Chiropractic San Diego

By Michael Dorausch, DC

There is a chance you are reading this post because you’ve received an e-mail, by a person named Daniel Monday, who says they want to buy your stuff. After hosting chiropractic ads for the past 10 years, we’ve discovered that the same scammers visiting our website, go to many others as well. While these posts appear unimportant for our normal readers (my apologies) they’ve reportedly been very helpful in thwarting online scam activity.

It’s been a productive weekend that the planet chiropractic office. We’ve been working on some upgrades to the classified ads system, in order to provide better service to those using the website for selling and buying chiropractic equipment.

Thanks to an incredibly engaged classified ad community, we’ve been able to cut back significantly on fraudulent e-mails reaching our users. Below I am posting and actual e-mail sent by Daniel Monday from his back2streetat40@yahoo.com Yahoo e-mail account.

Take a look at posts such as those regarding Mr. Benson in Nigeria, Mr. Smith Matt, Tom Marley, and Mike Rapp. These are all expected to be the same group of individuals (or even one individual) using different names and different e-mail accounts to target unsuspecting people selling items online.

Here is a reply to someone’s classified ad, from Daniel Monday, with an IP address of 65.49.2.157.

Reading the e-mail, you can see the telltale signs that this is a scam. #1 is that the sender asks whether cashiers checks or postal money orders are excepted as payment. #2 is that the sender mentions using a private shipping company to handle item delivery. Both of these are hallmark signs of online classified ads scams.

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Sender IP: 65.49.2.157

Posted To: Chiropractic Classifieds

Hello,
I came across your ad and I’ll like to know the following questions regarding
the ad.
Q#1. How long have you owned it?
Q#2. a) Have you owned
it from new? b) If not how many previous owner?
Q#3.Why are you selling it?
Q#4. In your opinion, what
sort of conditionis it?
Q#5. Any available photo?
Q#6. How much are you asking for it?
Q#7. Do you accept a ( Cashier Check / postal Money Order with cheque)as a
mode of payment.
Q#8. Kindly get back to me with ur FULL NAME,FULL CONTACT ADDRESS,TEL # so
that payment willbe issued and mailed to you.

Note that you dont need to worry about shipping as i have a private shipping
company that will take care of the shipping and delivery of the item once
payment is been received by you.I’ll like to have the response to these
question in your earliest conviniency.Hope to hear from you soon.

Thanks
Daniel

Daniel Monday
back2streetat40@yahoo.com
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If you sell stuff online, and you’ve received an e-mail similar to this one, I would contact the webmaster of the site you were using, and forward them all sender information, so they can take action.

By Michael Dorausch, DC

A real estate agent in Amherst, New Hampshire has done something unique when it comes to selling a chiropractic residence/practice. Like many other brokers and chiropractors selling practices online, he posted an advertisement to the chiropracticclassifieds (this link may be deleted after the office is sold, but you can view it here) pages on planetchiropractic.com.

Like the others, he included links to his web site, but he also did something I thought was quite creative. A video of the office and the community was created and posted on YouTube. A link is available to the YouTube video from the classified ad, but I decided to show it here in an effort to provide some creativity for those considering doing the same.

Here is the video in the form of a link, and I’ll also be providing it below, embedded into this post.

I liked the way the video starts from a satellite view. He talks about the area of Peterborough New Hampshire, describes the community, and talks about how many residents live in the area. The home office combination is on a beautiful piece of land, and there’s lots of video footage taking throughout the house, as well as outdoors.

The realtor is Harold “Buddy” Pope, and I think he’s done a great job showing us how one can promote their chiropractic office or property for sale online, using more than just text. I hoped to see more advertisements like this in the future.

By Michael Dorausch, DC

On October 28th, Daria had a planet chiropractic news article which included a screenshot of 32 chiropractic practices being added to classified listings in less than 24 hours. She gave a summary on some of those businesses listed and pointed out that the current number for practices for sale had exceeded 780 businesses. I noticed yesterday that 11 more businesses were listed (by a broker) for sale throughout the United States.

The screenshot here shows an additional 11 practices listed for sale, all are in the United States. That brings the current number 794. This may not be of any interest to most people, but I’m thinking if there are nearly 800 chiropractic businesses for sale, it appears like there’s some great opportunities out there for someone looking to move into an existing practice.

Taking a look at the list, office locations include northern New Jersey, Indianapolis, Austin Texas, west Phoenix, Southern California (Torrance area), North Dallas, Modesto, North Carolina, Gilbert (which is in Arizona), and a practice for sale in Italy.

There is even a single new listing for a new graduate seeking to associate in someone’s office.

With some creativity and good business principles, it looks to me like there’s some incredible opportunities to not only purchase someone’s existing business, but to find the right talent that will provide care for clientele.

It will be interesting to see how listings will look six months from now.

By Michael Dorausch, DC

It’s been a productive weekend that the planet chiropractic office. We’ve been working on some upgrades to the classified ads system, in order to provide better service to those using the website for selling and buying chiropractic equipment.

Thanks to recent activities such as yesterday’s visit from Mr. Benson in Nigeria, and previous visits from Smith Matt, Tom Marley, and Mike Rapp (three or four are suspected to be the same individual), we’ve added some new features that kick in when someone replies to someone else’s posted classified advertisement. Take a look at the screenshot below.

This is a screenshot of the new reCAPTCHA feature we added to the classified ad system. I don’t expect it will completely stop scammers and automated bots from sending e-mails to those with ads posted, but it should slow things down a bit.

Along with the regular form information are two words that need to be typed in in order to continue on (there is also an option for playing audio instead of reading text).

What’s cool about this CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) is that when people fill the information out, they are helping to digitize books.

