Gary McNeish, Christopher Niebel fined £440k for SMS spams

I've covered Gary McNeish and his SMS spamming outfit before, they are quite possibly behind the majority of financial SMS spam messages that have been doing the rounds lately.

Well, it seems the ICO finally caught up with him and his business partner Christopher Niebel and have hit the pair with a whopping £440,000. The Daily Telegraph reports that they were pumping out up to 840,000 spam SMS messages per day. The BBC has more details about the pair.

It looks like Mr Neibel has suffered the bulk of the fine, with £300,000 ordered to be paid by the ICO. Mr McNeish lives in Thailand (but owns the spamming company Tetrus Telecom) and has been fined £140,000. Mr Neibel seems a bit upset by this according to reports. Tough shit, I say.

Anyway, this is the guy who probably won't be coming back to the UK any time soon..

Check out some of his semi-naked photos here. Classy!

ppinomore.com PPI SMS spam

These PPI spammers are at it again, this time promoting a website ppinomore.com.

URGENT you are owed £3350 for the PPI you took out, time is running out to claim, please visit www.ppinomore.com to claim, thank you. To opt out reply STOP.

The sending number is +447787446160 although this will change at they get blocked for spamming. If you have any more numbers, then please considered adding them in the Comments section.

If you get one of these, you should forward the spam and the sender's number to your carrier. In the came of T-Mobile, O2 and Orange the number to report to is 7726 ("SPAM"). Vodafone customers should use 87726 ("VSPAM") and Three customers should use 37726 ("3SPAM"). Hopefully the carriers will act if there are enough complaints.

The thing with these spam PPI messages is that they are also a scam. I don't have any mis-sold PPI, so I'm not eligible for anything, but it seems that the spammers are encouraging you to make a fraudulent claim, which is a criminal offence.

So who is behind ppinomore.com? It has anonymous WHOIS details so no clue there. They claim their address is in Pakistan:
PPI-Today
586, Park Towers,
Block 26, P.E.C.H.S.,
Shahrah-e-Faisal,
Karachi

And they're not regulated by anyone..
ppinomore is a marketing agent. Our partners are regulated by the Ministry of Justice in respect of regulated claims management activities - their authorisation number is available on request and their registration is recorded on the Ministry of Justice website 

So who are their partners. Of note, the ppinomore.com site is hosted on 217.23.12.215 which is hosted by Worldstream in the Netherlands, but actually allocated to a scam/spam friendly outfit called YoHost . The following sites are on the same server:

antismsspam.com
birthdaywishlist.net
buyfacebookfriends.info
claimsdirects.com
cpamatch.net
downloads4.biz
easyexplorer.net
englandinsolvency.com
filewizard.net
flywith.org
glasgowtrustdeeds.com
guystube.net
homeworkers.tv
ineedajob.tv
jizzin.me
kimdotcom.biz
liquidationadvice.info
megahost.tv
memorysticks.tv
monstercv.tv
mortgagecharges.info
myppi.org
numbergenerator.info
phoneapps.tv
ppinomore.com
ppinow.org
prepaidcards.tv
protectedtrustdeeds.tv
referafriend.info
rofl.hk
scotlandtrustdeeds.info
scottishdebtinfo.com
scottishtrustdeed.info
smsoptout.com
streamingloads.com
surveymonster.info
textforgold.com
transfermypension.info
txtforloans.com
whatsbetterapp.com
yadoo.tv

Some of these look quite interesting.. they're also using SMS and PPI themed sites. Almost all the sites have anonymous WHOIS details.. apart from myppi.org that is..

Domain ID:D166396094-LROR
Domain Name:MYPPI.ORG
Created On:21-Aug-2012 10:52:54 UTC
Last Updated On:21-Aug-2012 10:52:55 UTC
Expiration Date:21-Aug-2013 10:52:54 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:GoDaddy.com, LLC (R91-LROR)
Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT RENEW PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:ADDPERIOD
Registrant ID:CR122029936
Registrant Name:john mcneish
Registrant Organization:surveycentre
Registrant Street1:flat 3 11a whitworth street
Registrant Street2:opal house
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:manchester
Registrant State/Province:lancashire
Registrant Postal Code:m1 3gw
Registrant Country:GB
Registrant Phone:+1.614083744
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:gary@tetr.us
Admin ID:CR122029938
Admin Name:john mcneish
Admin Organization:surveycentre
Admin Street1:flat 3 11a whitworth street
Admin Street2:opal house
Admin Street3:
Admin City:manchester
Admin State/Province:lancashire
Admin Postal Code:m1 3gw
Admin Country:GB
Admin Phone:+1.614083744
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:gary@tetr.us
Tech ID:CR122029937
Tech Name:john mcneish
Tech Organization:surveycentre
Tech Street1:flat 3 11a whitworth street
Tech Street2:opal house
Tech Street3:
Tech City:manchester
Tech State/Province:lancashire
Tech Postal Code:m1 3gw
Tech Country:GB
Tech Phone:+1.614083744
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech Email:gary@tetr.us
Name Server:NS19.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server:NS20.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

