CyberCriminal.com

Projectsdeal.co.uk

We are investigating Projectsdeal.co.uk for allegedly attempting to conceal critical reviews and adverse news from Google by improperly submitting copyright takedown notices. This includes potential violations such as impersonation, fraud, and perjury.

Projectsdeal.co.uk

PARTIES INVOLVED: Projectsdeal.co.uk

ALLEGATIONS: Perjury, Fraud, Impersonation

INCIDENT DATE: 16 March 2024

INVESTIGATED BY: Ethan Katz

TOOLS USED: Lumen, FakeDMCA, SecurityTrails

CASE NO: 2611/A/2024

CRIME TYPE: Intellectual Property Scam

PUBLISHED ON: 27 Nov 2024

REPORTED BY: FakeDMCA.com

JURISDICTION: USA

A summary of what happened?

Projectsdeal.co.uk is a UK-based academic writing service that offers assistance with dissertations, essays, and other academic assignments. Despite its claims of providing high-quality services, the company has faced several concerns and complaints from customers and reviewers.

Major Concerns and Complaints:

  1. Quality of Writing:
    • Customers have reported receiving papers with poor grammar, spelling errors, and content that does not meet academic standards. Some reviews mention that the work appears to be produced by writers who are not proficient in English.
  2. Plagiarism Issues:
    • There are allegations that some of the content provided by Projectsdeal.co.uk contains plagiarized material, which poses serious risks for students submitting these papers.
  3. Pricing Concerns:
    • The service is criticized for its high pricing, with reports of a 500-word essay costing around £298. Customers feel that the prices are exorbitant, especially considering the quality of work delivered.
  4. Customer Support Issues:
    • Users have expressed dissatisfaction with the responsiveness and effectiveness of customer support, citing delays in communication and unhelpful responses.
  5. Authenticity of Reviews:
    • Some reviews suggest that positive testimonials on the company’s website and other platforms may be fabricated, as they lack detail and authenticity. Additionally, the company’s social media accounts have a large number of followers but minimal engagement, raising suspicions about the legitimacy of their online presence.
  6. Transparency and Trustworthiness:
    • The absence of a physical address and detailed company information on the website has led to concerns about the legitimacy and transparency of Projectsdeal.co.uk.

These issues have led to a lack of trust among potential customers, with many opting for alternative services that offer better quality, transparency, and customer support.

 

Projectsdeal.co.uk Fake DMCA

 

 

 

Analyzing the Fake Copyright Notice(s)

Our team collects and analyses fraudulent copyright takedown requests, legal complaints, and other efforts to remove critical information from the internet. Through our investigative reporting, we examine the prevalence and operation of an organized censorship industry, predominantly funded by criminal entities, oligarchs, and disreputable businesses or individuals. Our findings allow internet users to gain insight into these censorship schemes’ sources, methods, and underlying objectives.

 

 

 

What was Projectsdeal.co.uk trying to hide?

Projectsdeal.co.uk‘s attempts to hide unfavourable content through the misuse of copyright notices while allegedly engaging in perjury present serious legal concerns. These actions suggest a calculated attempt to manipulate legal systems to suppress free speech, a fundamental violation of copyright law principles and an abuse of legal processes. The use of such tactics not only undermines the integrity of copyright protection but also potentially constitutes perjury, further entangling Projectsdeal.co.uk in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information Projectsdeal.co.uk may be trying to remove from the internet –

Investigative Report: Projectsdeal.co.uk – An Academic Writing Service Under Scrutiny

Introduction

Projectsdeal.co.uk presents itself as a premium academic writing service catering to UK students with offerings such as dissertation writing, essay help, and thesis preparation. Despite marketing claims of high-quality and professional services, the company has faced numerous allegations and complaints regarding its operations. This investigative report dives into these criticisms, examining complaints of subpar quality, unethical practices, and customer dissatisfaction.


Background

Projectsdeal.co.uk operates as an online platform providing academic writing assistance. It targets students in the UK, claiming to have a team of experienced writers proficient in various academic disciplines. The company’s marketing emphasizes professionalism, timely delivery, and high academic standards. However, feedback from multiple review platforms paints a different picture, revealing a litany of issues.


