Thursday 3 May 2012

The Stellios Foundation - a scam

An email arrives from "Alexander Stellios" from the "Stellios Foundation" hinting at interesting things:
"Hello,

We are Stellios Foundation, engaging in human development and training and developing prospective leaders in the aspect of human development.

We send our specialized trainers to different corners of the world to train upcoming human developers.

We kindly refer you to our website for details: http://stelliosfoundation.org

We would be glad to co-operate with you in the aspect of travel arrangement for our team to different parts of the world.

Please get back to us on your booking procedures and terms.

Best Regards,

Alexander Stellios"
The clues are there that this is a scam in the making. The poor English in the email is repeated on their web site. They can't even spell their own name in their HTML header:


It carries on in the text on their web site:


Their web site is also a bit too "young" to be credible.
Domain ID:D165362709-LROR
Domain Name:STELLIOSFOUNDATION.ORG
Created On:23-Apr-2012 12:29:14 UTC
Last Updated On:26-Apr-2012 11:01:34 UTC
...
Registrant Name:Abolaji Akindejoye
It's curious that their web site makes a different claim:


This isn't the only "foundation" that "Abolaji Akindejoye" has registered. Someone with that name also registered "drrichardsfoundation.com" from Lagos, Nigeria on 3rd February this year and it's already been suspended. I wonder why?

There is, of course, no record of this "foundation" or the "Dr Richards Foundation" ever doing anything, presumably because it's a scam.

Clearly they're trying to exploit the name of "Stelios" (the correct spelling), the founder of the Easy Group, most known for EasyJet, the British budget airline. Their founder, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, (understandably known to everyone simply as Stelios). His genuine philanthropic foundation can be seen at www.stelios.com.

If you receive this email or anything like it I suggest you just delete it.

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