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UGN Spam Trackers follow up on last week's stock scam story, and run down more stock scams -- including the losers!
Following the 60-Second Window article and our subsequent update last week, here are the figures for week of February 10 to February 18, 2006
This 8-day stock scam trap racked up 214 messages (more than 26 per day, or 1.1 per hour) building a 548 K spam folder. All of the stock scams violated at least one term of the Can Spam Act, making them all a Felony. Most violated two or more terms. 100% were sent through off shore servers. 100% used one or more stealth tactics: email spoofing, embedded graphics, encoding, or other email techniques to elude detection. 23 were unreadable, only three contained usable domains.
Ever Glory International continues to be the leader with a total of 152 spam scams, or an average of 15+ per day. Ever Glory is based in Los Angeles, USA but deals in garment and textile markets in China, Japan and Europe. Either they, or some of their stockholders, sure are anxious to sell stock. Since this stock has been pumped heavily for the past month, it is questionable whether this is a 'pump-and-dump' in the classic sense. They plan to renovate the new factory in China in 3 years, so this may be a China ploy to ramp up market excitement for that agenda. It is not known if they are involved in organized crime or terrorist activities, however 152 spams (similar to this one) in an 8-day period seems a little excessive for an honorable company. http://www.everglorygroup.com/doc/gv.htm
Premium Petroleum Inc (PPTL) runs second place this week with 70 spams, more than 10 a day. Based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. PPTL appeared in the stock scams filters early last week, so we're watching for the bottom to drop when the pumpers pull their earnings out. http://www.premiumpetroleum.com/
Here they are in order of frequency:
Only three had usable domains associated with the spams:
http://graserun.info/a/landing_1.html (Praha; Country:CZ)
http://penciller.embling.freeserve.co.uk (UK)
http://sdm3.rm04.net/ (Markmonitor.com Atlanta GA)
These are but a small representation because most stock scams include no domains, but only references to the symbol.
If you are active in the market, be careful and don't believe what you get in your email box. If someone is pumping stocks, chances are they're doing so for their own, personal gain -- not yours. Always rely on known, secure sources for your information -- or rely on a reliable brokerage firm.
A zip archive of this folder is available upon request.
Disclaimer: What You Should Know:
Stocks and their companies are listed here because they were the subject of spam caught in UGN spam traps. We are reporting on spam activities only -- not asserting that the company listed is in fact involved in the act of spamming. We use a three-step process to research and validate all spam received: 1 Spamcop: all spam listed has been pre-authenticated by SpamCop filtered email addresses. We do not include spam received at other email addresses. SpamCop filters are based on spam reports filed by the SpamCop population. 2 SpamAssassin Ranking: a SpamAssassin rank is assigned to each spam listed. The spam must achieve a "3" rank to be included. 3 Header Compare: check sender against email pop and/or spamvertised entity for matching. Forged headers result in the sending email listed in the spam being different from the IP gateway of the actual email.
Please share your concerns or discoveries, we're listening.
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