I am in the process of purchasing a bicycle online, and the person
whom I am buying from uses a third person site called
www.secure3rdparty.com.  The site requires you to send a wire transfer
to its general manager and when the merchandise is recieved they make
the payment to the seller.  Is this a scam?

Hi,

I can't yet prove this is part of a scam, but what I can tell you is
that some key things don't add up. I would not send any money to the
operators of this site under any conditions.

First of all, refer to the second comment below, the one by
Vballguy-ga (no relation to me).  He has pointed out some serious,
serious problems with the site. I have confirmed what he wrote.

Here are some other problems:

1. On the home page, it says that the site was transferred to its
domain last September, but the domain wasn't created until June 5 two
weeks ago.

You can get domain registration information by going to this page:
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois
and entering in the domain name. Here is the rest of the registration information:

Domain Name.......... secure3rdparty.com
Creation Date........ 2004-06-05
Registration Date.... 2004-06-05
Expiry Date.......... 2005-06-05
Organisation Name.... Lisa Positeri
Organisation Address. 4152 Edinburg Rd
Organisation Address. 
Organisation Address. New Castle
Organisation Address. 60014
Organisation Address. PA
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

Admin Name........... Lisa Positeri
Admin Address........ 4152 Edinburg Rd
Admin Address........ 
Admin Address........ New Castle
Admin Address........ 60014
Admin Address........ PA
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email.......... ************@yahoo.com
Admin Phone.......... +1.**********
Admin Fax............ 

(Note: For privacy reasons, I have asterisked out the phone number and
e-mail address given above, as I strongly suspect the information is
fake. You can find them out by directly checking the registration at
networksolutions.com.)

2. Note that the address of the registered owner of the domain is in
Pennsylvania, yet the site lists an England address.

3. The address given on the site is this:
148 Old Oak Road, 
City: London
Zip: W9 7HE
England

However, if you enter that address into Google .../
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=%22148+Old+Oak+rd%22&btnG=Search

... you'll find that that is the address for the Acton Practice ...
http://www.upmystreet.com/nrs/?l1=W12&cat=2447

... which is a doctor's office that has been there for 50 years:
http://www.c.j.hall.btinternet.co.uk/surgeries.htm .

4. The London telephone number given as a contact on the site is a
cell-phone number. Companies that do $3 million in business don't have
a cell phone as the main contact.

5. The quality of grammar on the site just doesn't seem right for a
site that's in the business it's in and that supposedly does that
amount of business. Companies dealing in financial transactions
usually do everything they can to make their site seem credible, and
this one obviously is not.

6. The administrative address in the registration is in Pennsylvania,
but the zip code is Illinois, strongly suggesting that the information
is faked.

I hope this is enough information to raise serious questions about
doing business with this site.

Best wishes,

Mvguy-ga

While I can not answer this for sure in either direction, I can tell
you that site was created very recently. This may be something you
would want to consider.

Creation Date........ 2004-06-05
Registration Date.... 2004-06-05
Expiry Date.......... 2005-06-05

You can contact the organization at:
Most companies will provide you with a BBB report or can prove validity. 
197 Whitechapel Road
Whitechapel London England-UK 
E1 9DN
Phone: +447867921623. 

Nenna-GA
GAR

It definitly sounds like a scam...


1) The site does not encrypt your login (called SSL) HUGE RED FLAG
2) The registration date listed above
3) The site uses a Yahoo ID as its contact.  ( I set up an account and
the last step lists secureon2007@yahoo.com as the contact for the
site).
4) They claim 3 million customers on their home page but there is not
a single site in google that links to this site This is a HUGE red
flag...
5) Their legal policy is almost an exact match of escrow.com
(https://www.escrow.com/resources/to_use.asp) except it references SSL
encryption on the site which it they do not have.  In fact they
accidentall refer to themselves in the disclaimer as "The Services are
Internet-based transaction management services performed by ECSC and
escrow services under which IES "  where IES is the parent company for
escrow.com. (they almost definitly just copied the legal policy)  -
HUGE RED FLAG- Their legal policies are copied from someone else and
still reference the other company.
6) If you do a google search for "transaction  point" and "customized 
closing  statement" (make sure to have the quotes there, you will get
one result... click on the cached copy and you will see that this page
is almost and exact match of an old site that is no longer there
called g-trader.com/solutions.php.
7) Look around the site... they have little or no text on a lot of the pages...



There is a lot more, but I think it is pretty safe to say that based
on the above, there is a strong chance they are a scam.

The E9 1DN postcode is not recognised as valid by the Royal Mail postcode checker.

Fake escrow sites are all the new rage in internet scams.  www.escrow.com is legit.

The new web address they are using is www.ww-secure-transaction.com
and under the name Jan Tomasson in England. Whoever these people are,
they tried to sell us a car stereo. When we started asking questions,
all of a sudden the site was shut down and so far we haven't heard
back from them. We were getting emails from ervinhawk@yahoo.com. Make
sure to do your research.  Hope this helps !

My husband just sent money for a bicycle to Jan Tomasson at
ww-secure-transactions.  The website has disappeared and the seller of
the bike, one Julia Cage, has too.  The add was and still is posted on
www.totalbikes.com.  Do your research before you lose your money too.

I fell for the same scam as well, i was too excited about the deal,
and should have payed closer attention. i sent money for a trek 5900
superlight, and so far it hasn't came, and i sent the money august 12,
today is september 1. at first the web address was
www.ww-secure-transaction.com annd then it was changed to
www.unitedshipperscomp.com i also dealed with a julia cage and a jan
tommason, and i sent the money to roger devlin. there still is a bi
tof hope left in me that it may come, a friend told me it takes 5-6
weeks to ship a bike from england. if my bicycle never comes i will be
very upset, and will try to find a way to make these people pay, and
get my money back. and bring some justice for all the people who got
ripped off

Just FYI, I came across the same person, Jan Tomasson, using the email
id tomasson2004@hotmail.com, selling a few other stuff on the
internet. One of them is a bike at
http://www.motorcycle.com/mo/classified/classifieds.motml?ct=classic_bikes&md=details&id=8441
and the other one was a laptop on www.craigslist.org, whose link I am
not able to locate, the price was too good to be true.