Anthony's FRESH PLASTIC

Thanks HotwirePR for giving my address to the scammers, that's precisely what I DIDN'T want to do!

nobody@vox.com(Ant UK) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:57:25 +0100

I signed for a letter a little while ago. From the postmark I knew what it was immediately. When I opened it there wasn't much of a surprise... A note saying sorry for the inconvenience and a cheque for £10.

I never wanted to give my address to the folk that run that shady company. They're a bunch of scam artists that steal and obtain money by deception. They're fraudsters, plain and simple.

And now, thanks to mBlox's PR company, HotwirePR, they now know where I live. Thanks guys, I thought when I gave you my address yesterday you weren't going to pass it on. You didn't say you were going to pass it on - I was under the impression that you were either going to act as an intermediary or dig into your own coffers for my refund.

How would you like it if I were to pass on your home addresses and mobile numbers to folk running a bunch of seedy businesses? You wouldn't like it - obviously! Bugger, I thought we'd got somewhere yesterday.

Oh well, never mind. What's the worst that can happen when fraudsters that you've been blogging about know your home address? Now for the pics of the day...

Nice Spread

Can any of you make out that signature? Me neither! Cheque, please...

Spread-ing the love

Again, can't make out the signature - and what's with the ten? Were they deliberating how much to give me or something?

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David Geoffrey Shepard: One Man. One Dream.

nobody@vox.com(Ant UK) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 06:52:17 +0100

David Geoffrey Shepard (BA, BA hons) was born on the 20th of February 1970 in what was then a troubled Johannesburg. At some stage of his life 'G' (as he liked to be called by his chums) left South Africa, possibly when apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela took over. It was after he graduated from St Benedict's College in the affluent town of Bedfordview in 1987 anyway. No one knows for certain as it all happened in the last century - a time before computers and filling cabinets.

Update: Long lost documents have surfaced that can shed some light on those missing early years...

He went to a couple of universities in South Africa (1990-1998) before moving to the UK and continuing his studies at a community college in Oxford (2000-2001)

Photography was in its infancy in the 80s, we can't be sure which one circled is David

For more than a decade G has lived in the historic English city of Oxford. Whilst there he has philosophised, created art, designed webs and sent out (and charged for) a whole host of unsolicited adult content to those British folk silly enough to use mobile telephonical devices.

Claritas logo designed by the supremely talented 'G'

While David isn't building a vast business empire spanning numerous websites, online shops, ventures and logo designing, he has been busy giving back to the community with his tireless work for Oxford Brookes University (where he uses a computer or something).

A business empire to rival Richard Branson

As well as the good times, there have been hard times for David. But all throughout his friends and colleagues have been there to help him, to support him. One such fellow was Mark Henstone, he once worked with David at Spread Media but moved on to mBlox (where he is now a Strategic Account Man-jester or something) Unfortunately all the help in the world couldn't save huge swathes of G's online portfolio, with recent casualties including Spread Media, M-Pimp Limited (clearly pimping ain't easy) and Szassy Mobile.

No matter what ups and downs David has, he never loses sight of his true gift to the world, that being his art...

His work is reminiscent of what Claire, the chick on Six Feet Under ~~slung together~~ created whilst trying to impress her talentless peers and that creepy professor guy. One picture even reminds me of ~~Mika~~ Miro's later works (nah, just kidding - Joan Miro was talented!)

More will be written on David in the future, he is the man of the moment and there's still plenty to be said. In the meantime, sit back check out his art (click images for the full size) and finally David, it's over to you...

Philosopher, Artist, Web Designer, Silver Plaque Installer... A versatile copywriter and creative marketer accomplished in both print and web publishing... with wide-ranging experience in positions demanding high levels of interpersonal and verbal communication skills.

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Did I ever show you these...

nobody@vox.com(Ant UK) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:27:41 +0100

Sometimes a picture speaks a million words - even a picture of words...

mBlox premium spam. Yum.

One of the good things about trialling phones is that you have a nice empty message box (at least, if you're like me and have never managed to sync anything properly!) Spam is far easier to spot a mile off. As you can see from the above I got a message from a five digit number - that's a giveaway sign that it's unlikely to be genuine. The other two message senders are my mate Gareth and 3Alerts alerting me that I'd reached my fair use limit (I plough on regardless now as they always send these no matter how much I've used).

Had I replied I wonder what would have happened?

