Beware of fake VC scams

I recently sent an investment pitch to some VC firms.

Yesterday I received an answer from one of them. This is the exact answer: http://i.imgur.com/k5AyYZA.png

The website in question is childresscap.com (screenshot for posterity http://i.imgur.com/g2RsmYR.png)

When I read it, the first second I was thrilled. Wow, I could actually get an investment. But then I got to the $130 part and I immediately felt something was wrong. At first, It was still hard for me to believe this was a scam because I was under the impression that I only contacted legit VC firms. So I started digging.

First I did a WHOIS for their domain name childresscap.com to see who registered the domain. The details are hidden with "Domain Privacy Service". Not good. Why would they hide the info? I took a closer look at their website. The fact that their website is ugly and unprofessional is not a clear give away of a scam. I've seen worse websites so this was not a clear indication of a scam.

I then looked at the "Partners" section. "Janice Nelson", the women who sent me the email, was not in the list. Again, not a very clear indication of a scam because I've gotten emails before from legit people that wore not on the website.

I googled the persons on the "Partners" section but didn't find anything good so I decided to search their image on Google Images. I have a very nice add-on for Firefox that does exactly this, so all I had to do was right click the images and send them to Google. All the images wore stolen and the names wore fake. Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/TUBXcLJ.png

This is just a twist of the classic Nigerian Letter. I know there are a lot of entrepreneurs reading HN so please be safe and take care of yourselves.

NOTES: - I contacted each person from the Partners page and told them their image was used on another website. - I also contacted the abuse department from Authorize.net