Major Concerns and Allegations

1. Substandard Quality of Work

One of the most frequent complaints against Projectsdeal.co.uk is the poor quality of its delivered work. Customers have reported:

  • Grammatical and Structural Errors: Clients often find numerous grammatical mistakes and structural inconsistencies in their papers, suggesting that writers lack the advertised expertise.
  • Irrelevant or Superficial Content: Several reviews mention that the work lacks depth or alignment with academic requirements, rendering it unusable for submission.
  • Non-native English Writing: Feedback indicates that some papers appear to have been written by individuals who are not fluent in English, contradicting the company’s claims of employing native-speaking professionals.

Impact on Clients: Submitting such poorly written assignments can jeopardize a student’s academic standing, leading to failing grades or penalties for non-compliance with academic standards.


2. Allegations of Plagiarism

Plagiarism is one of the most serious accusations leveled against Projectsdeal.co.uk. Allegations include:

  • Copied Content: Some users report receiving assignments that were flagged for plagiarism by their institutions, leading to disciplinary actions.
  • Failure to Provide Plagiarism Reports: The company claims to deliver plagiarism-free content but fails to offer evidence, such as plagiarism-check reports, upon request.

Consequences: For students, submitting plagiarized work can result in severe academic repercussions, including expulsion, tarnishing the reputation of Projectsdeal.co.uk further.


3. Exorbitant Pricing

Projectsdeal.co.uk charges significantly higher rates than many competitors in the academic writing market. For example:

  • A 500-word essay can cost as much as £298.
  • Dissertation services and more extensive projects come at even steeper rates, often crossing £1,000 for standard-length papers.

Customer Feedback: Clients express frustration over the high prices, especially when the quality of work does not justify the cost. Many reviews suggest that the service is exploiting students who are desperate for academic help.


4. Customer Support Issues

Despite claiming to offer 24/7 support, Projectsdeal.co.uk’s customer service has been criticized for being unresponsive and unhelpful:

  • Delayed Responses: Customers frequently complain about long delays in receiving replies to inquiries or updates on their orders.
  • Unresolved Issues: Refund requests and complaints about subpar work often go unanswered, leaving clients with no recourse.
  • Lack of Transparency: Customer support representatives reportedly avoid providing direct answers about writer qualifications or processes.

Analysis: The inability to effectively address customer concerns undermines the company’s credibility and trustworthiness.


5. Suspicious Positive Reviews

Projectsdeal.co.uk boasts numerous glowing testimonials on its website and affiliated review platforms. However, there are reasons to doubt the authenticity of these reviews:

  • Generic Content: Many positive reviews lack specifics about the assignments or experiences, appearing formulaic and overly promotional.
  • Social Media Red Flags: The company’s social media accounts have high follower counts but minimal engagement, suggesting that followers may have been artificially inflated.

Customer Observations: Independent review sites, such as Revieweal and UKTopWriters, highlight discrepancies between the company’s claims and real customer experiences, further eroding its reputation.


6. Lack of Transparency

The company operates with minimal transparency, raising concerns about its legitimacy:

  • No Physical Address: Projectsdeal.co.uk does not list a verifiable business address on its website, making it difficult to trace or hold accountable.
  • Anonymous Operations: The identities of the team members, including writers and customer service staff, remain undisclosed, raising doubts about their qualifications.

Implications: This lack of transparency fosters suspicion among potential clients, with many questioning whether the company operates ethically or legally.


Notable Customer Complaints

Several detailed customer accounts provide insights into the company’s failures:

  • Missed Deadlines: Clients report receiving assignments past the agreed-upon deadline, often rendering the work useless.
  • Refund Disputes: Requests for refunds due to poor quality or missed deadlines are routinely ignored or denied.
  • Breach of Confidentiality: There are claims that the company shared client information with third parties, breaching confidentiality agreements.

Case Example: One student described ordering a dissertation service for over £1,200. The paper was delivered late, riddled with errors, and failed to meet the academic criteria. Despite requesting a revision, the customer received no response from the company.


