In December 2018, KrebsOnSecurity looked at how dozens of U.S. political campaigns, cities and towns had paid a shady company called Web Listings Inc. after receiving what looked like a bill for search engine optimization (SEO) services rendered on behalf of their domain names. The story concluded that this dubious service had been scamming people and companies for more than a decade, and promised a Part II to explore who was behind Web Listings. What follows are some clues that point to a very convincing answer to that question.
Since at least 2007, Web Listings Inc. has been sending snail mail letters to domain registrants around the world. The missives appear to be an $85 bill for an “annual search engine listing” service. The notice does disclose that it is in fact a solicitation and not a bill, but wording of the notice asserts the recipient has already received the services in question.
Image: Better Business Bureau.
The mailer references the domain name web-listings.net, one of several similarly-named domains registered sometime in 2007 or later to a “James Madison,” who lists his address variously as a university in New Britain, Connecticut or a UPS Store mailbox in Niagara Falls, New York.
Some others include: weblistingservices.com, webservicescorp.net, websiteservicescorp.com, web-listingsinc.com, weblistingsinc.net, and weblistingsreports.net. At some point, each of these domains changes the owner’s name from James Madison to “Mark Carter.” As we’ll see, Mark is a name that comes up quite a bit in this investigation.
Image: Better Business Bureau.
A Twitter account for Web Listings Inc. has posts dat ..
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