Scammers targeting investors who hope to make money on the Ebola crisis appear to be infecting the Internet, state and Canadian securities regulator warned Wednesday.
Since July, 184 suspicious websites have been registered with addresses that reference securities and the Ebola outbreak, according to the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA).
The sites include hotebolastocks.com, bestebolastocks.com, ebolafutures.com, ebolainvesting.com, ebolaoutbreakstocks.com, ebolastocks.com and fundsforebola.com.
Most of the domain names are “parked” and have no content. “This indicates that either someone has bought the domain hoping to resell it or the content is not ready yet,” said Jake van der Laan, director of Enforcement for the New Brunswick Financial and Consumer Services Commission and chair of NASAA’s Internet Fraud Investigations project group.
The activity is not surprising, regulators say, since scam artists often launch new schemes based on timely news events.