Seabox Limited

SEABOX LIMITED

7 Albert Court, Prince Consort Road, London, SW7 2BJ

IMPORTANT ATTEMPTED FRAUD NOTICE

We are aware that in late 2019 the domain seabox.co.uk was registered by someone other than ourselves with the intention of obtaining money through deception. In May 2020 we were alerted to a website published using this domain. The website showed the company name and postal address of Seabox Limited but was not in anyway realted to our business or any of our employees.

The website appeared to show Shipping Containers and Cabins for sale which is an area in which Seabox Limted do not operarate.

Our understanding is that anyone making contact with those responsible for this site would receive an invoice or quotation requesting for payment to be made in advance of any delivery. Any money transferred in accordance with the instructions would simply vanish with no goods or services ever being supplied. Unfortunately this seems to be an ongoing business model for these scammers and there are other examples of this same fraud listed at https://shippingcontainerscams.com
As soon as we were made aware of this site Seabox Limited made direct contact with the website design company responsible for the site and Nominet ( the authority responsible for domain name disputes for .co.uk domains ). After some effort we were able to win control of the internet domain seabox.co.uk and to take down the offending website. Please note that any E-mails now sent to sales@seabox.co.uk will not be delivered to the scammers but will be received by the IT Department of Charles Kendall Group (the owners of the legitimate company Seabox Limited).

Source of the Scam

Once alerted to this fraud being carried out using our name, we were keen to put a stop to it as soon as possible and to find out as much as possible about the scammers so that we could potentially help any victims get some assistance.

I had used the contact us form on the website and left voicemail messages for them to call me back urgently.
The E-mail reply we received stated " I understand your frustration and deeply apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you. Our company is also named seabox, however the person that created our website has informed us that the wrong address was used in the creation process. We will do our best to follow this up and get this altered as soon as possible. Again, we are extremely sorry for this inconvenience and will get it resolved as soon as possible." The E-mail was apparently from Jack Ahara, Seabox, Sales Dept.

As there are no other registered companies in UK with the word Seabox in their name, we knew this to be false.

Nominet were able to confirm that the registered 'owner' of the domain name was listed as "WebFactory" - A web design company based in Cardiff ( see https://www.webfactory.co.uk/ ). When we contacted WebFactory they were intitially reluctant to do anything without direct instruction from Nominet. They could not give me the details of their client due to GDPR regulations.

When first contacted by Nominet as a result our dispute over the use of our name, WebFactory claimed "The domain name is in use on one of our clients site. We are only a web design company and have no affiliation with the business."

After a couple of days of exchanging E-mails we were able to convince WebFactory to at least take the website offline.

When asked for an official statement after Nominet had found in our favour, WebFactory said as follows :-

" We thank members of the public who make us aware of any suspect websites using our platform. Webfactory is in a very difficult position whereby we are bound by the contracts we have entered into with individuals and without irrefutable evidence it is hard for us to act as judge, jury and executioner and close people's accounts. Ideally an authority such as Action Fraud or the police would make a formal request which would then relieve us of any obligations of our contract with the individual. Where clear evidence is provided such as proof that a client of ours is trying to pass themselves off as another company, we are able to act and have done so.

As of this week in reaction to a recent report we have taken the step of updating our terms to implemented a blanket ban on all shipping container websites, which although there are genuine companies operating in this sector, the fraud risk profile we consider now to be too high.

Webfactory has no interest in recruiting websites of this kind or any fraudulent websites. We appreciate and invite future notifications of possible sites breaching our terms and/or the law."