Someone From Arkansas Is Selling Wiis For Only $99!!!
Quick, type in all of your credit card information before he runs out of inventory! Omgwtf $99 Wiis! The website, www.wiifor99.com—which is being advertised on Facebook, according to a reader—consists of the two screens shown above and that's it. What a lazy con. Since the site no longer exists, here are two screencaps we took of it on Wednesday night. Index page. Order form.
Justin writes,
"While surfing Facebook today, I saw an ad for the Wii going for $99. It immediately set off my spider sense. The site was just registered to a guy out of Fayetteville, AR, but under a false name? The phone number listed is for a different Peter.(Thanks to Justin!)
This is a test using rich text formatting and html links. It's the generic "company" ad that should appear on all posts with the Company category if they don't have an ad attached to a specific company.
Comments:
The ESRB Privacy Certified box at the bottom is kind of unnerving -- it links back to nintendo.com/privacy, but there's gotta be someone thinking, "Well it can't be a con, it's privacy certified!"
I Bought Nine! How could I go wrong! I can resell them on ebay and make millions!
LAWLS! Just their perfect target market too, dumb facebook teenagers with Daddy's credit card.
I'm no con man, but you have to be believable. Sell them at cost!
It looks like he took the buy button and the box around it from GameStop's website.
Phone support says "They're busy with an outage... trying "Live Chat"...
I like the broken links to wii.com at the top. >.<
The name and address check out. Either this is meant to redirect the blame to an innocent third party, or Mr. Rankin is an incredibly stupid scam artist.
I somehow don't think John took me seriously:
Welcome to Earthlink LiveChat. Your chat session will begin shortly.
Chat Information'John V' says: Thank you for contacting EarthLink LiveChat, how may I help you today?
noaddress@earthlink.com: Hi John, I'm contacting you to report fraud and ID theft using your hosting
noaddress@earthlink.com: The address is [www.wiifor99.com]
noaddress@earthlink.com: I guess the proper term would be phishing
noaddress@earthlink.com: People have reported that after the Credit Card info is collected, the site ends.
noaddress@earthlink.com: The site is being advertised on Facebook
John V: Hi, I will assist you.
noaddress@earthlink.com: I know you will. :) Scams like this are just scummy.
noaddress@earthlink.com: Granted, not everyone is as smart to recognize how bogus this site is. I'm sure you guys are all for stopping Phishing scams like this from happening.
John V: You need to take down the index page and completely rebuild it and update the passwords.
noaddress@earthlink.com: It's not my site
noaddress@earthlink.com: It's a site one of your hosting customers is advertising on Facebook to scam gullible people.
John V: [www.earthlink.net]
John V: Click on the above link and go through it.
John V: [www.earthlink.net]
John V: Check the above link instead of the first one.
noaddress@earthlink.com: Thank you John, I appreciate the assistance. :)
John V: You're welcome and thank you for using EarthLink LiveChat. Should you need further assistance, please feel free to contact us again.
John V: Bye.
noaddress@earthlink.com: That form only seems to allow me to report fraudulent emails
noaddress@earthlink.com: Not a site hosted on your network
noaddress@earthlink.com: Are you still with me John?
noaddress@earthlink.com: ?
John V: [www.irs.gov],,id=155682,00.html
John V: This third party web site link is provided by EarthLink as a convenience to you. The content or software provided on this web site is not owned or maintained by EarthLink. EarthLink is not responsible for the information, software downloads, or other material, on this third party web site. Any software you download from a third party site is subject to the license terms contained on that site.
John V: Check the above link.
noaddress@earthlink.com: I see. Ok, well thank you again for trying. Hopefully a lot of people won't give out their personal information before the govenment can react.
John V: You're welcome and thank you for using EarthLink LiveChat. Should you need further assistance, please feel free to contact us again.
Chat InformationChat session has been ended by the agent.
PS... I love that he "gave me the tone" right as I was about to ask who in his organization I >SHOULD< contact to get this fixed.
I wonder how many consumerist readers will see the headline "Someone From Arkansas Is Selling Wiis For Only $99!!!" and immediately click through to the page without realizing it's a scam... :-)
PPS... The irony that he gave me links to how Earthlink hates spammer and scammers is delicious.
[Disclaimer: This was a guy from LivePerson at their support chat, and not someone at Earthlink.]
The "what is this?" link for the security code directs to the corresponding pop-up explanation on the Apple Store site.
I'd love to meet someone who fell for this scam.
A better organization to report to is probably Nintendo, which I just did. Hope they take care of it soon.
LOL!
Please don't flame me for this...but isn't his use of Nintendo's graphics considered copyright infringement?
Geez, you would think to make it more believable, the guy would offer only the Wii console.
But no. Instead, he is offering a Wii, 4 great games and a ton of other stuff...for only $99!
@Captain Sassypants: Right now there's a 12 year old somewhere, grabbing a credit card from his sleeping mom's purse and buying at least one for himself.
why is consumerist linking to the site? some dumbass will prob buy it
well, how much is shipping?
Fake... Period... No one and I mean NO ONE would be dumb enough to sell a Wii for $99. Not even a "hot" one.
The site is blocked for me on IE7 as a phishing scam!
I sent an email to "abuse@earthlink.net" and "hostmaster
@earthlink.net".
Did consumerist fail to even report this site to earthlink? Why is it still live?
The hosting account was probably created using the registrant's credit card info and address - without his knowledge.
I also tried to "buy" one using a fake credit card number (but one that passes the algorithmic checks for validity - i use this to test my own shopping carts), and got an immediate error that my card number was invalid - didn't even try to process the card.
I'm sure it's set up to forward all this shit to some guy in eastern Europe.
Someone should report them to the FBI.
I'm sorry but if anybody was stupid enough to fall for that, they deserve it for being so gullible.
I called the Earthlink NOC, the guy was prety surprised that I reached them directly but said they'd "look into it".
He ripped the payment page images from the apple store. When you click "what's this" for the credit card it is even in the title. LOL douche.
Look what IE said: Internet Explorer has determined that this is a reported phishing website. Phishing websites impersonate other sites and attempt to trick you into revealing personal or financial information.
I love how he ripped everything from EB/GameStop.com and the Nintendo Store.
Even when you check out it says.. create a user name/password for the next time you log into the Nintendo Store, lol.
I entered in some fake information.. I ordered 100 Wii's and it went through! lol.
Well he first messed up by using Earthlink, Earthlink is a scientology ran business, the owner Sky Dayton is a Scientologist and participant along with his wife. They also run Helio the mobile phone no matter what they try to tell you helio is ran by earthlink which is in turn ran by scientologists.
Its a fishing website. DUDE! Dont enter your credit card info!
I didn't.. I just put in a bunch of fake gibberish. I'm not stupid.
What's a Wii?
Why has no one notified the police?
@CHIEDDY - Done and done. Reported to phishing-report@us-cert.gov and
reportphishing@antiphishing.org
Not necessarily the police, but one would hope that it will eventually bubble up to them.
And don't harass the site owner. Either this guy is a grade-A dumbass who doesn't know what WHOIS is, or the actual site owner just scammed this poor guy's credit card. Either way, let law enforcement do their job.
I tried to fill in a fake Credit Card number, and it didn't work. I guess I'll let the po-po bust hs door in. Why do they get to have all of the fun?
Golly everyone is a bunch of negative Nellies. Maybe each of his friends and relatives got him a Wii for Christmas, and he just had too, too many. And instead of selling them for an outrageous price on ebay he thought "I won't take advantage of the poor souls who weren't able to get one. I'll be kind and generous and sell them for only $99 so those sad, desperate gamers can have one and enjoy the joyousness that is a Wii."
What a bonehead. He's going down.
Anyone try to view the HTML of the credit card page? You can't right-click on the page either, so I went to my Menu Bar to view it. Looks pretty scrambled, gotta love Javascript. I'm really curious as to what is actually going on when you submit any info to him...
My buddy Hugh Jass just ordered 10 of them, but his card numbers apparently don't pass. I suspect nothing is going to get charged to a card right away, this crook is just logging all of the entries to go over later, maybe make some real cards from.
Feel free to spam his lists all day long with garbage.
He must have something running that's a little more sophisticated than just a form that feeds CC info into a database. How is he validating CC numbers? I too put in a fake one and got rejected.
Man, I'm Justin, and yes, I did send it to nolegal@nintendo.com and everything (which, it's confusing as hell on their Wii site to report crap like this). I do appreciate you all taking it further and clogging up his ordering system with fake credit card numbers. You guys rock, haha
@tmccartney: He wouldn't have to...if it is a credit card scam, he just needs the info, and then he rejects it all, so people are like? So all credit card numbers, fake or not, will be rejected, then it goes into his database.
@tmccartney: Anything you put in there gets rejected. That way you scramble through your wallet for another card give Cpt. Schmuck there a much better chance of ripping you off.
No https...tsk tsk