Warning - "Settlement Claims Commission" - Scam!

We got an email from a consumer today which reported a potential scam.

I got a call from a certain Nicole Anderson who said she is a federal agent from the USA. She gave me their email as: claims@scc-gov.org and telephone number as +1-209-751 4458.

I have so far searched the internet and found the website www.scc-gov.org which contains both this email and telephone number.

Given the presentation you gave on the radio last week concerning the cloning of the FNB website, I am not sure if this website indeed belong the US federal agents.

I need to send scanned copies of my IDS/passport as well as information regarding trading in some US Shares that I bought through a certain Drexel Assets Management in 2003. Drexel Asset Management was later fond to be fraudsters and apparently, the federal agents have been instructed to contact all persons who were victims of their fraud.

Curiously the website is registered in the Netherlands, not the USA, as you would expect. Also the domain suffix ".org" is not what you would expect of a US government agency (".gov"). Finally the web site was only registered on 9th April this year which doesn't sound right to me.

The phone number they give is also associated with other potential scams (such as sacid.org) which you can see here.

The name of the organisation also doesn't seem to come up if you do a search of US Government sites.

The text on most of the pages on their web site also seems to have been "lifted" from other legitimate web sites.

Finally their web site is simply not good enough. The graphics are very poor quality, the wording is not what you would expect from such a service. Also the "List of settlement cases" page lists a vast number of companies who it claims have benefitted. I haven't checked them all but I can't find a single one that actually exists.

Scam!