Hospitalera's Blog

Inetglobal wants to sue me

hospitalera — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:11:48 +0000

It sounds ironic that, just two days after the FBI raid at Inetglobal headquarters, I had to appear before a Czech court to receive legal papers from the USA send to me by Inetglobal. As the, very friendly, Czech judge put it, it has nothing to do with the Czech authorities, they serve only as a “glorified postal service” (his words) due to legalities when it comes to international law suits.

The papers mainly accuse me of “damaging their business” and expresses Inetglobal’s intention to start a law suit in the USA against me. These papers were sent off middle of December last year and today is the 25^th February! If that is an indication of how fast moving things are when it comes to international law cases, then I am in for an interesting year or two!

Am I concerned? Yes and No.

Yes, because I have never had a law suit filed against me before, nor, for that matter have I ever received “legal papers” in a similar way. Going to the court alone was frightening enough. As the friend who accompanied me to serve as translator put it: “Things like this make you feel guilty even when you know that you have done the right thing.” I am really not looking forward to having to handle legal papers and proceedings for months and perhaps years to come.

No, because the FBI and other government authorities are investigating Inetglobal for exactly the same points I have written about on this blog. They are investigating Inetglobal for being a pyramid or Ponzi scheme. And that will certainly help my case when a formal law suit has started. When Inetglobal gets convicted for being an illegal pyramid scheme, then there is little chance that I get convicted for saying so in the first place.

Do I regret having written the original blog post?

No, not at all! If I saved only one person from losing money to Inetglobal, then it was well worth the time, effort and risk writing the said blog post. But I have to admit that my wording could have contained a bit more “in my opinion”-statements and could have been a tiny bit less candid. So, that is what I have learned so far: When writing critically about something then stating that “in my opinion xyz is a xyz” keeps your butt legally safer

So, what is happening now?

I received the papers and have 20 days to deliver my answer to them. This requires a lot of thought on my part. The fact is also that I will, most likely, have to defend myself because their is no way I can afford an “international lawyer”. One of the good things of living in a capital is that there are a lot of embassies around and so the first thing I did today after receiving the court papers was writing an email to the American embassy here in Prague and asking them, not for legal advice, I know that they can’t do that, but for advice about how legal procedures work in general there “over the big pond”.

I always felt it to be the right thing of keeping the discussion about Inetglobal to one single blog post and not converting, as I have been accused of doing by the “Inetglobal fan brigade”, this blog into a purely “anti-Inetglobal blog”. But I started this blog some time ago with the idea of documenting on things I do and commenting on things that I find. And so, yes, I will post updates on the Inetglobal situation here on this blog but I will also continue to write about other things that I hope are of interest to you

A tip on the hat goes to PatrickPretty.com for an excellent follow up blog post that explains the exact reasons why and for what Inetglobal is investigated by the FBI at the moment.

Oh, and btw, does anybody here knows of a good lawyer versed in international internet law that might be interested in a pro bono case? One can but ask

An emergency? I think not!

hospitalera — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:57:59 +0000

Hubby and I woke up this morning to an email sent by a friend, text below:

“Subject: an emergency:

How you doing? I made a trip to Scotland (United Kingdom) unannounced some days back, Unfortunately we got mugged at gun point last night! All cash, Credit card and phone were stolen, we got messed up in another country, stranded in Scotland, fortunately passport was back in my hotel room. It was a bitter experience and i was hurt on my right hand, but would be fine. I am sending you this message cos i don’t want anyone to panic, I want you to keep it that way for now!Our return flight leaves in a few hours but I’m having troubles sorting out the hotel bills, wondering if you could loan me some money to sort out the hotel bills and also take a cab to the airport about ($2200.00). I have been to the police and embassy here, but they aren’t helping issues, I have limited means of getting out of here, we canceled our cards already and made a police report, I won’t get a new card number till I get back home! So I really need your help. I don’t have a phone where i can be reached. please let me know immediately,would definitely refund it to you once we arrive! Hopefully tomorrow Hope to hear from you soon Thanks for your help love to all

(name removed)”

Now we knew that this friend was NOT in Scotland as we had dinner together only two days ago. A short phone call to check his well being and a bit of internet research on my part and it was quickly clear that it was a scam. Here is what happened:

Somebody got hold of his login details to his email account, changed the password and sent the email above out to everybody in his address book.

The scary part was, that this person continued to monitor the incoming emails and answered them in the name of our friend. This made it VERY convincing to some people, that it was really him. Additionally the scammer also had access to all emails saved in the account, giving him/ her ample background information about his / her potential victims.

This hacker attack seems especially aimed at free email accounts like Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail and the like. Our friend still tries to find out how and by what means the hacker-cum-scammer gained access to his email account. There are basically two ways how that can have happened

a) When using a public / shared computer that was infected with malware / spyware or the like. Or

b) His own computer was infected, meaning that also other sensitive information like online banking etc might be in danger.

We tried to help us much as we could by sending warning emails to mutual friends informing them that he is well, at home and doesn’t need any money and by encouraging him to get his computer checked by a professional.

I am posting this to warn as many people as possible that this ?new? scam is making its way around the internet and to warn as many people as possible. If you want to learn more about scam, and even want to help to fight them, here is a good place to start to fight scam.

Stay safe, and be careful out there on the internet!

Merry Christmas

hospitalera — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 13:35:01 +0000

And a Happy New Year!