Tags: Scams
Ameri-scam.
May 23rd, 2005, by Rich.
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Two months ago I wrote a short article about a telemarketing call that I received from AmeriVacation. It has very quickly become one of the most viewed pages on this site, and also the most commented upon, by many people who are worried that they have been conned.
With just a little digging I’ve started to unearth some more information on AmeriVacation, and some “companies” that appear to be related.
It appears that AmeriVacation is only the latest front. They set up a website, to appear legitimate and then cold call people, anyone whose number they can get using an automated calling mechanism (which is very simple to do with a computer). They then sell a package that is not what it appears to be and then make it very difficult to obtain a refund.
Sadly the people that get scammed are often the most vulnerable people who can least afford to lose such a large amount of money.
Through my digging I discovered a little about the history of the scams, and a little about how they’re all related. What follows is a brief review of the links so that others may pick up the trail more easily.
The currently active websites (which can be linked through identical wording, identical phone numbers, IP addresses that resolve to the same physical machines, etc) are:
- www.amerivacation.com
- www.expertholidays.com
- www.yourvipholiday.com (bad press) (more)
- www.flbahamastravelhome.com
- www.mydiscountholiday.com (bad press)
- www.doublevacations.com
- www.affiliatedtravelnetwork.com
- www.brilliantholiday.com (bad popup press)
- www.destinationcenter.net
- www.myffc.com (bad press)
- www.mydiscountholiday.com
- www.floridaholidayusa.com - discovered July 2005
- www.holidayfloridausa.com - discovered July 2005
- www.sunrisetravels.us - discovered August 2005
- www.imperialvacation.com - discovered August 2005
- www.5starholidays.net - discovered August 2005
- www.floridatouristbureau.com - discovered August 2005
Now, anybody that sells a holiday from Florida, or sells a holiday to Florida must be registered. The last entry in the above list , “mydiscountholiday.com” claims a Florida Seller Of Travel License Number of ST35170. In fact, this next list of sites all claim to have that same license number.
- www.mydiscountholiday.com (bad press)
- www.usafamilygetaway.com (bad press)
- www.sandyvacationsllc.com (bad press)
- www.floridabureauoftourism.com
- http://www.destinationsforyou.com
- http://www.celebrationpromotions.com
Another useful thing for linking companies is the address, several of these companies have used “600 North Highway 1792, Suite 120, Longwood Fl 32750″ including:
- www.yourvipholiday.com
- www.usafamilygetaway.com addres link also mentioned here
That link is important because without it these appear to be two separate groups of companies, when in fact, it’s one big cloud.
The next link in the chain is the phone number, all the sites below are connected because they use the same UK freephone number 0800-917-7462. What’s especially nice is that three of them have also decided to share testimonials too!
- www.windsorvacations.com
- www.myvacationschoice.com
- www.vacations-paradise.com (bad press)
- www.sohovacations.com -bullshit testimonial (bad press)
- www.centuryvacations.com - bullshit testimonial
- www.firstclicktravel.net - bullshit testimonial
- www.usafamilygetaway.com
The other address in use is “7632 Southland Blvd, Orlando, FL 32809″ and this is used by:
- www.myffc.com
- www.mydiscountholiday.com
- www.brilliantholiday.com (bad press)
- www.destinationcenter.com
Currently www.destinationcenter.com looks like a bit of a sales force advertisement. However, by looking at the caches on google and web.archive.org, it’s apparent that it was also used as travel sales site (hence I got the address match above), selling these same packages - i.e. not just a coincidence, this was the same outfit.
So, who’s behind it? Well, according to this story, it all comes back to to a Altef Hemani (aka Alex Hemani), who has a history of such scams.
His name is as good as mud on the internet, so he’s tried to combat this by buying a few websites and and writing eulogies about himself.
Each of those sites, incidentally, is owned by the same company: Travel Express Investments 385 Center Point Cir, Altamont Springs, FL 32701.
What’s especially interesting is that the administrative contact for the domains is Arif Rajan who may be the same business man whos only newsworthy moment until now was that in 2002 he was was questioned and released without charge regarding money laundering for terrorist organisations.
Sources
Naturally the information I’ve been able to gather and present here is all freely available to the public. Please feel free to check, corroborate, dispute, disprove or otherwise extended it through your own investigation.
I have found the following resources most useful:
- http://whois.net/ which provides information about the owners of domain names.
- http://sunbiz.org/ which provides information from the Florida Department of State regarding companies, and the persons legally responsible for those companies.
- http://www.doacs.state.fl.us/ the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which regulates travel in Florida.
July 9th, 2005 at 3:00 pm
I got a similar call here in Switzerland, telling me that I won a “all including cruise in the caribbean”. Furtunately I was not at home, so the call was re-directed to my voicemail box. I found the number to call back (where I’m supposed to say the “magic” word “cruise”) in the 0800-er list maintained on one of our gouvernment’s agencies website.
Here it is:
Syntec UK Ltd
The Avenue 18
W138PH London
England
Korrespondenz:
MCI Communications Switzerland AG
INA Numbering
Hardturmstrasse 135
8005 Zürich
0800 000 991
When I called the numer I was re-routed and on a sudden I heard the UK’s
dialing tone [which is familiar to me - since I'm a Eurepean :-)].
Then they lift the receiver and hang up immediately.
That made me suspicious and I Googled Syntec UK Ltd and found your article.
