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Comment by lingben | Hacker News Reader

I'm rather confused why not contact a lawyer and pursue legal action?

world-glance.com screams caution since there is so much missing, team info, personal names & bios, contact, address, etc. and it was only registered in Feb 2015 and has whois privacy protection

http://whois.domaintools.com/world-glance.com

privacy protection is not normally an issue but when a COMPANY (not personal!) webpage has no personal details, address, phone, etc. it is a huge redflag

don't mean to criticize a victim of fraud but no reputable VC or investor would be asking for money for petty expenses like a cab or flight, etc.

The whole point of this is that they are the ones that are supposed to have money and they may or may not give it to you.

Not the other way around :/

But I get it, she was using the 'boiling frog' strategy

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> I'm rather confused why not contact a lawyer and pursue legal action?

What kind of legal action would you pursue?

She likely has no funds whatsoever to go after. I would contact a lawyer in this case, for sure - but I don't think it makes any sense to pursue legal action here - legal action is very expensive, and it is very likely throwing good money after bad money.

The only actions that make sense to me are police/interpol complaints, and (possibly, depending on lawyer advice) public naming and shaming - which this website does.

Note that the "naming and shaming" doesn't actually give anything back to those who were scammed - it's mostly a public service for the rest of the world.

If all she's been getting out of the "potential investor" scam is free dinners/trips/etc. and doesn't have significant assets, suing her is probably a money-losing proposition.

As the author mentioned, perhaps she stole something from their house or normally would but the camera's made her stray from her usual tactics.

since i don't know how to contact you elsewhere, I am going to ask in a thread. I just noticed in your profile you mentioned moving from copenhagen to the US. what happened?

Family & work reasons. My parents live in the U.S., and I had a contract position at a university in Copenhagen that was extended a few times and recently ended, so it was a good time for a move. Copenhagen's a nice place to live though!

Thanks for the reply, I will miss your insights on HN about copenhagen and denmark!

> I'm rather confused why not contact a lawyer and pursue legal action?

It sounds like all she really got was a few meals, lodging for a few days, and a taxi ride.

It would cost the author much more to sue than he could recover.

Sue for what? Cecile sounds very broke to me...

I agree. Also, publishing this stuff online might weaken his legal hand.

Presumably that isn't her name.

I was thinking the same thing, but if he was booking her plane tickets (or other people have in the past) would they not need to book user her real name (so it matches her passport).

Absolutely, the owner of this website could be sued for slander. If everything in this story is true then just sue Cecile because she obviously committed fraud, the case should be a slam dunk. Then expose her once she has been sentenced to prison.

edit:

Cecile's website is a joke :

http://world-glance.com/

Does it look like a serious VC to anybody? there is absolutely no information whatsoever. Remember the legend about about nigerian scammers? they make it so obvious it is a scam to screen people, that website feels a bit like that.

Slander is for false statements, it doesn't look like these are false.

That would presuppose Celine has money to afford lawyers, if she does, that would be the point to recover the funds, and/or countersue for fraud.

> sue Cecile... Then expose her once she has been sentenced to prison.

First, if you sue someone, it's a civil action, not a criminal prosecution.

Second, if any statements are defamatory, they would be libel, not slander.

Third, truth is an absolute defense against libel claims. (And just for completeness, the U.S. does not have criminal libel laws.)

> the U.S. does not have criminal libel laws

Some states do have criminal-libel laws, though there isn't a federal one. See: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/criminal-libel-statutes-...

Quite right. I should have been more clear: Criminal libel laws may still be in the statute books, much like laws may still exist requiring someone carrying a red flag to walk in front of horseless carriages. But we should expect prosecutions under criminal libel laws to fail because of the modern interpretation of the First Amendment (and state constitutional protections that may be broader).

For instance a court in the 1990s struck down Montana's criminal libel law as unconstitutional: https://casetext.com/case/state-v-helfrich-1 But as far as I know it is still on the books.

Between:

a) absolutely horrible, meaningless copy.

b) A very poorly designed website.

c) a very weird photo of gazelle which appears to have been taken from aliexpress.com (http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Animal-Gazelle-2-Poster-3-Siz...)

d) a host shared by another 18,000 websites (according to Bing)

This company genuinely does not look real. I understand that the writer would be extremely excited by the prospect of a $4m investment, but I also feel like he should have done a little more due diligence. Based on what I see, I can't imagine genuinely expecting to receive $4m from this firm...

Hi there -- please share how one can find out how many websites are sharing a host via Bing.

Thanks!

Just use DNSstuff. Her site is simply a branded Wordpress.com account.

http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools#dnsReport|type=domain&&value=c...

Two things. First, cecileortlieb.com is not actually Cecile's website - it is the website that hosted that article which claims that she is a scammer.

Cecile claims to be with world-glance.com. He site would be here:

http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools#dnsReport|type=domain&&value=w...

Second, dnsstuff is great - I haven't used it before, but I have it bookmarked now.

Hi there;

I don't know if Bing's numbers are completely accurate and you may find better ways to get this information (dnsstuff.com is sure useful). In this case, I was looking into world-glance.com so I will use that website as an example.

1) ping world-glance.com - this shows an IP address of 94.136.40.15

2) Go to bing.com - search for 'IP:94.136.40.15' (without the quotes)

It will show 18,800 results.

I hope that this helps...:)

So you imply that the website claiming Cecile is a scammer, is a scammer, too. That's possible but the suspicions you talked about are not conclusive.

Last week I've come across a website called tinnitusmiracle.com and a person called Duane claimed that that website was a scammer by presenting convincing evidences; see (http://fixedgear808.blogspot.com.tr/2015/03/tinnitus-miracle...)

Oh no, not at all...

Rather, I went to http://world-glance.com/ (aka Cecile's website), gave it a quick read, checked out the images, and figured out where it was hosted.

Between those things, World Glance does not look very professional.

I'm sorry that I wasn't more clear!!!

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