On Oct 12th 2009, the day I received this fantastic offer, EMIE.PK closed at USD 4.25 but Addison Management Group Asia offered me the shares for USD 4.00 since they had institutional buying power and passed the discount on to their customers. This discount story alone should make all your scam alarms go off – there is no not such thing as a “free lunch”.

Since then, there has been pretty much no movement at all in EMIE.PK (not before Oct 12th either for that matter) and the trading volume has been just under 2000 shares spread over 5 days in the 90 day period. The current close is USD 4.50. Check it here.

The small trading volume of EMIE.PK is also a warning sign that the offer is strange. I was offered 10 ooo shares, that equals the total trading volume in the period from March 7th 2008 to Oct 12th 2009.

Looks like Addison Management Group Asia was unlike with this one – EMIE.PK didn’t live up the expectations. I suggest that Addison Management Group Asia fire their analysts and secure the services of chimpanzee Lusha instead – she’s likely to pick better stocks and at a fraction of the cost – how much is a banana in India nowadays?

One person forwarded me an email he had received from “his” Senior Account Executive at Addison Management Group Asia. The email address is mail@addisonmanagementgroupasia.com (can someone teach their IT department how to create personal email accounts?). I ran an email header tracer on the email and it originates from GoDaddy servers in Arizona. No India connection on that one as far as I can tell.

Finally, the domain name (addisonmanagementgroupasia.com) expires on Feb 3rd 2010, registered for only one year.
What’s your guess, will Addison Management Group Asia renew it and continue their “successful” business?

For some strange reason I woke up this morning and realized that I had a newfound curiosity in fraudulent online behavior.
Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to check if the sender of an email really is the person he/she claims to be?

I am familiar email headers but not until now have I had an urge to understand more about how it actually works. An email header is little message travelling with every email containing information about the sender, the receiver, the subject and a few more things.

Your email client (Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) will display parts of the email header, typically From: , To: and Subject:. It is very easy to fake the From: information in an email so you need retrieve the full email header with the complete information about the email message to try to find the true origin of the email. With the full email header you can see where the email started its journey and how the email has traveled across the internet so reach your inbox.

You retrieve the full email header in different ways depending on your email client. For Outlook 2007 just right-click on the email in your Inbox (don’t open the email) and in the Internet Headers section you see the full header information. For instructions on how to retrieve the email header in other email clients just Google on: view email header [your email client]. There’s also a guide to some of the most common email clients here: http://www.ip-adress.com/faq/view_email_header/

Ok, you’ve got the full email header now! The interesting part of it is the Received: lines. Scroll through the email header and look for Received: and the text immediately following.

Here is an example from an email from I received the another day from cqmw40mmg@urscorp.com.
URS Corp is one of the largest engineering design firms in the world and a major US government contractor. I was curios to see what they wanted to inform me of but reading the mail the Subject: and the Body: of the mail seemed very strange…

Received: from jura.zsem.hr (193.198.217.4 [193.198.217.4]) by sj1-dm03.mta.everyone.net (EON-INBOUND) with SMTP id sj1-dm03.4ace186c.408bb2 for <fredrik@lyhagen.com>; Thu, 8 Oct 2009 23:03:11 -0700

You see name of the sender’s domain (jura.zsem.hr) and the IP-address (193.198.217.4) associated with that domain. Thereafter you see to which domain the email was sent (sj1-dm03.mta.everyone.net) and finally the To: information and a time stamp.

The first step to check the senders IP-address could be to just copy-paste the entire header to a web page that will analyse the header for you and return the IP-address and as much info as it can retrieve. This is likely to work if the sender is not not trying to conceal their real location and identify.

Copy the full header from one of your email to this page and see what it returns: http://www.ipaddresslocation.org/email-tracking/email-header.php

Copying the full email header from the example above to http://www.ipaddresslocation.org/email-tracking/email-header.php I see that the email is sent from Croatia.  This email is probably not from URS Corp and they have just been used a facade to hide the identity of the true sender.

http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/trace-email-source-IP-address

The email header tracing will not always give you as much information as in this example. Sometimes you only get the IP-address and you will need to check the owner of the IP-address and the domain name associated with the IP-address. Just search on DNS lookup and you’ll find plenty of sites offering this.

