Sponsored by..

Saturday 1 August 2015

Spam: Countrywide Money Ltd (countrywidemoney.co.uk)

You know things must be desperate when a business turns to spam. Here's a dubious-looking spam that seems to be presenting itself in a way that looks like a get-rich-quick scheme.




From:    Countrywide Money [info@countrywidemoney.co.uk]
Reply-To:    Info@countrywidemoney.co.uk
Date:    1 August 2015 at 05:11
Subject:    Extra Income FOR YOU!


For further information on registration to become an agent, please call our introducer help Desk on 0800 195 3757; to Unsubscribe Click Here!


Incidentally, the Unsubscibe link doesn't work. Tsk tsk.

Now, I'm sure this is a legitimate business offer and not some sort of scam. But all those banknotes and the general pitch seems to suit an operation in Lagos rather than one in the UK. So, what can we find out about this Countrywide Money Ltd?

Let's start with the WHOIS details for the domain countrywidemoney.co.uk:

Domain name:
countrywidemoney.co.uk

Registrant:
Countrywide Money

Registrant type:
UK Individual

Registrant's address:
The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service.


A non-trading individual? Let's look at that web site for a moment..


Well, it doesn't look like a personal homepage to me. But we can look up the details of Countrywide Money Ltd at Companies House to see what we can find. It turns out that the sole director is one "Tony Edwards" who should presumably be listed on the domain WHOIS:

DIRECTOR: EDWARDS, TONY MR
Appointed: 07/06/2012
Date of Birth: 24/10/1972
Nationality: BRITISH
No. of Appointments: 3
Address:
53 FEATHER DELL
HATFIELD
UNITED KINGDOM
AL10 8DE
Country/State of Residence: UNITED KINGDOM

Let's have a look at the flashy offices in Hatfield, eh? Oh.. it looks like a residential address.


A bit of a disappointment really as the web site and brochure look so promising. A little bit more digging at DueDil shows some equally disappointing looking financials.



Hmmm.

One other odd thing, the "About Us" page says that they were founded in 2002..

But Companies House says they were only incorporated in 2012:


That's kind of.. odd. There must be some rational explanation for the discrepancy.

Anyway, I'm not sure why this person feels that promoting their business through spam is appropriate. I certainly won't be signing up to this scheme.

UPDATE 6/2/16

Somebody claiming to be Tony Edwards has made several angry comments on the end of this post, but has not addressed the simple query of where they got their mailing list from. This somewhat incoherent, ill-informed and badly spelled comments cumulated in something that could easily be misinterpreted as a threat of blackmail and even violence.


These comments are connected to a Google+ profile that looks to be genuine, but it is possible I suppose that they are coming from an imposter. My personal opinion is that if they are genuine then they simply show how unprofessional Mr Edwards is.

An explanation as to how the spam email ended up with a non opt-in address would be good. An apology for spamming would be perfectly acceptable. Threats are not.

7 comments:

CAT Euro said...

Thanks for your post. I just received one of these to an email address I no longer use - but which I had always restricted to bone fide organisations which I would not expect to leak email address or to generate Spam. So don't know where he got it....

Your item is hugely amusing. Thank you for taking the time to share it.

Unknown said...

TOTAL DEFORMATION AND MIS-REPRESENTATION OF COMPANY INFORMATION!!!

***URGENT MESSAGE FOR CONRAD LONGMORE - PLEASE CONTACT COUNTRYWIDE MONEY LTD AS A MATTER OF URGENCY. ON 0800 195 3757 OR ALTERNATIVE ON 07951 365888.

Conrad Longmore said...

@Tony Edwards: if there is something factually incorrect here, please let me know what it is and I can correct it.

Unknown said...

Mr Con rad, for a start , the number you have provided on your website, seems to be an incorrect telephone number,and no one seems to know who you are.

Rather than keep sending emails back and forth...Can you provide the right telephone number so that we can get in touch with you regarding the queries or incorrect issues you have raised.

I have provided my telephone number for you to get in touch, but to no avail; Can i then ask you politely to remove the deformative contents you have personally written about our company, off your google blog.

Thank You!

Conrad Longmore said...

You can outline anything that you believe to be factually incorrect right here in the comments. Perhaps first and foremost, you could explain how you collect email addresses?

Unknown said...

Conrad longmore ,

Without going into long and lenghty email discussions with you whilst you hide behind the scenes, i would kindly ask you politely to be man enough, and stop being a coward, for the last time, to provide your contact telephone number, so that we can have this matter resolved and by all means at that point, please feel free to ask any questions including any grievances or grudges you may have... and that includes the peculiar question you have raised, even though we hold a full ICO DPA license...??? and with tons licensed and highly reputable data companies selling TPS OPT-IN email addresses to brokers? hello!!!

Again, my telephone number is: 07951 365888 which i am happy to provide.. Are you willing to provide yours? NO, Rather you choose to hide.

Conrad Longmore, If you really want to throw punches, dont you think the best way to do that would be to step into the ring? rather than keep throwing punches in the air outside the ring?

On the positive side, we've become even more popular with phones ringing with enquiries and also with few objections obviously from your deformative and mis-informed comments about our business, which we are resolving as and when we recieve such and people are frankly not bothered and dont seem to have any issues with it...

Conrad Longmore,..as you're fishing around for something to add to your blogg, I can instruct our IT Department to set up a blogg and deform your business, with loads of comments similar to what you're doing on google; that might help you increase your audience. its very easy and it wont take us long to set up. just trying to help you as a goodwill gesture!

In the meantime,please keep up the good work! good advert.

Conrad Longmore said...

Mr Edwards, I have added a screenshot of your bizarre and highly unprofessional threat to my blog, just in case you delete it.

You have not been able to answer basic questions about why you spammed on non opt-in address, or even bothered to apologise. Instead, you have responded to criticism with threats and intimidation.