The Guide and directory scam industry

Across Europe there are a growing number of phony guides.
What is most remarkable about these scams is the similarity in tactics. It is not clear at this point whether they are all run by the same group of people or are simply copycat operations.
The fact that they all appear to target their victims in English does suggest that this may be the work of a small group of British Ex-pats.

The scam guides all use the method of sending out thousands, possibly millions of trick "contracts". They use legitimate publications such as Yellow Pages to garner lists of targets. They never hit large numbers of people in a single trade or area; they need their victims to feel alone.

The "contracts" are disguised as requests for information, the "legal" agreement and price are hidden away and printed very small and in hard to read capitals. It is very easy to fall for the trick, even trading standards offices have been duped.

Once a contract is returned they wait a few weeks before sending the first letter making it clear they are expecting money. From that point on all requests for cancellation are refused.

Most of these guides operate the "10% Rule"; a simple but aggressive tactic based on the fact that when threatened repeatedly approximately 10% of victims cave in and pay up. They often accept part payments as they are offering no service to speak of and any money they can weasel out of people is sheer profit. While court action is threatened it is never used. They would need to travel to the countries of their victims in order to pursue them in court. This would involve unwanted publicity and should they lose all contracts would then be deemed invalid, a risk they are unwilling to take.

Throughout Europe they have somewhere close to 100,000 victims, if 10% of them are paying up, the money extorted will run into millions of pounds.

This page is dedicated to all the guides and directories that use the trick of a disguised "contract" to net their victims, with the help of readers it will hopefully be able to provide personal information that the people running these scams would rather not see published!
All information on this page is copyright free, Please feel free to duplicate and distribute it!
If you have more information on any of those listed below or have found yet another scam please Let Me know; until the authorities act right across Europe pages like this are the best defense we have!

Those so far identified

European City Guide
The Millennium Guide
First European City Guide
The European Internet Guide
The Tour and travel Guide
The International Fax Directory
Unknown

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European City Guide

Started 1998
Contact Info
EUROPEAN CITY GUIDE
BALMES,
127 E-08008,
BARCELONA,
SPAIN.
TEL.: +34 93 452 04 23
FAX: +34 93 453 61 15
E-MAIL: info@eurocityguide.com (Inactive, 1st November 2001)
WEB: http://www.eurocityguide.com/
http://www.eurocityguide.net/

View Contract

Front

Reverse

A Whois search indicates that the domain name was registered by a certain LOPEZ PELAEZ. He appears in the company regestration documentation as LOPEZ PELAEZ TORRES FRANCISCO.

Quote from a visitor to this site "I have spoken to them on numerous occasions and although, I am a native Spanish speaker, I must say this has not made the slightest bit of difference, in fact I think all their staff are foreign"

After sending threatening letters themselves they hand the "debt" over to Ovag International part of the Swiss company OVAG AG. They can be contacted for comment at ovag@ovag.ch

Countries affected.
The 35,000 businesses listed in European City Guide are spread over 34 countries, all the states below except Spain have been affected. Where a name is linked you can get information in that language.
PLEASE: If you can spare the time to translate information for us, get in touch!

ANDORRA AUSTRIA BELGIUM BOSNIA CYPRUS CZECH REPUBLIC DENMARK ESTONIA FINLAND FRANCE GERMANY GIBRALTAR GREECE HUNGARY ICELAND IRELAND ITALY LATVIA LIECHTENSTEIN LITHUANIA LUXEMBOURG MALTA MONACO NETHERLANDS NORWAY POLAND PORTUGAL SLOVAKIA SLOVENIA SPAIN SWEDEN SWITZERLAND TURKEY UNITED KINGDOM 2 3 YUGOSLAVIA

Their Database.
Current lowest number 10000, they may have removed lower numbers after rulings that their initial mailouts were illegal.
Current highest number 44972 (30th October 2001)
They appear to send thousands of letters to one country, then leave it alone for a while, until the publicity dies down; the current target counties are Italy and the UK.
There are no matches in Spain, they do not defecate on their own doorstep...
Main European City Guide Page

The Millennium Guide
I have little info on this one except an article from Moneywise magazine, Reproduced on another Anti ECG site. It is beleived to be inactive, if you have had contact with the Millennnium guide, please write in.

First European City Guide
Whether it came first or not is hardly relevant, this guide is equally useless to those who are listed in it's pages.

Contact Info
1st European City Guide,
Messinastrasse 11,
FL-9495 Triesen,
Lichtenstein.
TEL.: +423 399 32 22
FAX: +423 399 32 11
E-MAIL: info@1st-Cityguide.com
WEB: http://www.1st-cityguide.com/

A Whois search indicates that the domain name was registered by a certain Martin Witworth. Hardly a Lichtensteinian sounding name! It is not clear what other invlovement he has with the guide.

Here are the contact details he has given are teh same as those for the guide.

After sending threatening letters themselves they hand the "debt" over to Ovag International part of the Swiss company OVAG AG. They can be contacted for comment at ovag@ovag.ch If you are getting interested in this company, you should be, they are turning the screws on thousands of people and working for the 2 biggest scam guides. The similarites between the ECG and the Tour and Travel Guide also seem to exceed the liklehood of chance.

The Tour and Travel guide
Based in Germany this one is part and parcel of the above first European City Guide however it specifically targets Travel establisments
It has a very slick looking website at:
http://www.travelguide.de/
On entering the database you soon realise that this operation dwarfs the others, there may be as many as 95,000 victims, spread accross over 200 countries. By spreading thier net so wide they have managed to continue with a lower profile than the European city Guide

View Contract

Front

A Whois search reveals thar the domain was regestered by Martin Witworth (remember him?) It is unclear what his full connection with these sites is, however he gives a German address for this business. We would very much like to talk to Martin.

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There are now email lists for victims of the Tour and travel/first ECG, please join below!

Low Traffic List, you will only get announcements from the moderators. Use the box below or send a blank email to TTGuide-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

High Traffic List,, anyone can post, share ideas with other vicims. Use the box below or send a blank email to stoptandt-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

The European Internet Guide
Currently no information except that it is based in Switzerland.

The International Fax Directory
This lot use a slightly different tactic. they mass mail Pro-forma invoices in the hope that some businesses pay up by accident or due to lax account keeping.

Based in Switzerland they mail the demands from Prague, It is much harder to assess the scale of this scam as those who have paid up probably don't even realise what has happened!

If you have been listed in Fax directories in the past or have been the victim of junk faxes you may get letters from this lot. Please scan them and email them to us!

In the UK you can regester and stop all Junk faxes and Phonecalls this is legally binding on anyone using these methods for direct marketing...
for Faxes go to The Fax Preference service or call 0845 070 0702
for Phonecals go to The Telephone Preference service or call 0845 070 0707
Junk Mail is harder to stop, try Mailing Preference Service or call 0207 766 4410 Unfortunately they will be unable to prevent overseas mailshots from scamsters like the European City Guide!

Unknown
Mentioned by the OFT in Aug 2001 based in Germany, The OFT are just beginning to recieve complaints.

Constoppers Email List
This list is here to protect you, Please join up and will will recieve very occasional messages warning of scams being carried out against small businesses.
Report scams to constoppers-owner@yahoogroups.com The whole group will then be alerted to verified scams.

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