And here's the message itself (just above, up there - yeah, there). There's no wording to suggest it's a promotional or premium message. Most people seeing that might think a real person had sent it to them. A horny bloke (no matter which way they swing - notice there's no reference to gender, clever that!) might even be tempted to reply...

Damn I wish I had money to burn and a phone number to waste (once your on their list...) as I'd love to know what would've happened if I'd replied. Would the message sender (Spread Media) have continued to pretend they were a real individual? Would they ever inform me it was £1.50 a pop?

If anyone has ever replied to one of these in error (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt) would you mind emailing me and telling me your story. I won't divulge your details and I won't make fun of you for falling for it (hey, you may have been drunk at the time...)

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Can't send emails to my mate David Shepard. What gives?

nobody@vox.com(Ant UK) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:51:51 +0100

I guess it'll have to be an open letter instead, so here goes:

Hi,

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Now, is there any chance of having my money back? Oh, and why did you do this twice to me? That's not cricket is it?

Hopefully you'll do the gentlemanly thing and give me my money back and compensate me generously for the huge inconvenience. I mean it is obtaining goods by deception, isn't it? Although in my case I wasn't deceived, I simply was unfortunate enough to have a mobile phone and live in the UK.

I might pop in to Oxford or Marlow at some point, I have friends in the area. I might stop by. Maybe with Thames Valley Tonight or maybe just with friends.

Cheers dud, (no I didn't make a spelling mistake)

Anthony
http://freshplastic.vox.com

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Tell me your story. Have you been fleeced by SMS spanners?

nobody@vox.com(Ant UK) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:40:57 +0100

That's not a typo, I meant SPANNER, 'cause that's what they are... tools! Oh, enough of my never ending wit already...

Regulate this!

I would love to hear from those of you that have had a run in with PhonepayPlus/ICSTIS maybe even OFCOM or OFTEL, ~~PayPal~~ or ~~PalPlus~~. Whatever they like to be called on a Tuesday! Crikey, it's Tuesday already!

Of equal interest to me and presumably the majority of the people reading my Fraudwatch posts (remember don't have nightmares, goodnight and good luck) are the perpertrators and enablers, the likes of mBlox and the Tanla's and Spread Media's of this world. Anyone got any stories about these less than savoury folk (oh I hate biting my tongue!)

The world (okay the UK) needs to hear your story, so please get in touch. I know you're reading as lots of people were checking out my latest Fraudwatch posts, from across the country - and they can't all be Andrew Bud (scroll to comments for a treat) or David Shepard.

BTW for those new to my blog, Andrew Bud's company is in cahoots with the scammers and he is also The Regulator - I'll be back... to steal your money!

The Bud-dy Movie of the Year!

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"I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

nobody@vox.com(Ant UK) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:26:04 +0100

If you don't know the quote from my 'title' above, then I'm probably going to sound a tad on the postal side of things. For those of you that that describes, let me put you at ease and say GO WATCH THAT MOVIE!

So, Ant, we get the title and we want to know what's grinding your gears. Please tell us!

No, this isn't a video of me... it's Peter Griffin.

You want to know what really grinds my gears? And, in no particular order, here's what:

People making excuses for the unexcusable
Getting nowhere when talking to customer services
Being expected to pay a premium to call a company who rips you off and then profits from the call you've just placed to stop them ripping you off further
Having to bite my tongue because I'm venting too much
Wasting hours upon hours over this crap - but I'm so er, peeved that it's not about the money (they could give me 100x the amount back, I wouldn't give a crap* it's the principle and I want to make everyone aware about this issue)
There's a bunch of other things but fudge it, I guys got to eat and before I do I think I need to make another call or two!

*Not entirely true, it would be quite nice but even if you made it 1000s - no wait - 10,000s it wouldn't stop me from bitching as I don't think anyone should get a penny stolen because companies and industry regulators aren't do the right thing/their job.

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Fraudwatch: Ha ha, Spread Media - say adios to £20k!

nobody@vox.com(Ant UK) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:55:00 +0100

I've just received a letter from the company that overlooks premium rate phone services in the UK, PhonepayPlus. I say 'company' as that's what they are, they're not a Government regulator - no, they're a non-profit making company made up of the companies they regulate.

Now to the letter I received and why...

PhonepayPluspageOne - See what I did there?

PhonepayPluspageTwo - and so it continues...

For those not up to speed, I got spammed a couple of times earlier this year and paid for the privilege. I typed up a few posts, dug up a lot about the company and called up the so-called regulator - hence the above letter.