John McNeish? So why is his email address gary@tetr.us then? Probably because this is really Gary McNeish who has been involved in offshore SMS spamming before.

So, is Gary McNeish responsible for the ppinomore.com SMS spam? It could just be a coincidence that a server stuffed with dodgy finance and marketing sites contains both a site belonging to Gary McNeish and these ppinomore.com scammers, after all there's no indication that this is actually Gary McNeish's server, just that he has a site on it.

Still, hopefully the recently announced ICO crackdown on SMS spammers might have a positive effect.

Update:
Here is another link between ppinomore.com and Gary McNeish's myppi.org - if you search for the text "ppinomore is a marketing agent. Our partners are regulated by the Ministry of Justice" on Google, it also appears on myppi.org:

Funnily enough, the content for myppi.org has changed to some search engine called "Yadoo" since it was indexed by Google. It must just be a coincidence that the ppinomore text appeared on Mr McNeish's site, yes?

The following numbers also seem to be in use for this spam:
+447867368703
+447780458447 

Please add any more in the comments, thanks!

Isn't it amazing..

Isn't it amazing how everything sometimes comes together. I came across this particularly well researched article at a blog called Cultivated Drivel.

Sometimes people make those connections that you should have seen your case. In this case, the post managed to link together several strands of my own blog that I hadn't managed to do myself.. namely: Inter Financial Ltd, Gary NcNeish and Piradius.net

It looks like Mr McNeish might have his fingers in quite a few spam pies..

SMS Spam: loanslineuk.co.uk / Gary McNeish

Here's an annoying SMS spam sent from +447979520064:

Short on Cash? Need a payday loan? 100% Apps Processed. Up to £750 today. Apply now at www.loanslineuk.co.uk to Opt Out Rply stop

We can easily identify the owner of loanslineuk.co.uk from their WHOIS records:

Domain name:
        loanslineuk.co.uk

    Registrant:
        gary mcneish

    Registrant type:
        Unknown

    Registrant's address:
        flat 3 11a whitworth street
        opal house
        manchester
        M1 3GW
        United Kingdom

loanslineuk.co.uk simply forwards to moneyfix.co.uk via an affiliate link: www.moneyfix.co.uk/Default.aspx?AID=TETRUS&SAID=MONEYFIX_JPD_PARTNER1

The word "TETRUS" in the link is a clue. We can also see Gary McNeish's address on the domain for tetr.us.. well, we could before it was re-registered to an address in the Seychelles:

Registrant ID:                               CR17598876
Registrant Name:                             gary mcneish
Registrant Address1:                         flat 3 11a whitworth street
Registrant Address2:                         opal house
Registrant City:                             manchester
Registrant State/Province:                   lancashire
Registrant Postal Code:                      m1 3gw
Registrant Country:                          United Kingdom
Registrant Country Code:                     UK
Registrant Phone Number:                     +7.799764944
Registrant Email:                            gary@tetrustelecoms.com
Registrant Application Purpose:              P1

If we look at the domain registration for tetrustelecoms.com we see the bogus address:

    tetrus, tetrus  serialsniper@gmail.com
    tetrus
    capital city, lancashire M35 0AE
    SC
    +66.838273350

There can't be many people called Gary McNeish in Manchester, but oddly enough it isn't the same Gary McNeish who was fingered for a fake Data Protection scam in 2002, but this Gary McNeish (Gary John Peter McNeish) was mentioned by the Daily Telegraph recently in an article called "For sale: your mobile phone number" which questioned the way that Mr McNeish obtained telephone numbers for leads.

According to Companies House, Tetrus Ltd was dissolved on 22/3/11, so it should no longer be trading.

If you get one of these, you should forward the spam to your carrier. In the came of T-Mobile, O2 and Orange the number to report to is 7726 ("SPAM"). Vodafone customers should use 87726 ("VSPAM") and Three customers should use 37726 ("3SPAM"). Hopefully the carriers will act if there are enough complaints.

Added: The Slough Times has some more background information here.