Con artists use Google's map service to redirect victims to a fake drugstore

Sep 26, 2011 11:18 GMT  ·  By

Internet users have been receiving spam emails alerting them that someone has sent them a Google Map link. In the end it turns out to be another Canadian Pharmacy scam that tries to attract unsuspecting victims into purchasing miracle medication. Mxlabs discovered that the emails all have the same general structure as their subjects start with ‘Sent via Google Maps:’ and end with ‘A Maps link’, in between being placed a random name to make the whole thing look more realistic.

The links contained in the messages all seem to belong to different blogs, but actually, they all reroute to the same address bestrxs.com. For now the location is down, but it seems as the old pharmacy trick has returned in a new form.

According to Spam Trackers, the drugstore scam began a long time ago, one of the first cybercriminals accused of launching such a fake pharmaceutical website being Igor Anatolyevich Gusev, a Russian who owned the Glavmed organization, responsible for such a fraud.

In some cases, the Canadian Pharmacy becomes European or United Pharmacy, depending on the recipient of the email or the visitor of the page.

These so-called virtual drugstores advertise and sell all sorts of medication that supposedly does miracles, of course, at a very small price.

Among the false pretenses these shops present is the Verisign secure logo which normally guarantees for the safety of online transactions. The symbol is easily forged and placed on the site to make it seem genuine.

Approval from the American Drug Administration (ADA) should also make people trust the medicine traded on these pages, but the fact of the matter is that ADA doesn't even exist, being an organization made-up by those running the scheme.

These websites are so well built and take so many different forms that it's fairly difficult for a regular internaut to tell one apart from a legal medicinal related facility. The best thing to do is not to purchase medication online all together, especially when they come for very low prices and claim to do miracles.