Cosmos Infomedia Scam is back!

Take a look at the two screenshots above! What do you see? Same picture. Same layout. Looks like two screenshots of the same website, don’t they? In fact, they are not. They are the screenshots of two different websites claiming to do the same thing – make you rich by letting you work from home, doing mail order.

I received an SMS from my Internet Service Provider today, which read as follows:

Earn 7 to 37000 p/m by doing 2hr paper work at home for quick details open www.cash37k.com or to get details  by post SMS your name add. Pin code on 09321123454

I wanted to find out what exactly this scheme is. And the screenshots provided above are where I ended up. In August 2008, Trendy of Trendite exposed www.Earn45k.com, a site that promised to make customers rich by doing Mail Order from home. According to Wikipedia "Mail order is a term which describes the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote method such as through a telephone call or web site. Then, the products are delivered to the customer." Trendy explained how Earn45K is a scam. Following are the reasons he provides to show how the site is a scam:

1. A Google Search will take you to forums where people discuss how they lost money because of Cosmos Infomedia

2. The contact address on the WhoIs page of the site and the actual contact address mentioned on the site is different. [A WhoIs page is where you get the details of a site’s registration.]

9 months after Trendy reported Earn45K as scam, Times of India reported that certain Aravind Ojah was arrested in connection with Earn45K Scam. That was in April 2009. Times also reported Ojah entering into tie ups with telecom companies to send out SMS to victims. I tried finding out more about Ojah and his accomplice, Mirinda. There is no trace of either of them online, except the Times of India News and Trendite Update. And then, today I received an SMS from for Internet Service Provider about Cash37k. That is eight months after the news of the arrest!

I have only one reason to believe that Cash37k is as wretched a scam as Earn45k – both the sites look the same. The difference is in the money they offer you will make and a few links that were present in the original site is missing in the new site. The new site has a link called “Refund” which is probably to dupe people who may suspect fraud. The new site, like the predecessor, pretends to quote from Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes [Banning] Act 1978 in an attempt to mislead customers.