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.

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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!

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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.