According to the reCAPTCHA website, there are approximately 60 million CAPTCHAs solved by humans around the world every day. In each of those cases an estimated 10 seconds of human time is spent solving these puzzles. Putting this puzzle work to good use results in more than 150,000 hours of aggregating work done each day. The “solved” puzzles helped to get books digitized for the Web.

When I checked the site earlier today, there was mention that current puzzle solving was helping to digitize old editions of the New York Times. I think that’s pretty cool.

So whether you’re responding to a chiropractic practices for sale advertisement, chiropractic employment, or equipment for sale from a private party, know that you’ll be doing your 10 second part (or more if you’re responding to multiple ads) to help digitize books and other information to be put online.

Just a quick post to alert others regarding activity of a “Mr Benson Raymond” from Nigeria. Daria posted that other day regarding seperating you from your money and it looks as though this character fits the profile well.

Here is the email being sent to people posting classified ads on various websites…

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Hello,
I am Mr Benson raymond, I work in  with  a small retailing company.I actually saw the  advert you placed and I will like to know the last offer you want to let it out and gather more info about it and the major reason why you want to sell it, if  it has been damaged in any form or not. as soon as we agree on terms,I will arrange the payment  via check or banks draft.
Thanks,
Regards,
Mr Benson

benson
weaving112@yahoo.com

=======

A Whois Record lookup on emails he sent across our server show the ip address 196.3.183.73 which is based in Abuja, Nigeria. Webmasters may want to add the following IP addresses to their blacklists: 196.3.180.0 - 196.3.183.255

Whois Record Results…
inetnum: 196.3.183.0 - 196.3.183.255
netname: SubTel2
descr: Suburban telecom is an IP Wholesale Provider
country: NG
admin-c: LO1-AFRINIC
tech-c: Oa13-AFRINIC
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: SUBURBAN-MNT
source: AFRINIC # Filtered
parent: 196.3.180.0 - 196.3.183.255

Have a nice day.

By Michael Dorausch, DC

This scam topic must really be getting old for lots of people. Interesting thing though is I’ve received several e-mails from people across United States that were about to get scammed by 419 fraudsters and they fortunately did some research online and came across at least one of the fraud related articles we’ve posted during the past several months. That thanks goes to the community for sniffing out fraud activity.

Early this morning about a dozen people received the same e-mail from a person using a Yahoo.com e-mail account. The e-mail appeared very similar to those sent by the Tom Marley persona and others. Below is a copy of the e-mail…

========================================
BELOW IS A REPLY TO YOUR CLASSIFIED AD
========================================

I just place a look on your item and i am interested
in immediate purchase of this item,but before i proceed
on this transaction i will like to ask some question as follow.

1.What is the condition of the item?

2. Do you accept a ( cheque / money order) as a mode of
payment?

3. What is the final asking prize you can go at last?

4. Will you let our shipping company to come to your
house for the pick up of the item cos we don’t want you
to worry yourself about the shipping of the item.

5. Will you be able to send the remaining
fund back to the shipping company via western union
money transfer same day you receive and cash the
Cheque for the arrangement of the home pick up from your house.

6.if okay You are to send your
NAME,ADDRESS,CITY,STATE,POSTCODE,TEL #
to mail out the payment.

Regards.
Smith

smith matt
smith_matt110@yahoo.com

To Avoid Potential Scams & Fraud View Here First
==========

Whether you’re selling chiropractic adjusting tables, motorcycles (apparently these scammers have been targeting motorcycle owners in the U. S.), or any other item online, continue doing your research before you conduct any transactions.

All e-mails from this user were tracked back to IP address 64.62.138.97 and a DNS proxy service known as Dynaweb. Classified ad website administrators are encouraged to check log files for traces of DynaWeb activity.

By Michael Dorausch, DC

I’m on a roll. Turns out the subluxated fraudbag that targeted e-mails at the classified ad community has been doing so on other web sites as well. We received an e-mail yesterday from someone that was selling a motorcycle in a US state that was contacted by the same individual e-mailing users on our classifieds site.

Thanks to the participation of the community we were able to post information about the suspected fraud. While it’s frustrating for those seeking to sell items to others, it’s motivating to receive e-mails from people that have gained from reading the information we’ve collectively presented. You guys rock!

I got into this in major detail just last week with my 1000 mentions of fraud and phishing but I’m on a roll and I intend to continue posting this info (even if it only helps one other person).

On the topic of fraudulent e-mails when purchasing classified items posted online, here is some communication that should raise flags…

Hi,
Thanks for the mail and the content is well understood, the information has been receiveed, the check will be mailed out by tommorrow by my creditor and i will notify you with the tracking number of the payment….please note that the check will come with excess funds which will be used for the shipping and handling of the item,all you need to do once u get the check is to take it to bank and cash it instantly and then withdraw the excess funds and have it sent to the shipping company that will be contacting you once the payment is been received by you.

Notice the mention of excess funds, third parties, and shipping companies? This has scam written all over it.

Here is more from the same individual…

Thanks for the mail, the payment will be mailed out by monday, hope u understand that the check is going to come with excess funds so all you need to do is to get the check cashed deduct the funds for the item and then have the rest funds wire to the shipping company that will take care of the pickup of the item, thanks and i hope these is clear to you.

OK, sometimes I have bad spelling too, so that might not be a dead giveaway. But the mention of excess funds and the request to wire money to a shipping company is classic fraud language.

Regardless of what web sites you use for classifieds and / or auctions, pay attention and stay alert to the possibilities that often times the first person contacting you is the fraudulent scammer. They watch for items to be posted on web sites and they move quickly, hoping to separate you from your items before you catch on to what they are up to.