reynolds from Drogehda. This is the same address as given by irishcerts.ie
Oscar may be a member of the Irish Police service in Slane, Co. Meath. there is a dentist called Cormac Reynolds in drogehda. Cormac Reynolds is a very common irish name but Oscar Reynolds from the same town is quite unusual?

ANYONE can be caught! Even a member of eater! Any ideas where I go from here?

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 2:15 pm

My immediate thought would be look in to a chargeback on your CC or PayPal and a report to the police.

There used to be loads of these sites in the UK for passport renewals, driving licenses, etc. The difference with those was that they usually actually supplied what you ordered, you were just paying extra. In your case though, it is straight fraud - he's taken your money with no intention of supplying what you paid for.

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 2:25 pm

Sorry this happened. Something similar happened to me a few years back, only it was a fake shop I bought perfume from, or protein, or something. Crims stole my CC details and embarked on a shopping spree, but luckily the bank caught on early, cancelled the card and reimbursed me.

I guess you have a site to kill now?

Master Baiter Joined: 28 Sep 2009 Posts: 100

How do I go about killing a site?

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 2:49 pm

Read more here – https://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=57 - go through the “stickies” first

There’s details on how to deal with these sites on https://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=157288 in particular, but get up to speed on the process first …..

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 2:52 pm

You can also pm the following members for help (info ripped straight from a pm sent to me by firehouse5 on the subject):

B8er
Big X
El Capitan Borracho
Ima Baeder
music man
Nigel Tuffnel
TheFae
Tsnerd
Woody999

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 5:13 pm

You can try to kill it, but it has been registered since 2009. This pretty much means that it's a longshot.

The site is owned by a company called Highbird ltd, which was dissolved in 2012. I found this phone number for the company +353 (0)87 628 5220. The directors are Oscar and Cormac Reynolds. The site is hosted in Bulgaria for some reason.

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 7:26 pm

It scammed one of our own. I think we should all pile on it and send reports to try to get it shut down. Twisted Evil

Baiting Guru Joined: 07 Jul 2006 Posts: 5727

Since you used a cc I think your best bet is to contact your cc company and cancel the payment.

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 8:32 pm

We don't recommend "piling on" when it comes to taking down fake sites, even difficult ones. This sounds like a bit outside the normal type of fakes we typically deal with but it still could be possible: requires documenting that indeed it is fake as the first step.

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 8:33 pm

Contact Us page is worrisome to say the least

Quote:

You can contact us at:

Irishcerts
Rathdaniel
Collon
Louth.
Ireland

Office Hours: Monday-Friday 9am – 5.00 p.m

Phone: 00353-876289420

There are a couple of abuse e-mails listed in the WhoIs

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

I wonder if the site was just left untouched after the company dissolved? Did you try e-mailing [email protected]?

Found on their Privacy Policy page

Elite Baiter Joined: 28 Mar 2015 Posts: 1916

I should think that either PayPal, or your CC company, would reimburse you.

Perhaps if this site was left idle after the company was dissolved, it could have been hacked and taken over?

Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2017 10:17 pm

Firehouse, my apologies. I just thought if it is somehow escaping notice, multiple letters from experienced killers might make the difference.

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2017 5:04 am

One of the dead giveaways this site is fake is that they don't use an SSL on their order form. I'm not aware of any legit e-commerce site that fails to use, at the very minimum, basic SSL encryption.

Looks like his only payment option was PayPal. If you used a credit card via PayPal vs having the funds deducted from your checking account, it should be an easy dispute. Regardless, file a PayPal dispute. Always use credit card as the funding payment method when purchasing via PayPal. It's so much easier to win a dispute in case something like this goes wrong.

A while back. Ebay mistakenly charged me for 6 duplicate orders but shipped only one. Despite proving to PayPal that none of the other 5 duplicate orders were even shipped or in my Ebay order history, they dragged their feet for weeks to refund me. When I finally got Amex involved, Amex instantly charged back the 6 duplicates to PayPal and we never heard back from PayPal again.

Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2017 1:16 pm

Sorry this happened to you. I have a friend who works in the fraud department of PayPal in Dublin. I could ask him to do some digging?

Also, you're the only other baiter in Ireland that I've knowingly come across. Sláinte!

Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2017 1:43 pm

My wife got caught when she applied for a Turkish eVisa a couple of years ago. The site looks exactly like the legit Turkish government site. Nothing I could do ( the site doesn't claim to be the Turkisg site but claims to expedite the issue of your visa Rolling Eyes

)

As she had googled "turkish visa" and this website was No 1 in the list I emailed Google to try and get them to shut the site ( and a few others) down. Checking today I can still see at least one of the slimy bastards adding £14 as a "service fee".

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