Delinquent Money Collection Scam

Attention:Counsel...Tuesday, January 27, 2009 12:10 AM

From: "Matila Manufacturing Pte Ltd" <[email protected]>Add sender to Contacts

To: undisclosed-recipients

Attention:Counsel

I have previously sent you an email; please confirm the receipt of this mail due to the urgency of this matter. If you are not in position to represent us at the moment kindly advice immediately.After a careful review, we decided to contact you to represent our company in North America. Matila Manufacturing Pte Ltd is a manufacturing company in Asia.We would require your legal representation for our North American delinquent Customers.

We are of the opinion that a reputable attorney is required to represent us in NorthAmerica in order for us to recover monies due to our organization by overseas customers, and as well follow up with these accounts. In order to achieve these objectives a good and reputable law firm like yours will be required to handle this service. We understand that a proper Attorney Client agreement must be entered into by both parties.

This will be done immediately we receive your letter of acceptance.

Awaiting Response.
Patrick Chan.

Hi medlockenterprises and welcome!

That email you posted looks like the evidence we need to report the Matila website, as it appears to be directly from the domain rather than a free webmail!

To be certain, (and make sure the from address isn't forged) we need the full header. If you aren't aware how to retrieve the header, please let me know and I'll give you further directions. You can copy the whole email with the header and post it here, or send it to me through private message.

Thank you for posting!

Very interesting comments about "Patrick Chan" ([email protected]) and "Matila Manufacturing Pte Ltd . . . a Manufacturing company in Asia."

We are lawyers, and we received the message from him too:

"Additional comments = Attention Counsel:

"I have previously sent you an email; please confirm
the receipt of this mail due to the urgency of this matter. If you are not
in position to represent us at the moment kindly advice immediately.
After a careful review, we decided to contact you to represent our
Company in North America. Matila Manufacturing Pte Ltd is a
Manufacturing company in Asia

"We would require your legal representation for our North American delinquent Customers. We are of the
opinion that a reputable attorney is required to represent us in North
America in order for us to recover monies due to our organization by
overseas customers, and as well follow up with these accounts. In order to
achieve these objectives a good and reputable law firm
like yours will be required to handle this service. We understand that a
proper Attorney Client agreement must be entered into by both parties.
This will be done immediately we receive your letter of acceptance.
Awaiting Response.

"Thanks,

"Patrick Chan
+656-211-2116,
Email:[email protected]"


Needless to say, we had not heard from him or of either "Chan" or his
"company" before.

We had not searched your other postings, but we ran into the same thing with "Cisero Ong," "Stephen Tia Lhong," and "Cergas Oil & Engineering Co. Ltd" (see also http://www.cergasoil.com, [email protected], [email protected]).

The "company" is supposedly located at the following address, etc.:

"Mr. Cisero Ong
President
Cergas Oil &amp; Engineering Co. Ltd
No. 2435, 1st Floor, Psn Boulevard
Boulevard Centre,
98000 Miri,
Sarawak,
Malaysia
Phone: 085-41 6060"

We received an "Official Check" purportedly drawn on Wachovia Bank, N.A. of Winston-Salem, N.C. 27150, and made payable in the amount of $48,950 US. All relevant information has been provided to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) (see http://www.ic3.gov), and others.

Hi hikercoast, and thank you for joining and adding to this thread.

We will investigate the other company you mention. The website may be fraudulent and if it is, we will have it reported to the host. Do you have a scam email from that domain (with headers) that we can use as evidence? It will make our reporting much easier. Please do post it here, or send it to me via the private messaging system.

Thanks.

There's a report here of a Texas lawyer losing $182,500 to this scam. He's suing his bank, but probably with little chance of success. Another unnamed lawyer is claimed to have lost $300,000.

if that is true, what idiots! We have a bridge to sell them in Brooklyn too, at a very cheap price because of the economic meltdown!

There are several groups involved now, but the main group reached $1 million in December that I know of, and there may be more. These guys are good, unfortunately. They seem to find a way around everything, and evolve very quickly.

My firn was also targeted by this scam. THis time the company was Tomen Corporation and the contact person had a Japanese name. When asked for a phone number he refused and said that because of language problems it was easier to communicate by emai. The debtor was supposedly Paul Gettel at Eagle Power Equipment in Delaware. Same exact info as on the arkansaslawer post. We received an official check from citibank for $360,400.00. When we called citibank to check on it we were told the check was no good. In this scam we were offered a $25,000 evergreen retainer. We were to deposit the check retain the $25,000 and wire transfer the balance of the money to an account in Korea.

Hi California

Welcome ot SCamwarners

I am glad to se you realised it was a scam before losing any money.

If you have any details or emails that are not included in this thread could you please add them here, by doing so you may be able to prevent somebody else from being scammed

Yes, "Caifornia Lawyer," we too were offered an "evergreen retainer." We have done many retainer agreements and arrangements over the years, but frankly had not heard of that term. When we tried to ascertain its meaning, nothing showed up. We assume it is bogus, just like the deals.

Hi everyone.

I'm part of a law firm and we received a suspicious mail. Looking for information, i found this forum (BTW many thanks to the staff and members, it is a great forum).

