Going on LinkedIn for the first time in a while, I saw a familiar name, Michael Anderson, as a suggested connection. The face is Michael Scheibe’s, and based on comments, it appears that Michael Anderson is continuing his career as a scammer. I immediately reported this profile, and even when it’s off LinkedIn, you can still get lots of interesting information from this screenshot.
Let’s start by looking at his company, Matochi Engineering.
Now, I’m not going to reveal everything that tipped me off that it’s a fake site, but I will show you how I found the source site.
Surprisingly, the links to Twitter worked, and here’s what came up.
And the McCarthy Building Company website? Please note that there’s no indication that McCarthy Building Co. is in any way involved in scamming people.
Check out the tweets…
One of the ways scammers try to present legitimacy is to take a company’s website and make it their own. A scammer’s site never runs right, because it’s a fake. A little research can pay big dividends and keep you from making a costly mistake, saving your from financial and emotional heartbreak.
There’s another way to research legitimacy, and that’s by running a “who is” search. Go to who.is and type in the domain name. Here are results for Matochi Engineering.
This says the site was created on March 13, 2019, and who registered the site. For a company founded in 1942, it’s odd that they’re just registering the site in 2019.
And oddly, for a company supposedly based in Nevada, the site was registered in Benin City, Nigeria.
Now let’s run “who is” for McCarthy Building Company.
Immediately you can see there’s a legitimate company registering the website.
Even the registration dates indicate that McCarthy is a legitimate company.
Scammers LOVE fake sites, and once you know what to look for, it’s obvious how they try to deceive.