Hijackers, possibly based in the US, have stolen a UK company’s name and opened a website suggesting that they are a legitimate trading moving company.

The UK company is called Logistics Action Ltd., run by Michael and Angela Donnelly.  The company provides logistics consulting and teaching services and is nothing to do with the moving industry.  It does not have its own website.

Scammers have opened up what looks like a legitimate website for a moving company and decked it out with BAR, OMNI, FIDI, LACMA, etc. badges to give it added gravitas.  The idea, presumably, is to extort month from unsuspecting customers.  The site even says that the company is the winner of the EMMA award for the International Moving Company of the Year 2011, actually won by Robinsons.

Anthony Robinson said that he had almost lost some business to the site: “Two customers almost bought from them who happened to come to us wondering how there were two winners of the EMMAs in 2011,” he said.

Michael Donnelly said that the first he knew of the problem was in mid May when he received a call from someone asking if he was delivering a car for them. “It seems that they get people to send money to someone pretending to be Logistics Action and then that money vanishes. We’ve shut them down once on one domain and they’ve moved to another domain with exactly the same set up. We were looking at putting up a website but it now looks as though we’ll have to change our name.”

Brian Friedman, Founder and CEO of the Forum for Expatriate Management said: “Our legal counsel has been in contact with the Donnellys who themselves have reported the matter to the police. I understand that the scammers may be based in Romania but we have no details of them and are not sure what we can do.”

The rogue website was operating on 7 June but by the following day had been taken down.  Perhaps the authorities were closing in upon the culprits.