Public Warning.-Scammers passing themselves off as Spanish lawyers and law firms

[sheyllim]

Did you know that Police and news agencies are reporting an increased number of door-to-door cons across the nation. There may be a bigger number of operators attempting to rip people off, so be wary of any person knocking on the door and trying to sell you stuff. People should be aware of those strangers knocking on your doors. Some people end up needing installment loans to get by until the month is over after a scam.

[Unregistered]

My father, who passed away 6 1/2 years ago, just received a letter from Barrister Andres David Uriah wanted to split $10.8 million. Same thing, deceased gentleman from 2004 with same surname. It really had me curious as it had the stamp and post mark from Spain. It took a week from Spain to Alberta, hmmmmm. Been two weeks waiting on paperwork from Ontario!

[Unregistered]

A long narrative for your readers - please respond if you have more information. Aside from what I write below, I thank the people who added to this thread, who also helped us expose the scam.

My couple-hour attempt to expose a scam.

My father-in-law recently received a letter in the mail from a Spanish lawyer by the name of "Pablo Perez" of the Edificio Law Firm in Madrid, Spain. Mr. Perez informed my father-in-law that he had been searching, on behalf of a former, deceased client with the same last name, a living relative in order to transfer the inheritance left by the deceased. My wife followed up on the letter, writing an email to Mr. Perez. She received in response a letter proclaiming the honesty of his intent, his desire to close the portfolio and transfer the inheritance. He assured that everything would be done through legal channels.

Ok – obviously a spam, but to those who could use the cash, thinking is not always completely clear and reasonable. But on the way to officially proclaiming it a spam, we did some research, and were warned by the following clues.

1) Mr. Perez had an email address that ended in lawyer.com. That seemed fishy, so we checked the website http://edificiolawfirm.com/index.html. All of the "partners" of Mr. Perez had email addresses that ended in edificio.com.

2) Mr. Perez sent a "death certificate". After looking at it carefully, I decided my Photoshop skills are better than that of the scammers. The font size changed mid-sentence, the official stamp was totally phony.

Now things really got fun.

3) I decided to do a reverse image search using the picture of Mr. Perez provided on the website. It led me to another fellow by the name of Dr. Michael Schädlich. He's a real guy I think, and probably unaware that his picture is being used by scammers. BUT, Dr. Schadlich is not only Mr. Pablo Perez at the edificiolawfirm.com site, he is also Herbert Kroon at "Robert McAllister & Partners" (http://robertmcallisterpartners.com/home/profiles.html), and Roger Barkley, director of marketing at Rolls Royce according to a fake (?) linked in profile (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/roger-barclay/32/505/88a).

4) Now, if you follow the links, you might notice that the firm of Robert McAllister & Partners has the EXACT SAME FORMAT website as Edificio Law Firm, which got me thinking about the other pictures on the sight. I conducted another reverse image Google search on the picture of all the partners (of both firms), and found the picture again here: http://www.hornecoupar.com/ - a law firm in Victoria, British Columbia. So, according to this firm, the people in the pictures are Mark Horne, John Coupar, Fiona Hunter, Heather Fisher, and Donovan Waters. I'm fairly certain this is the legitimate law firm. But…
Now things get weird.

5) Three of the five people identified from the Horne and Coupar law firm in Victoria, BC are also the staff of the Topnet Beverage Company in Saudi Arabia (http://topnetbeverages.com/about), where they are identified as Rev. Dr. Walley Ashford, Dr. Blatter von Browich and Mrs. Susan Bell. So, is Topnet Beverage also a fake company? Or is the Horne Coupar law firm?

Who are the scammers?

I don't know, but I assume they work with 10dollarsite.com to build their websites, because that company even uses a site with a similar photograph on a sample of their work (then it was for McKinney Brothers law firm in Denver - http://10dollarsite.com/Portfolio/) and they also worked with http://www.creotec.com/web-design-portfolio.php who created the now deactivated www.spanishpropertytaxrefund.com using the same picture yet again.
Well, there it is. All the relevant fake names, with a couple real ones, whose identities are being borrowed. I hope this little narrative reflecting three hours of sleuth work will help others to avoid be taken in.

The bottom line here, of course, "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

Again, I don't know who they are, but I hope they get caught. They are preying on normal every-day people, some of whom are despondent enough to pursue the mirage put before them. These guys are no "Robin Hoods" – just run-of-the-mill criminals.

[Unregistered]

I've just received a letter from a David Gomez at a Spanish "law firm". The format is similar to everyone else's - someone died in the tsunami, and I stand to inherit lots of money if I reply to the lawyer's private email address.

Even though it's an obvious fake, I googled the name of the firm:
Baylo Abogados
C/ Goya 13
1. Izda
28001 Madrid
The phone number is a mobile number.

The first google hits are what appears to be a genuine law firm - Baylos Abogados - located at C/ Goya 12 in Madrid - one of the partners is a David Gómez. (www.baylos.com). I've googled the picture of Mr Gomez and he doesn't appear to be anything other than a lawyer, which indicates to me that the scammers have hijacked a genuine firm's identity and that of poor Mr Gomez.

I would be interested to know whether the scammers are buying up population registers or have got hold of them illegally. My name is generally connected with another address in Sweden, so if I was to get spam coming from anywhere other than the official register it would be to that address. (And the register must be newer than 3 years in this case, due to a postcode change).

[Unregistered]

Beware, I have received a letter from a EQUITY ADVOCATES S.A in Madrid. this is their website http://www.equiadvocates.net/index.html , claiming to have a late late leaving behind millions which I cal legally collect even though I have no family relations to this lady....
the letter is sign by a "lawyer" by the name Luis Mora Espino

[Unregistered]

Hello,

At first I'm from Poland. Today my father received a fax from Baylo Abogados (not baylos - which is ceirtanly similar http://www.baylos.com/ ). They informed us, that our related who lived in Spain left us several milion dollars. Unfortunately we didn't have any related with our family people from Spain. Moreover as you know, polish language is really difficult. The fax had many of mistakes. They were probably using google translator. The website is really poor: http://dmabogado.com/

POLISH AND OTHER PEOPLE BE AWARE!

[Unregistered]

I am a Canadian and have received 2 scam letters from Rafael Berdaguer Abogados and yesterday a new letter arrived
from Arraut & Asociados with the same content..???!! The name of the "deceased" family member has magically changed. Never knew I had so many "long-lost" family members....I sent copies to the Spanish Embassy in our city, but have received no response.

[Unregistered]

I receive a letter few days ago..confirming me that I have a relatives died years ago..and deposited a 13M dollars in a bank. This lawyer named Don Erico Lawson ask my help to claim that money. But I dont know any relative from spain coz I am a citizen in Philippines hut curently residing here in Norway. I dont know if this is true or not..please help me. This leter came from the office so called ERICO ABOGADOS CONSULTO address is PASEO DE SARASATE, 5.1° Dcha, Pamplona 31002 Spain tel.no is +34 634 113 826 email.add.is lawsonericoesq@yahoo.es. .please respond t thi...

[Unregistered]

Recently I've received fake notice about inheritance from someone in US without kin. I'm from Poland. Please be aware of that scum.

[sweden]

we got a letter from a lawyer with the name popeye sanchez. he sais that my father would get 12,752 million euros. and i searchd a little on the internet and fond out that he always uses the same letter he just gets another last name. the stamp didnt have something on it so technically it should not go to send such letters.