The mail received is similar but not exactly the same as the mails posted before:

"Attention Counsel:

I have previously sent you an email; please confirm the receipt of this mail due to the urgency of this matter.if you are able to represent us legally at the moment to receive past due collections from our debtors in North America .

We are a manufacturing company in Asia Matila Manufacturing Pte Ltd.

We are prepared to go along with your attorney agreements on your mode of representation as soon as we receive your response.

Thank you,
Cho Goalith
Matila Manufacturing Pte Ltd".

I don't have the mail address from the sender as it was forwarded to me by an assistant. However, it is a rocketmail.com account.

I received one yesterday at my law firm, King & Ballow. Here are the headers. Good luck figuring this out. The web site for the company is very attractive!!


Microsoft Mail Internet Headers Version 2.0
Received: from psmtp.com ([64.18.2.43]) by mail.kingballow.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959);
Wed, 4 Feb 2009 02:52:16 -0600
Received: from source ([87.248.110.140]) by exprod7mx203.postini.com ([64.18.6.14]) with SMTP;
Wed, 04 Feb 2009 03:53:07 EST
Received: from [217.12.4.214] by n23.bullet.mail.ukl.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 04 Feb 2009 08:53:06 -0000
Received: from [87.248.110.112] by t1.bullet.ukl.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 04 Feb 2009 08:53:06 -0000
Received: from [127.0.0.1] by omp217.mail.ukl.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 04 Feb 2009 08:53:06 -0000
X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3
X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: [email protected]
Received: (qmail 20686 invoked by uid 60001); 4 Feb 2009 08:53:05 -0000
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws;
s=s1024; d=rocketmail.com;
h=X-YMail-OSG:Received:X-Mailer:Date:From:Reply-To:Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Message-ID;
b=w04mgkSNskWCiqZh+j1p+VRXP56AvIXw5y6Bd4lpL8/QWOudNgP09W480nYu6OEggyv09LBQa2ICWOEM7Tz8wcUBaNnmTsWFlbKO1s8oxSwDYkfTWm57gF+a5CUrgGY+rtrIK9yJqOeD68KaRG+A5SFNmH9Vy88UbDxAWsyhLtA=;
X-YMail-OSG: wer6vcIVM1nDKx9C_gP_tqft2ku.aVg.YiVqivfvM7OfRyNOFwRD1S0U8csB2ntMw6Hd3TQzZKrLwan28gCdI515hUHu16PSsA0ZTlKjjSWsT8_iChvLiMPPMVMx0A9DkWGPSabf8G6G4RK9o.ij9H1B_Ghk
Received: from [92.40.167.84] by web24607.mail.ird.yahoo.com via HTTP; Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:53:05 PST
X-Mailer: YahooMailWebService/0.7.260.1
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 00:53:05 -0800 (PST)
From: Cho Goalith <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: COUNSEL REPRESENTATION
To: [email protected]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0-1802533009-1233737585=:19964"
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
X-pstn-neptune: 0/0/0.00/0
X-pstn-levels: (S:22.13109/99.90000 CV:99.9000 FC:95.5390 LC:93.6803 R:95.9108 P:95.9108 M:97.0282 C:98.6951 )
X-pstn-settings: 1 (0.1500:0.1500) cv gt3 gt2 gt1 p
X-pstn-addresses: from <[email protected]> [db-null]
Return-Path: [email protected]
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 04 Feb 2009 08:52:16.0308 (UTC) FILETIME=[E1389F40:01C986A5]

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Please post any bank accounts that you receive to wire money to, this would help a lot. Thanks to everyone for all the info.

Looking for information, i found this forum (BTW many thanks to the staff and members, it is a great forum).

Thank you!

I am not a lawyer, but I am one of the companies that they claim are in default. I have never heard of, nor done business with, Rising Sun HK Limited. I have received two letters from different lawyers claiming to be representing them. They claim I am in default of 1.2 million. One letter even claims they had made previous payment arrangements with me yet I never sent payment. The other letter claims I owe 299K but the invoice sent shows 449K. Both claim legal action if I do not send payment within 15 days. This was sent to my corporation's resident agent. I had just formed the corporation a few months earlier and have never done anything with it, not even open a bank account. They claim to have shipped 1.2 million worth of BBQ grills to that address. I assume they got the name of my corporation from some list of newly formed corporations. They do not even have my name, the letters are addressed "To Whom It May Concern". I know this is a scam, ofcourse I do not owe anything. I am not worried about any kind of legal action, I just don't want them to try to hurt my credit rating before I even begin building it. What should I do? I have planned on contacting the FBI. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I just looked up the domains for the attorneys and one was registered the same date the collection letter was dated. Which incidently was only 30 days after the date of the invoice which I was supposed to be "seriously past due". The other site had only been registered a few months earlier.

To scammeddude re: "What to do?

Ignore them. If you really want to be safe, you might wish to set up one or more new corporations and use them instead.

If the attorneys' domain names are new, chances are that it is the same group of people who are threatening you, and that no "real" attorneys are actually involved.

If a real attorney is involved, you might explain the situation to him or her (e.g., it is a scam). If the real attorney keeps threatening you, contact the bar association of the State in which you are located, and report the attorney as potentially being complicit in the fraudulent scheme.

The bar association should investigate and they will get the attorney off your back, for free.

Good luck.