Comments on: Fake TV site promotes internet scam

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 02 May 2008 01:54:28 +0000

I remember KRAP4.com…complete with Super Duper Doppler 40000, the radar so powerful it could see you showering! Great web site. It went bye-bye a few years ago, tho.

By: William Hughes

William Hughes — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 06:44:26 +0000

The crazy thing about the TV station is that the call letters are assigned to a radio station in Tuscaloosa, AL. I’ve been discussing these scam artists on another web site, but for the life of me, couldn’t figure out where the news team photos came from until now. I took a quick look at the National Nine Perth News team and Jeffmister is absolutely correct. I was completely lost on that one.

By the way, it’s not the first time they got caught using another station’s call letters. They previously set up a site using the call letters WRWD in Dayton, OH. The only problem was the call letters are assigned to a country-western radio station in the Lower Hudson Valley region of New York (south of Albany, north of New York City’s northern suburbs.)

By: Nate

Nate — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:20:54 +0000

I’m surprised the woman in the WAGT report didn’t check out if the station had a Wikipedia article. For every station that exists it comes up as the 2nd-5th search result in Google or Yahoo if you search under call letters. I know as a editor on the television stations project we’ve had quite a few hoaxes created by fantasy television station owners/newsgeeks that have had to been sorted out. I posted a link to this post in the talk area of the television stations project just in case these guys try to make their scam appear even more legit.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:28:17 +0000

Here’s another report on the website:

By: Randy

Randy — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:10:19 +0000

Obvious fake, no real site would allow a home page to not have ads above the.

By: Steve Morman

Steve Morman — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:06:55 +0000

Viewing the page source shows that they actually did copy the HTML from an existing IB v2.0 site: there are many calls to IB network functions on this page that don’t exist on the web server of the fake site.

I can even tell which site they lifted and rebranded. Too weird.

By: George

George — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:05:32 +0000

This week, articles from the “American Chronicle” started appearing daily in the google news local (Los Angeles) section. The “American Chronicle” features articles on selecting a lawyer when you’ve been in an accident. You guessed it, a law firm is running the “American Chronicle” with just enough third party news articles to game the google algorithm into thinking its news, not advertising. It does have news content, so it IS a news site. Down the slippery slope we go.

By: Amanda E.

Amanda E. — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:58:49 +0000

Looking at the source code, they took WXAN’s site for a template - including outright hot linking of images. Click my name to see.

Its a shame this person didn’t register his domain with GoDaddy to go along with the hosting service (they used Network Solutions) - WXAN could have forced GoDaddy to give up the person’s name and contact information since this person is using the stations image for his scam (GoDaddy’s “private registration” can be blown just by a letter from a lawyer).

By: Jeffmister

Jeffmister — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:42:31 +0000

That picture of the news team is actually the Perth team of National Nine News in Australia!

By: CBS3Philly

CBS3Philly — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:59:05 +0000

Anyone remember KRAP4.com? One of the best fake station sites ever.

By: tdc

tdc — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:58:41 +0000

very true.

another dead giveaway that it’s a tv fake.

By: Safran

Safran — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:50:35 +0000

At least it’s clean…

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:37:56 +0000

This reminds me of another fake news site. It turned out to be a college student’s project and he continued to run it like a real news site.

The only problem was that he was using real TV personalities’ pictures with fake identities.

The corporate overlords were not impressed.

[click my name to see the fake site]

By: tdc

tdc — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:11:48 +0000

i would never fall for such a scam…

there’s no helicopter buzzing mount rushmore.

By: Mike Escutia

Mike Escutia — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:04:47 +0000

It *does* look like the old-style IB designs. Which, by the way, are still around on the sites for Cox-owned stations (see wsbtv.com for an example).