July 10th, 2005 at 8:27 am
I have recently been duped by the people running this website. It read that I had won £1101. It gave me 2 minutes to call them and when I did they said that it was a promotional offer to give me £1101 off a cruise to Florida. They said that I had a year to take it and that I needed to have a visa credit or debit card. At first I didn’t want to give my details, especially as they were asking for £598 up front. I said that I couldn’t afford to pay that straight away so they said that I could pay a deposit of £48. They guy on the phone sounded convincing so I gave in and gave my card details. They gave me the website address http://www.celebrationpromotions.com and when I looked on it I realised I’d been ripped off, but when I went to the Cashpoint [ATM] the £48 had already been debited, so I rushed to the bank to freeze the account and withdrew all my money in there. I have rang their so called customer service number to get a refund but they said that it was non refundable and that unless I took the cruise I’d lose it.
July 11th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
Hi Guys, Thanks for putting this information up on the web. We had responded to a pop up and nearly got sucked into this scam. Luckley my partner did a serch in google and found your sight. A big thanks for saving us from being another [Starr Getaways] victim. Greetings from Dublin Ireland
July 11th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
Hi Again, just ellaborating on my previous email. I was on the web site, had various windos up at the same time, then noticed this one flashing saying I was the 1,000,000th visitor to the site and have won £1201.00, call this number, which of course I did. Now, this is the 1st time i have done anything like this, usually look at it, say to myself, scam and click out. Fortunately to date I get very little to no spam on my email. Anyway, rang the number, gave them the conf number and she said gr8, you have won…6 nts in Orlando, 3 nts Fort Lauderdale, plus a 6 nt cruise to the Bahamas. How does that sound..Great I said, she asked for my card details, which I replied I don’t want to confirm now, have to check with my other half, at which time he was coming through the door. Gr8 timing or what..i dithered a bit with the girl, she then put me onto Blake, who told me about themselves etc. Asked if they had a web-site, which he replied with http://www.starr-getaways.com. I looked it up, looked all good and proper, phone numbers, addresses etc..Asked if they were a registered agency, he gave me the number. Great. We are heading to New York in May, and thought this would be great to tag onto the end of that trip. So I gave my card details, expiry date. He asked for the CCvV number on my card, but I did not have my card to hand and gave what I thought it was. In the meantime, my partner is searching on Google and came across this site and made the link to the scam, so I then hung up. I then rang my card company and put that on stop, esp as it is a debit card not credit. So I have managed to avert the scam, however they rang my mobile number at least 6 times, which i ignored. I then ecided to answer, and told them I have found out about their scam and am not interested. They continued to ring, I answered again and advised the about this web site and told them to check it out if they are so legit. He called me back 10 mins latter, which I ignored and have not heard from them since. Sorry this is so long winded, but they were very polite and efficient with me, it all sounded too good. A good lesson learnt today.
July 12th, 2005 at 4:35 pm
i have just rung one of those numbers that pop up on screen so i rang it the woman called irene santana gave me this website addy, http://www.expertholidays.com, when i said i couldnt access the website she passed me over to a man who asked if i was using aol when i said no he put phone down on me !!! all a scam no way were they getting my card details anyway
July 13th, 2005 at 10:12 pm
“Low” and behold - I’ve been conned in little ol’ Denmark. I listened to the whole salespitch and gave them my card number (how stupid and naive am I?!) But they said they needed it to verify my credit, and when I protested, they said it would be illegal to charge my card so after a bit of grumbling on my part and getting the girls name and extention number I got carried away on this winner cloud 9, and gave in (again how stupid am I?!). But it didn’t sit well in my stomach, so I called Mommy… and she got very upset and said this scam had been all over the news, and urged me to call the bank. So I did - cancelled my creditcard and all - Now 6 days later I find that they’ve charged the 898 euros anyway - How the hell did they do that? Well, I’m of to the bank first thing in the morning…I just feel so stupid - but like Søren said - We’re not used to such cons in DK.
July 15th, 2005 at 3:01 pm
How lucky I am, I just got a popup telling me that I’ve won a holiday from none other than Starr Getaways, the number they’re using today is 0800 091 0878.
July 15th, 2005 at 3:35 pm
Hi there, I got a call from these guys royalty holidays - Florida.
The guys name was Mark. Said it was a promotion with Disiney land in Florida, Mastercard and Visa.
They called me and then I had to press 7 to go further.
http://www.royaltyholidays.com
The address they are using is
Royalty Holidays
1415 Halsey Way Suite 310
Carrollton TX 75007
July 15th, 2005 at 4:14 pm
This comment from Angel in the Netherlands (on the how-to-cancel thread) is very interesting. The company mentioned is “HolidayFloridaUSA / AmeriVacation”.
Now, I’d not heard of “Florida Holiday USA” before, so I took a look at their website - floridaholidayusa.com - which unsurprisingly is exactly the same as the amerivacation.com site, except the name AmeriVacation has been poorly airbrushed out and replaced.
The FloridaHolidayUSA website was registered on 23rd June 2005, by Al Jessani, so it is definitely related to AmeriVacation. This also which explains why searches for “AmeriVacation” have been diminishing over the last week.
Seems like the scam contines unabated.
July 15th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
Hi Sheligh - I’ve not heard of RoyaltyHolidays.com before. It is registered by the same person and served from the same machine (63.251.38.6) as RoyaltyTravels.com, whose testimonials do seem to have a lot in common with those of VacationMoments - the same photos and the same people.