I wound up calling this guy. The number listed was his home number but his wife kindly gave me his work number. He sounded pretty confused when I talked to him, so I just recommended that he contact his local FBI office and complain that someone was using his name for fraudulent purposes. At the time, there was no telling if he was lying or not. I figured recommending the cops would work either way.
I later got email from the sysadmin at one of the hosts associated with the spam, who said they’d found the guy responsible for the spam. Didn’t say who it was, which is OK with me.
Today, Greg pointed out this page, on which nandi@bonbon.net says:
We are a new online bank. We need someone who can make us a script which supports fully automated banking (credit card deposits, internal money
transfers, wire transfer requests, etc.). We are willing to pay big cash for
the program.
Alas, Justin Young confirmed that nandi@bonbon.net was his email address when I talked to him on the phone. So I’m thinking he’s responsible after all. Poor guy. I’m glad I got to help wield the hammer.
One Comment
Isn’t it amazing what you find when you search for yourself on the internet.
I am the one that you called at work who “supposedly” started this scam. I know this was 8 years ago but I just thought you may like to know what actually happened. About a week before this phishing scam my identity was stolen I began noticing some unauthorized charges on my credit card. Got those fixed through my bank and thought that was the end of it. Then the calls started coming, including yours. Apparently someone registered the paypal-ebay site with all of my information (with the exception of email) and made it look like I was to blame. My wife and I went through hell on this and stayed away from our house for a few days. We did get the police involved and I willingly let them search our computer. Obviously nothing was found and no arrests were made. One thing I don’t understand though is that bonbon email address was never mine and I would not have confirmed it.