Sponsor just called me asking for person who doesn't work here

[RedCherry]

I just had a sponsor call me, asking for a guys name, to see how I could promote them better, and they had MY phone number, MY business name, but this guy used that to sign up for an account. Had a different address, here in Pahrump, and was getting paid through e-passporte.

Just great, I told them to take my business name off their account. I sure don't want my business tied to them, but wonder how many other sponsors this fuckstick has done this to?

I've never had something like that happen before. He must have either gotten my business name off a gallery, since I put a copyright on a lot of them, or the chamber of commerce.

[Bill]

Well thats definitely creepy.

And I can only think of one reason that somebody would steal your name.

It's also equally creepy that the sponsor voice called to talk to the guy.

[cd34]

In January I received 4 W-9 requests from sponsors I've never had any dealings with. One of them told me the epassporte id where they had sent payments which shocked me. Betrayal is a good word there I think.

I have also gotten calls from the State Unemployment Office for employees that filed saying they had been laid off. That usually requires a few hours of paperwork to get straightened out. Makes no sense as I have to file quarterly employment reports and a simple check against those forms would give them the answer they need, yet, I get a 3 page form that needs to be filled out to deny the claim each time it happens.

Since Epassporte introduced their tax evasion card, it has made it very easy for unscrupulous webmasters get just enough info from someone so that they can get tax-free sponsor payments. Since most sponsors don't appear to be asking for 1099's for tax reporting, many can get away with it for a long time. Or, they're in a blacklisted country and use that info to get past the blacklist.

However, picking someone in the same city is just kind of odd.

[RedCherry]

Yea, and doing the same business as I am? Maybe he just looked up my website, found my address in the whois, and made up a bogus street address. It really creeped me out big time, what if the guy is doing illegal stuff?

I thought seriously about posting a thread on GFY, but then I don't know if I want to put my real name, business name, and town out there...might get a ton of guys doing this.

Originally Posted by cd34

However, picking someone in the same city is just kind of odd.

[RedCherry]

Originally Posted by Bill

Well thats definitely creepy.

And I can only think of one reason that somebody would steal your name.

It's also equally creepy that the sponsor voice called to talk to the guy.

He found several accounts in my name. I told him I only have one account and the code is ####. I had him close out my old account, I hadn't done anything with it, the mailing address was wrong, and the email was something I couldn't check, and set me up a new one, which was nice, but still really creepy.

Almost as creepy was having the company I sell domains for as a reseller, call me about my domains, using my business name. That took a few minutes to figure out, because I thought someone was calling my clients trying to get them to register elsewhere.

[bDok]

i think this same thing just happened to preacher as well. Had the company not personally known him he would have never even found out about it. Very shady shit that goes on out there. sux to hear it's happening.

[RedCherry]

Originally Posted by bDok

i think this same thing just happened to preacher as well. Had the company not personally known him he would have never even found out about it. Very shady shit that goes on out there. sux to hear it's happening.

I wouldn't have known if they hadn't of called trying to drum up more business.

[NY Jester]

Ive never had that happen but I have had the NY State dept. of parole/probation call my personal cell phone on more than one occasion, asking for different gentlemen. Thats always nice.

[lazzlo]

thats pretty crazy

[Preacher]

Originally Posted by bDok

i think this same thing just happened to preacher as well. Had the company not personally known him he would have never even found out about it. Very shady shit that goes on out there. sux to hear it's happening.

Yes, this happened to me twice that I know of. Massive Dollars and NSCash, both caught on quick that it wasn't me and dumped the accounts -- to them for catching that and letting me know.

Basically this ass signed up at these sponsors using the information in my whois and my domain name and then sent fraudulent sales to his epassporte account.

I contacted epassporte and their response was that the epassporte account number that I had reported to them as swindling sponsors did not have my personal data on it, it had someone elses so the fact that one of their users was committing fraud was not their problem!

Fuck epassporte! They are swine!

And yes, I'm still removing wallpaper and packing, so don't let my wife know that I turned on the computer.

[DangerDave]

Preacher is spot on...

This is a major problem, facilitated by EPassporte and slack sponsors..

I got accused of fraud on another board in the last few months because some scamming cunt had signed up with my whois details to a program, and a gmail addy and an EPass account.

My opinion is that EPass needs to lift their game.. and sponsors need to be a bit more proactive(eg: no fucking free email addresses), or this problem will be a continuing one.

DD

[selena]

Originally Posted by DangerDave

and sponsors need to be a bit more proactive(eg: no fucking free email addresses), or this problem will be a continuing one.

DD

That's one of the reasons auto approve programs are a bad idea, imho.

As an affiliate, I get that when you sign up, you want to do what you want to do right then, and having to wait for approval can be annoying. But as an affiliate manager, I see lots of reasons to take some of the steps that we do...ie, application must either have a domain based email or the whois has to match.

Nothing will stop fraud entirely, but there are measures sponsors can take to help cut down on it.

[magicmike]

We've had a couple of people signup for the program using false info on either the company or url field.

We manually verify new wm apps so it hasn't been a real issue for us though.

I'd say 95% of our wm fraud cases come from webmasters using epassporte as their method of payment. However we have a lot of legit webmasters who are also paid that way so its a tough situation.