scams

Penny Stocks: What does an 80% decline tell you about this company?

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I have been tossing these Spam emails for a while, but this one I decided to take a look at. I have no idea why anyone would trust an email from a company with one name in the link and another in the email address. That’s the second sign of a problem! Let’s take a look at the offer on the table.

Email received from Barbra Farmer bonniedhama@a1container.com to kennethdickson@msn.com. (Hah! I don’t even have an email address at that location!) so it used a fake email address, fake name, and was sent to a non-existent email address.

Hague Corp. (OTCBB: HGUE)

Solterra Renewable Technologies, Inc.

I just wanted to tell you why I am so excited about this profile.

you can see Hague is truly revolutionary:

Solterra will be producing and distributing a Thin Film Quantum Dot PV Solar Cell, which is differentiated from other traditional PV cells by a unique technology
that can result in lower cost, higher efficiency, and broader spectral performance. I will personally be visiting the company later this day.

Look for much more on Hague Corp and Solterra Renewable Technologies, Inc.

Company: HGUE
Rating : very bullish
Sector : Green tech
Current: $0.10
Target : $0.74

Well, a brief summary. The stock traded at $0.02 in late April before bouncing to 50 cents. It has no income, no assets, some deals with some fancy names on it, lots of buzzwords. But it is difficult to see this as anything other than a spam. What do you think, Tim?

Do not consider this a recommendation or anything. This is a from a spam. I merely mention it as we all receive these spam emails. I wondered what the facts would be.

Purchasing Domains: Yahoo! Domains for Small Business

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Dont’ use Yahoo! Domains, or you could find yourself paying nearly $35 bucks a year for the domain once the term is up! I was about to register a domain for this blog, and noticed the text on the frontpage which says: “$9.95/year for your first term (terms available 1-5 years) $34.95/year after.”

yahoo domains

In the agreed number of years for your term, you will only pay the $9.95 for your domain for that year. After the initial term expires, you will be required to fork out nearly $35 for the domain thereafter. This is a deal that just doesn’t make much sense: many hosting companies charge $15, $10 or even less for standard domains, so why would you?

So, I guess I’ll be using GoDaddy or NameCheap for my next domain purchases, it’s a pity Yahoo! Such tactics are very mercantile, and don’t make for good customer feedback! Who do you use for purchasing your domains?

IRS Fraud: A whole new scam!

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InvestorBlogger doesn’t often write about scams, but this time I received one scam email that was quite surprising, but obviously a fraud to me. In Taiwan, there’s been quite a bit of publicity about scams involving overpaid taxes being returned. So the nature of the scam wasn’t new to me. Still, if you receive an email looking like this. Beware.

It looks innocent enough, but given the fact that I don’t submit US tax returns, and I’m not a US citizen. I don’t even live there, enough reason to just hit ‘delete’.

But for my readers, I decided to investigate a little further. The link to the scam website was obvious enough, though. Also, the tone of the email was just wrong for an official communication. Why would the IRS hide an address in the first place? And why would the IRS use a website that doesn’t even link to the IRS, but is registered as a Swiss domain (*.cc)…. Mmm. Enough warnings yet?

tax refund fraud

I accessed the website through a proxy server to mask my IP address at home. I don’t know about it being a wise move to visit the website at all, though, as many of these websites attempt to load spyware and other nasties on your computer at the same time as defrauding you. So, don’t be tempted to click! I now regret that I did.

refund fake website

The website then asks you to verify your details (a typical scam trick) without inputting details about your tax filing information or even basic information personal information. Lastly, the website asks you to submit your credit card details to retrieve your payments. The IRS only offers two methods for return of taxes (and neither one involves a credit card).

And if you never submitted an email address to the IRS or the form arrives in an email address that you never used, you can simply dump it. So there are a lot of ways that you can determine if the email is a scam, a spam or genuine.

Email is a useful form of communication, but you still need to be ware any requests for sensitive information. If in doubt, visit the website of the purported institution by directly entering the information in your browser window.