O’Neill and Brown Plumbing set up website to impersonate online scammer


When this plumber found a website that was impersonating his company, he had a genius idea to beat the hacker at his own game. Here’s what he did.

What do you do when crooks use your business contact details to create a fake website?

This is a problem we see almost every day at IDCARE, Australia’s national e-community support service.

Sometimes we hear from business owners having their identity theft online. These owners are angry and frustrated that this is happening and it seems there is not much they can do to make it stop.

But in June, we found a company that refused to give up.

First lesson: never cross a plumber!

The company is based in Canberra and O’Neill and Brown Plumbing.

The owner of the company was contacted in February by what we have recognized to be an elite team of cybersecurity detectives in the Northern Territory, working with the Government Consumer Affairs Bureau.

The team let him know that his company’s contact details were being used by crooks in setting up a fake website selling farm and construction equipment, Pantano Equipment.

Second lesson: the NT super detectives are on the lookout; especially when it comes to agricultural equipment!

We have received many promises about this scam, one person recounted how when he realized that the site was bogus and his tractor was not going to reveal it he “absolutely broke me” .

So what do you do if your business is spoofed by criminals who sell things that aren’t there?

The owner of the plumbing company spoke to his IT professional and he contacted the police for advice.

He met a very helpful member of the Australian Federal Police who encouraged him to report identity theft to the domain host.

This is the company responsible for buying and selling website domains and registering them.

It is a complex world where “registrants” and “registrars” meet “privacy hosts”.

Everyone has a role and everyone leaves little “cyber breadcrumbs”.

Some of them come to an abrupt end, but others offer a chance to expand the reach of complainants about their woes.

So the IT guy wrote to the host of the domain of the website and managed to get it deleted, but then it reappeared, with another similar name, and people were taken there by searching for farm equipment on Google and on the steps.

Lesson 3: When it comes to cybersecurity, hone your whack-a-mole skills.

Then there was a stroke of genius. The company bought the Australian domain name, www.pantanoequipment.com.au and the sole purpose of this site was to let people know about the scam.

It lists the different websites that scammers use and urges people to report any activity to the police.

This movement beats crooks at their own game. In the words of our Managing Director here at IDCARE, Dr David Lacey: “Sometimes to catch a rat you have to go down the gutter.”

Company employees also wrote reviews of the bogus site, pointing out that their company details are being spoofed and the site is a scam.

Lesson 4: Cyber ​​crooks only win if you don’t know what it is. So beat them at their game!

While some people still get tricked, the number of people affected by this bogus website is dropping.

Kathy Sundstrom is a former Sunshine Coast Daily reporter who now works in the IDCARE Identity and Cyber ​​Support department.