An alert for those interested.

These sites are part of an elaborate stolen credit card scam that uses "mules" recruited through fake job listings to open bank and merchant accounts to run stolen credit card numbers through.

NONE of these sites actually sells website templates. They are all fraudulent. Most of the individuals who set the companies, bank and merchant accounts up were not aware that they were dupes in this scam.

Most of the sites are now showing a Internal Error 500! but I believe that to be a counter move on the scammers part. Here is a screen shot of the template:

http://img401.imageshack.us/my.php?image=toykdxg6.png

If you have a charge from one of these websites (most likely for 9.90) know that it is NOT legitimate and that your credit card information has been compromised. Report this as a fraudulent charge to your cc company and request that your cc account be closed and a new card and number be issued to you.

For additional information on how this scam operates please visit:

dslreports cc scam information

MGD at dslreports has been following this scam for years and has written extensively about it.

A fascinating case! I hope that they can close this scam method and determine the total scope - it may be even bigger than it looks here.

Thanks for the info, mae_m.

Coincidentally, someone named cannydesign registered at Freedomlist today, posted a couple of useless responses which were the first clue. Second was support @ cannydesign.com in the signature. A search brought me to this topic.

Not surprising: http://samspade.org/whois/85.29.195.72

Guess who is no longer able to post at FL?

_________________
- "Security Garden" -

@ moike yes there is no doubt that there are hundreds of other sites used solely for this purpose. It is hard to fathom the access these criminals have to stolen credit card details.

@Corrine once I posted the urls the criminals began their attempts to knock any mention of fraud related to these sites down the search engine rankings by spamming forums.

These are the one they seem most interested in protecting:

I tried viewing some of the pages on your protected list
cannydesign.com
vividtemplates.net
VTDIZ.COM
techtemplate.net
TSDIZ.COM
sucretemplates.com
SUDIZ.COM
greerdesign.net
GSDIZ.COM
ibtemplates.com
IBDIZ.COM
infobitedesign.com
DIZIB.COM
cctemplates.net
CCDIZ.COM

and they are all displaying the page "Internal Error 500!" But they aren't suspended.

It's an interesting forum spamming technique -- creating users with names like cannydesign.com, vividtemplates.net, techtemplate.net, sucretemplates.com etc. and registering them on websites all over the place. Apparently it gets pretty high page rank.

Just cancelled my 2 credit cards wich have been charged as you mentioned, thanks a lot for the info, you have made my day...

i got done by infobitedesign.com for £9.90 and promptly got intouch with my credit card company to change my card. the weird thing is emailed the fake websites support address and they actually gave me a reply and a refund

You folks are all cancelling these credit cards, right? This incident shows your credit card numbers are for sale on the world market; getting a refund is not enough.

@thebondman

Refunding the charge after a complaint is received is actually part of the criminals MO. They are hoping to minimize the number of fraud complaints sent to the merchant account. Too many complaints and they will get shut down. Better to quickly refund those (maybe 1-2%) who actually catch the charge and take the time to complain.