A new scam that is going around for about a month now is Gatesway. I just saw it yesterday on Facebook. Supposedly set up by Bill Gates, it is a market trading tool to help the poor gain back some of the wealth from the super-rich. Great, yeah!
It offers free membership to use this tool that trades automatically on the stock market and makes you money. Super great!
Basically, you just put in some money to start it up and it starts making you a return straight away. The startup sum recommended is $250 so as to not really scare anybody off. They have a really good video of Bill Gates seemingly talking at a TED talk about how this will change the world. They also have a story that appears to be on the CNN website also.
There was a link to bring you to the sign-up page.
Clicking on the link brought me to a control panel with instructions.
Step 1: give details such as email address and phone number
Step 2: make a deposit. Not only do they want you to use your card, but they actually want you to make a copy of your card for them.
Step 3: Start reaping in the money ( presumably 🙂 )
I never got past step 1 as no way were they getting anything like my credit card details off me. My big mistake was giving my mobile number. Within 30 seconds I had received a phone call from India, and 12 hours later I can now also add the UK, Denmark, and Cyprus to the list. When I didn’t deposit any cash they quickly sold on my details to other trading companies around Europe.
I started off by looking for Gatesway’s website. Surely anything run by Bill Gates would be easily found. No! Well, it was new so maybe Google wasn’t putting it up near the top of the rankings yet.
Next a closer look at the CNN website with the story on it. The CNN website IS quite convincing except for a couple of things. Firstly there is a discrepancy with the URL. It is D-CNN rather than CNN. Always check the url if you are not familiar with the website.
Secondly and by far the biggest give away was the fact that if you click on any of the pages on the menu they brought you to the Gatesway website. CNN wouldn’t be overly happy to have that happening for real. Scam really blown.
The TED talk was a genuine TED talk, but they used an impersonator to give the talk a different storyline than Bill Gate’s original one. Originally the talk Bill gave in May 2013 was about the importance of feedback I education. It was definitely not about how to get rich quickly by using his Gatesway trading tool.
But if you missed all of the above, the biggest give away was the immediate phone call. Those scammers wanted their greedy little hands on my money straight away. A real company would probably have live help and may send you an email to give you a nudge. They won’t, ( or at least shouldn’t), call you within 30 seconds of signing up.
Gatesway is hosted with GoDaddy since 6th March this year and they have used a Domains by Proxy company to hide their real identity. They also have the SECURE in the URL for their website. Unfortunately many scams have this now, and Google Chrome’s “SECURE” rating just isn’t. Remember to always be careful when using your credit card online!
Giving out your details is not such a good idea either.
But then again if there is someone you don’t like you could always sign them up and give their mobile number!!!!
But remember you didn’t get that idea from me