The main points in the above are:

PhonepayPlus received 90 complaints
Spread Media were found in breach of the Code of Practice
The company were Fined £20,000
'A 6 month bar on premium rate services promoted by reverse billed SMS...'
Those wishing to get their money back need to handover their full name and address as well as a copy of their phone bill to the fraudsters (contacting them either by premium rate phone number or by snail mail)

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand £20,000 isn't enough but on the other, other companies have gotten away with just £500 fines for similar breaches. The letter is a bit sketchy as regards to the details and how they came up with their conclusion as well as their fine. Instead they leave most of the juicy bits for the website HERE. It looks like Spread Media weren't the only shady company involved in this - I'll be delving deeper into this at a later date.

What exactly will the 6 month 'bar' mean to the company and the guy that runs it? Maybe he just needs to set up another company (he's had lots of practice). Where does it leave this little gem? That's way too funny and will need its own post!

Do PhonepayPlus really think it's a good idea for those of us scammed to hand over our full names, addresses and phone records to a company that clearly can't be trusted? It's bad enough they stole money from us, should we set up friends, family and colleagues for a future scam? And would you want to hand over your details to a man who's just lost £20,000 partly because of you? Yeah, I figured not!

Thinking out loud... there were 90 complainants - how many more were conned and:

didn't realise it
thought they'd subbed to the service when drunk
thought their friends had subbed to the service for a laugh
thought their kids had subbed to the service (and gave 'em a right rollicking over it)
had no idea who to complain to
sent STOP and couldn't be bothered to complain as they didn't have the time to chase it up?

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So I've text 'STOP ALL' to 68888, what now?

nobody@vox.com(Ant UK) — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:05:31 +0100

I bit the bullet and text 'STOP ALL'. (Hopefully) stopping the premium rate service that I never asked for. It cost me 10p which is a measly amount but that's not the point - I had to give money to fraudsters in order to not be defrauded out of even more! These were the instructions of the industry regulator!

Now I've come to the real challenge. I want my £1.50 (plus that 10p) refunded. To do this I need to contact the scam artists on a premium rate number. I'm now willing to do this. However, it's just dawned on me that I have to give them my address in order to receive a cheque from them. It's bad enough these thieves have my mobile phone number, I don't want them to have my address too.

Isn't it common sense to not give out your address to criminals? I've learnt over the past week that some of these reverse-charge shortcode scams are connected to organised crime, money launderers and generally unsavoury figures. Yet the phone companies and regulators advise us to contact these people in order to get a refund and to do so we have to give them our addresses!

I still want my money back, even if it is just £1.60 - but it's way too risky giving these guys my address for that amount. I'm going to have to pester 3 (my mobile company) for the money instead. Meanwhile, I'm gonna dig even deeper into Spread Media's dodgy dealings (another reason why I don't want them to have my address!)

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David Shepard: The man behind the scam?

nobody@vox.com(Ant UK) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:05:03 +0100

Could this be the man behind the infamous "Katie" premium rate scam? Anyone know more about him or the companies connected with him? As well as Spread Media, there's Equinox Agency Ltd, Vaudaville.com and Photoidol

Here's a picture of a guy who I believe must be the David Shepard - courtesy of facebook.

David Shepard's Facebook mugshot

Here's a link to PhonepayPlus's previous Spread Media adjudication and a brief summary is below:

Spread Media Ltd - PhonepayPlus adjudication

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Fraudwatch: Regulator says I have to give more money to the thieving bastards!

nobody@vox.com(Ant UK) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:21:57 +0100

Just off the phone to PhonepayPlus (the regulator in charge of premium rate services). I was advised to send the 'STOP' message to Spread Media - at cost to me. I was also advised to call Spread Media's premium rate phone number in order to get a refund!

So, lets get this straight:

Some random company uses deception in an attempt to trick me out of money (which I ignore)
A month later they attempt the same deception - this time charging me £1.50
The UK regulator tells me that I have to give the thieving bastards more money in order to get my money back and prevent the scum from taking more.

Great regulating guys! Show those scam artists who's boss. That £500 fine and formal reprimand you gave them last time sure did the trick. No wait, it didn't - you just told me on the phone that there's already a bunch of complaints about Spread Media's latest deception! I guess the paltry fine and slap on the wrist didn't work after all?

Readers, what d'ya reckon? Should I text 'STOP' to 68888 or not? PhonepayPlus seemed to think it'd only cost the same as a normal text message, would put an end to future messages from Spread Media and would be more or less essential (if I get more messages and get charged it will be apparently my fault for not sending the 'STOP')

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