As an example go to http://www.ip-adress.com/ip_tracer/ and enter the IP-address: 74.125.53.100

Now, imagine that you get a call from somebody offering you a fantastic investment opportunity. Since you are a bit careful with your money you ask the person to send you an email with the offer so you can think it over properly.

You may want to run a check on the origin of the email to understand if the sender location matches with the location of the country he/she claims to be calling from. Or if the company the person is calling from has an office in the same location as the location of the IP-address in the sender’s email header.

On their site I find that the latest newsletter is from February 2009. A bit old but maybe I can learn something about their investment philosophy by reading it.

The newsletter was quite interesting  so I check to see the name of the journalist / analyst providing such insight. No references. Let’s try a little experiment:  I copy-pasted the first paragraph of the newsletter to Google search and guess what I found!

The same text, written by Manuel Schiffres, was published by Kiplinger on Dec 15th, 2008: http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/picks/archive/2008/pick1215.htm

So I did the same on the second section of Addison Management Group Asia February Newsletter.

That text was also published by Kiplinger, on Dec 16th 2008, written by Anne Kates Smith: http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/picks/archive/2008/pick1216.htm
I must have missed the source notation on the Addison Management Group Asia February Newsletter so I checked that again. None.

Strange, there are no references to neither Kiplinger nor the two journalists in the newsletter so I guess that can only mean one thing: Manuel and Anne both work for Addison Management Group Asia. But hang on, Manuels and Anne biographies on Kiplinger.com say that the are employed by Kiplinger. Well, well, maybe Addison Management Group Asia purchased the articles from Kiplinger and just forgot to mention the source. Shit happens!

Although Addison Management Group Asia may have forgot to give Manuels and Anne credit for their work I am sure Addison Management Group Asia has worked with many respectable private investors and institutions over the years. I turn to Google again to see if I can find any references on Addison Management Group Asia.

I find an interesting article about a court case in Florida involving Addison Management Group Inc., Addison Financial Group Inc., Addison Enterprise Inc., and a few more companies. According to the article three gentlemen used the above companies as vehicles to cheat their customers on about USD 7 million in fradulent forex options transactions back in 2005-2006.
Article: http://shareholdersfoundation.com/news/florida-federal-court-orders-nine-defendants-cftc-foreign-currency-forex-anti-fraud-action-pay-
Official Complaint: http://www.cftc.gov/stellent/groups/public/@lrenforcementactions/documents/legalpleading/libertymutualcomplaint.pdf

But, just because the names are similar and that EM International Enterprises is based in Florida as well one should not jump to conclusions.

As I said in the previous post. Addison Management Group Asia and EM International Enterprises are unfortunate in that their online image may cause potential clients to associate the companies with dubious business practices. How unfair isn’t that!

Nevertheless, looking forward to speak to Mark again in 90 days, ohh, just 88 days now! Great! Can’t wait!

Addison Management Group Asia

Yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from a gentleman named Mark Sherman (isn’t that an unusual name for somebody with a distinct Asian-English accent? ) from Addison Management Group Asia (http://www.addisonmanagementgroupasia.com).

Got the first call from them about 3 months ago. A very pleasant lady who’s name I didn’t take note off, explained that since I am a “successful business professional” they would like to send me an introductory information pack about Addison Management Group Asia and their wealth management services. “Fine!” I responded. About 1 month ago I received a fancy glossy brochure.

Now this call about a fantastic opportunity to invest in EM International Enterprises (EMIE.PK). According to Mark, EMIE, is a furniture manufacturer and supplier to JC Penny, Nordstroms, etc and they have just signed a global preferred supplier contract with Tesco. Luckily for me the market hasn’t reacted to the news yet but when the market does (in 90 days according to Mark) the share price of EMIE.PK will move from the current level of USD 4.00 to USD 6.75. In 90 days. Blimey!

Mark offered me to buy 10.000 shares at USD 4.00 + 1% comission and when they sold EMIE at USD 6.75 in 90 days I would get my principal back and a profit of USD 26425.

