Over the past week, Silk Legal has been contacted by numerous companies inquiring about forming a Thailand based company to complete a funding transaction. Immediately, we became suspicious and started to ask some specific questions in order to identify red flags. This is simple scam where an investment into a company is promised and the scammer is insisting on creating a Thai company in order to facilitate the investment. The money is then supposed to flow from the Thai company to the receiver’s accounts in whatever country they are from. This is a major red flag for AML and Compliance in itself.
The scammers will ask for a small amount of money, such as $3000-$7000 in order to facilitate the transfer to the new Thai company – and guess what – you never hear from them again!
The scammers are passing themselves of as member of the Kharafi Group, a respected multi-national company based in Kuwait. One of the scammers is going by the name of James Greenwood with the email address of [email protected]. Kharafiae.net closely resembles the name of the Kharafi Group; however, their official web domain is located at www.makharafi.net.
Further Inspection of kharafieae.net indicated that the domain was registered in the United States on 16 June 2015 – less than one month old. More damming evidence can be found on this domain record as the email address [email protected] is linked to several posts on websites such as ScamGuard
Silk Legal reminds people to exercise caution in dealing with potential investors. If it sounds too good to be true, it will probably cost you in the end.
See the ScamGuard article here:
