All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
VPS abuse and $0.1 million lawsuit
Hello,
i seek Your kind advice and opinion regarding classic abuse/fraud in web-hosting industry.
a) There is an US company who provide dedicated server to the customer from Germany.
b) The German customer using the server (one of its ARIN IPs) to provide shared web-hosting account to a customer from Nigeria.
c) The Nigerian customer send an email from his web-hosting account and trick some Italian company to send him 100 000 USD (example: international bank transfer from Italy to United Kingdom).
The Italian company then submit an lawsuit in Italy providing email headers of the communication with scammer and details of the transaction, details of the case.
I want to ask what is the probability that Italian company will get the money back from:
a) US server, IP provider
b) German web-hosting provider
c) Nigerian scammer
What are the ways to get money back and how such a legal process will/can run?
Thank you
Comments
Anyone else not understand what he said?
So pretty much, a US based company provided a server to a scammer, the scammer scammed, and someone sued the provider? or are they suing the scammer?
There are no realistic ways to get the money back. Forget about it.
German web hosting won't have to pay for that, as well as the server provider.
get legal advise noww
I don't understand why you ask us here, when the first call should be a lawyer
Eh? Surely if someone entices a business to pay money to them fraudulently, it's the the fraudster who's liable, not anyone else?
+1. This is like saying "someone driving a Ford ran me over so I'm going to sue Ford".
It's not really a $.1 million lawsuit, it's...(holds pinkie up to corner of mouth)...a $.0001 billion lawsuit.
Wow so helpful!!!
and wise.
Wow so smart!!!
Your answer in this thread as been both smart and helpful!!!
@op: do some people send that much money to nigerian scammers? If so they probably have enough cash to go to nigeria, find the scammer and nicely ask the money back.
couldn't the bank in UK be held liable for something?
sorry @postcd , ignore what i say 2 mr.Jon jonchun.
du uwanna watch me dance
Following the LET way!
Yeah, get a lawyer. Don't see how the scammed Italian company have any recourse, though. It's not like you could sue the postman/company for delivering a scam in a letter.
Go to Nigeria with a hammer? Kidding of course.
You should only consider legal advice from competent/qualified people (lawyers maybe?) ... That's why getting some real "legal advice" is the best "advice".
Please call the Nigerian prince he will send you back a few millions...
How do you trick someone into paying $100,000? I mean, who doesn't have to jump through a few approval hoops to spend $100,000?
Sounds like they learned a $100,000 lesson. Can't put a price tag on that, but if you were to try.... I'm thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000.
Scammed 100k just using a shared hosting account Holy shit ......
I'm glad that scammer didn't get a VPS there would be list of Scammed company's
$100k is nothing, talk to the Ubiquiti Networks guys, they got done in for $40,000,000.
Francisco
Holy shiz... Seriously ? Man, we need to file 2-3 forms to get even a $500 from our company.
There is no legal base to sue the web host or anyone in the chain except the scammer - The first host, as per German law, is NOT liable for anything done on the server/service as long as he took appropriate measures to stop it once known (i.e. abuse mail or court order was sent) and has the required customer data by German law (= nothing if paid in cash/BTC). It's like a creditcard - if stolen you only pay up to like 50EUR even if the thief spent much more. The US host/DC is not liable as the US has similar laws in place. The US host does not even need to cooperate and give out any customer data to an Italian court, this does not change liability either.
The risk would be INSANE for any datacenter or end-user ISP without this exemptions from lawsuits (more in EU than in US, US iirc still allows a lot of non-criminal lawsuits while you can't even do that in EU), it is simply too easy to abuse the service - I would maybe compare it to sue the owner of a rented car because the renter borrowed it to someone that ran over some guy, obviously the driver (= nigerian) is liable, the original customer (= german) might be liable if he gave the car knowing this guy is not able to use it correctly and/or dangerous, the original owner (= US corp) has no liability at all.
In the end ONLY the scammer is liable, depending on how it was paid it might be untraceable (Western union is mainly fake names and bribed WU staff, bank accounts in Dubai and alike are often opened with fake IDs, at least according to some SPIEGEL docus i saw) - Even if you manage to actually trace it it someone individual in Nigeria the law there works slow (if at all, de facto the government has no control over like 1/5th of the country, it is occupied by Boko Haram and others).
thank you all.
@William Your knowledge is really wide, thanks for sharing
@Francisco What means "they got done in for $xxx"? My english is bad
@Nekki
hosting provider usually have tools to monitor on what is happening on the server, but indeed some kind of abuse is probably really out of scope of monitoring and cant be proven that the activity is illegal without deep research
They got scammed for $40 million dollars: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/08/tech-firm-ubiquiti-suffers-46m-cyberheist/
It's completely unrealistic to expect a provider to monitor to the degree that would have been necessary to be aware of what was occurring.
Nigerian scammers are pretty clever, or so it would seem. Who now days would fall for such a thing. Oh I know, freakin idiots.
A senator fell for the old Nigerian hustle several times for millions a dolla sent by western union for a chance of a life time return.
The silly old bastard lost it all, just like the guy in the thread above.
Ew. Go to Nigeria with a phone displaying drama from LET on it. It will surely scare away the scammers as they just can't handle it
In some situations the Ford will take responsibility, example: some parts had a manufacturer fault therefore the Ford is responsible.