“Fredrik, tell me, isn’t that a nice profit in just 90 days?” Mark continued.

Right! After some discussion Mark understood that I had some reservations about making a money transfer of USD 40 400 to a business contact I had only spoken to on the phone.

Now Mark offered me 5000 shares and explained that he was interested in getting my long-term business so he wouldn’t jeopardize “10-20 years of your future business by offering you anything less than an exceptional investment opportunity with very limited risk as an introduction to Addison Management Group Asia.”  Sounds like good business practice to me – low entry threshold and then make your clients loyal by removing risk and by creating substantial returns, time and time again!

Despite his great sales pitch I still had my reservations so after a while he was down to 2000 shares.

He kept repeating “when we sell at USD 6.75 in 90 days you will not only get your principal investment back but make a profit of XXX USD.”

I quite enjoyed listening to his sales pitch and must say that he was a skilled sales man (I have many years of experience from running tele-sales teams).

Anyway, I finished the call by thanking him for the tip, told him that I would be watching EMIE.PK the next 90 days and if the stock did get up towards the USD 6.75 mark I would be looking forward to speak to him again.

The whole conversation left me with a funny feeling. Had I just missed a fantastic investment opportunity?

I turned to Google and started  searching on Addison Management Group Asia. This forum post caught my attention: http://www.hotstocked.com/message-board/about5707-100.html

Interesting, so I did some more searching.

Addison Management Group Asia domain was registered Feb 3rd 2009 by DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD for one year, expires  Feb 3rd 2010.
Directi is a domain registrar (http://customer.directi.com/) and if you Google on Directi you will get plenty of hits with Directi and scam in the same sentence.

According this report from February 2009 Directi comes out at the top of domain name registrars involved in malicious domain names: http://hype-free.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-directi-should-be-kicked.html

Example of scams where Directi may to be involved somehow:
Auction Online fraud: http://www.bobbear.co.uk/auction-online-solution.html
Sunrise Service Centers job fraud: http://www.bobbear.com/sunrise-service-center.html
Infobite Software fraud: http://suckerswanted.blogspot.com/2008/05/infobite-software-ltd.html

Ok, so Addison Management Group Asia online image looks a bit dodgy. But EM International Enterprises (EMIE.PK) could still be an interesting company to invest in right?

Mark’s background on EMIE.PK is somewhat correct, but I get a strange vibe from EMIE, their website is not what I would expect from a publicly traded company, http://emi-enterprises.com/. According to their site they deal with furniture for the North American market. However, they offer no information on their customers and no mentioning of their contracts with JC Penny, Nordstroms and Tesco.  The domain name was registered in Feb 2008, updated in Feb 2009 and expires in Feb 2010. Seems a bit strange to me that a company goes for the shortest possible domain registration. But then again, what do I know about about domain name management? I would love to learn more about EM International Enterprises so I check their contacts page. Unfortunatly, they only offer an email address to contact them. But another Google search and I found their corporate address in Florida.

I did a search on this address. I know, I’ve spent too much time on this now…
Anyway, on the same address I find another penny stock company with a name that is quite similar to EMIE so I checked them out as well.

I’ll leave the name of this other company out but I have to share this, quite funny!

The business of this other company is described as “The Group’s principal activities are restaurant operations and sewer equipment manufacturing.” and in case you are interested “Restaurant Operations accounted for 67% of 2003 revenues and Equipment Manufacturing, 33%”.

ROFL! Wonder what their “Soup of the Day” is?

So in summary, I had a great conversation with Mark  and I am now eagerly looking forward to see if he is calling back in 90 days when EMIE.PK hits USD 6.75.  I certainly hope he doesn’t forget so I miss out on the next fantastic investment opportunity!

Please note that Addison Management Group Asia and EM International Enterprises probably are bona fide companies of the best kind. I am not suggesting anything else, I am just a bit concerned about their online image.  Should representatives of the AMGA or EMIE read this I would like to offer my consulting services at a discounted rate to help you manage your online presence better. It could be the difference between winning or loosing that next deal.