Scammers clone SGF’s email

The fear of what could be the attitude of people, especially in Nigeria remains unpredictable as highly placed government officials have continuously become victims of electronic scams.

Scammers are those who obtain money by means of deception including fake personalities, fake photos, fake template letters, non-existent addresses and phone numbers, forged among other negative practices.

One of the high-rising crimes for scammers is to clone either technology devices of these government officials or their electronic mails (e-mails).

One of the latest scam is a Short Messaging Service (SMS) making a round that some eminent Nigerians have been nominated into some board membership, urging them to send emails to send their curriculum vitae (CV) to a given email with inference to the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF).

The scammers in their SMS’ also promised to revert to the purported board appointee.

Some of the SMS’ read: Mr. Kingsley Olemoney, Ur name is listed 4 board appointment send ur CV to the SGF through (osgf@presidency.ng-gov.org). U will be contacted on receipt of ur CV.

Unfortunately the sender of the SMS was purported to be the ‘PRESIDENCY’.

Further investigations by ITRealms Online, showed that first, there is no operational domain existing as ‘presidency.ng-gov.org’ which experts alluded to mean that the fraudster, may have just created an email from that domain for the scam purposes.

ITRealms Online exclusive investigation revealed that ‘presidency.ng-gov.org’ from where the ‘osgf’ email must have been created just for fraudulent reasons.

Also, it revealed that “Kehinde Alao” owns ‘NG-GOV.ORG’ alongside five (5) other domains and is associated with about 32 domains, while his contact email is ‘ronson.kiefer@yahoo.com’ with name server history showing that ‘Kehinde Alao’ has affected 14 changes on 9 unique name servers over 3 years, whereas his Internet Protocol (IP) history indicated 13 changes on 10 unique IP addresses over six years.

The Whois history has it that the alleged ‘Kehinde Alao’ has 56 records that have been archived since November 24, 2007, even as the reverse IP has 1,704 other sites hosted.

.ORG WHOIS, ITRealms Online gathered provides information to assist persons in determining the contents of a domain name registration record in the Public Interest Registry database.

Although, Whois, noted that the data in this record is provided by Public Interest Registry for informational purposes only, and does not guarantee its accuracy, hence, this service is intended only for query-based access.

The domain name, NG-GOV.ORG was purportedly registered with domain identity D162224846-LROR created on May 9, 2011 at 14:39:09 UTC and was last updated on October 05, 2011 at 13:04:20 UTC.

The expiration date of the domain name NG-Gov.Org will be May 9, 2012 14:39:09 UTC with registrant ID:O6AW8C0ZFH, name filled is ‘Kehinde Alao’ whose street record was listed as 12 James Road, Ikeja, Lagos, Post Code 23401, phone, +234-7090161907.

Dr. Audri Lanford of Scambusters.org said that many scammers are very cunning, so being smart is not enough to protect one self, noting that daily smart subscribers express are scammed.

He added that since identity theft has been number one on his firm’s Top 10 List of the Worst Internet Scams for the past several years. He said, this list was created to help prevent identity theft, and to assist people who are identity theft victims learn the best practices for recovering from identity theft.

According to him, identity theft facts showed that it is the fastest growing crime, based on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Experts, he said, estimate that about 10 million people are victims each year, which means every minute, about 19 people become new victims of identity fraud.

He pointed out that drug trafficking is now being replaced by identity theft as the number one crime.

“If you become a victim, it will probably take you hundreds of hours and an average of $1,000, (about N150,000), to recover from identity theft. Even worse, some innocent victims have even ended up in prison because identity thieves have committed crimes in their names,” he said.

Hence, he said, that is why identity theft prevention is so important and his firm want to help people in protecting them from this nightmare.

However, if you have had the misfortune of becoming an identity theft victim, Dr. Lanford said, they have some excellent resources to help people recover from this.

ITRealms Online recalls that recently, the National Security Adviser, Gen Andrew Azazi (rtd) was reportedly a victim of unknown persons who have cloned his phone, and using same to send what was depicted as ‘rude SMS.’

Azazi, the former Chief of Defense Staff made this disclosure at a recent forum on proposed cyber security law at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, stunned the audience with his revelation.

Remmy Nweke

ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D