ADV Plugin + Lacoste “Advertising Agency” Scam

March 23rd, 2012 Forgotten Girl Posted in Scams | No Comments »

Note: Lacoste has got nothing to dowith the scam. The so-called advertising agency is using the company’s name to lure their victims.

To my dear self-hosted wordpress bloggers, please be aware of a scam involving an advertising agency wanting to place a banner ad on your site, particularly a Lacoste banner ad. The person who contacted me actually commented on one of my posts saying he could not find any other way to contact me. Here’s his unpublished comment:

So, it looked promising so I sent him an email asking for their proposal and here’s his response: (click to view full size)

I sent him my rates and here’s his next email: (click to view full size)

Unfortunately, the ignorant me installed and activated the plugin but I thought it wasn’t working so I Googled about it. The name of the plugin is ADV Plugin and Google returned a number of results all about scams. I read one article and immediately de-activated and deleted the plugin before reading other articles. Apparently, it is a scam although people have no idea what it actually does. But one thing’s for sure, no one got paid by these scammers.

It hasn’t been discovered yet what the plugin actually does but some say that it puts malwares to your site. I’ve read somewhere that it changes the php files. It also created a folder in my directory, so, be sure to delete it if you also installed the plugin like I did. I already asked my hosting to help me look for malwares or anything weird on my site since I’m not tech savvy and I don’t want to touch anything in there for fear of messing things up. Hoepfully, they’ll be nice enough to do it for me. I’ve also read in one of the articles that the plugin adds a user to your site, so, be sure to check that, too.

With regards to the so-called advertising agency… the person who sends the email and the company go by tons of aliases. Here are some of those that I’ve collected from my search on Google including my agent, Samuel:

Samuel Charles – Guraci Agency
Noah Vincent – Legretto Agency
Valentin Lopez – Gera Agency
Matthieu Colin – NanaAgency
Lilian Marchand – Lemma Agency
Killian Blanchard – Jino Agency
Rayan Meyer – Bevesto Agency
Martin Dumont – (agency name unknown)
Jules Barbier – Marka Agency
Noa Morin – Kara Agency
Erwan Brun – Bizotto Agency
Tristan Muller – Gana Agency
Oscar Meunier – Kervel Agency
Eliott Arnaud – Larko Agency
Rayan Meyer – Bevesto Agency

All of the agencies’ sites look the same: (click to view full size)

Hopefully, the 10 minutes that the plugin stayed in my site won’t cause or do any damage. So, my dear bloggers: beware and be careful. It wouldn’t hurt to do a little searching…

Again, I’d like to repeat that Lacoste has got nothing to do with the scam. The so-called advertising is just using the company’s name to lure bloggers to accept their proposal. I just mentioned Lacoste because from what I’ve read, they are constantly using Lacoste’s name.

Tags: ADV Plugin, advertising scam, Guraci Agency, Lacoste, Samuel Charles