1-774-280-5664

This number was a website design scam over text message. I initially received a message on my business line asking about website design services. Below is the initial text exchange:

The Text Exchange

The Followup Email

Below is a copy of the email message that was sent to me from [email protected]:

Explanation of the Scam

There are plenty of red flags here to be confident it was a scam (a real doctor wouldn’t have such bad grammar etc…). I began doing some research to find out exactly how the scam works.

The key to this scam is the part of the email that says, “…i have a private project consultant, he has the text content and the logos for the site.”

After doing some research on the web, I found someone who actually already had all the details. Basically, if you follow up with the scammer, eventually they’ll have a very odd request. He’ll tell you that his project consultant doesn’t take credit cards and offers to pay you via credit card for what he owes you and the project consultant, and for you to send the difference to the consultant via check. If you do this, you’ll get a nice credit card payment which seems great, but then after your check to the project consultant clears the bank, you get hit with a fraud charge and the credit card payment you received gets reversed. This leaves you out whatever money you sent via a check and then they all just disappear on you.

The moral of the story is always make sure you have a client vetting process to ensure clients are legit – especially when it comes to cold clients that you don’t already know or haven’t been referred to by an existing client.