Comparison with Competitors

Projectsdeal.co.uk positions itself as a premium service, but reviews suggest it lags behind competitors in key areas:

  • Quality vs. Price: The high prices are unjustifiable given the reported lack of quality.
  • Customer Support: Competitors like Oxbridge Essays and EssayPro are noted for their proactive customer service, whereas Projectsdeal’s support is criticized as inadequate.

Conclusion

Projectsdeal.co.uk faces significant challenges in maintaining its credibility as an academic writing service. While it markets itself as a reliable and professional provider, consistent complaints about quality, transparency, and customer service paint a different picture.

Key Findings:

  1. Poor Quality Control: Work delivered by the company often fails to meet academic standards, leading to dissatisfaction among customers.
  2. Lack of Transparency: The absence of verifiable business details and unclear operational practices raise doubts about the company’s legitimacy.
  3. Exploitative Pricing: High charges for subpar work suggest an intent to exploit students’ desperation.
  4. Ethical Concerns: Allegations of plagiarism and breach of confidentiality highlight serious ethical failings.

Recommendations for Students:

  • Avoid relying on services that lack transparency or have a history of complaints.
  • Verify the legitimacy of reviews on independent platforms before committing to a service.
  • Seek assistance from reputable providers with clear refund and revision policies.

Projectsdeal.co.uk serves as a cautionary tale for students seeking academic help online. Its operations highlight the importance of due diligence and the need for stricter oversight in the academic writing industry.

 

 

 

How do we counteract this malpractice?

Once we ascertain the involvement of Projectsdeal.co.uk (or actors working on behalf of Projectsdeal.co.uk), we will inform Projectsdeal.co.uk of our findings via Electronic Mail.

Our preliminary assessment suggests that Projectsdeal.co.uk may have engaged a third-party reputation management agency or expert, which, either independently or under direct authorization from Projectsdeal.co.uk, initiated efforts to remove adverse online content, including potentially fraudulent DMCA takedown requests. We will extend an opportunity to Projectsdeal.co.uk to provide details regarding their communications with the agency or expert, as well as the identification of the individual(s) responsible for executing these false DMCA notices.

Failure to respond in a timely manner will necessitate a reassessment of our initial assumptions. In such an event, we will be compelled to take appropriate legal action to rectify the unlawful conduct and take the following steps –

 

 

Since Projectsdeal.co.uk made such efforts to hide something online, it seems fit to ensure that this article and sensitive information targeted online by these events get a lot more exposure and traffic than what it would have received originally

We hope this becomes an excellent case study for the Streisand effect…The key idea behind the Streisand effect is that efforts to restrict information can backfire, often causing the information to gain more attention than it would have otherwise. This effect is widespread in the digital age, where users quickly notice and spread censorship efforts on social media and other platforms. Trying to suppress something can unintentionally lead to it becoming more visible, which Projectsdeal.co.uk is finding out the hard way.

Potential Consequences for Projectsdeal.co.uk

Under Florida Statute 831.01, the crime of Forgery is committed when a person falsifies, alters, counterfeits, or forges a document that carries “legal efficacy” with the intent to injure or defraud another person or entity.

Forging a document is considered a white-collar crime. It involves altering, changing, or modifying a document to deceive another person. It can also include passing along copies of documents that are known to be false. In many states in the US, falsifying a document is a crime punishable as a felony.

 

 

Additionally, under most laws, “fraud on the court” is where “a party has sentiently set in motion some unconscionable scheme calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing the trier of fact or unfairly hampering the presentation of the opposing party’s claim or defense.”  Cox v. Burke, 706 So. 2d 43, 46 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998) (quoting Aoude v. Mobil Oil Corp., 892 F.2d 1115, 1118 (1st Cir. 1989)).

Is Projectsdeal.co.uk Committing a Cyber Crime?

Faced with these limitations, some companies like Projectsdeal.co.uk have gone to extreme lengths to fraudulently claim copyright ownership over a negative review in the hopes of taking it down.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. Projectsdeal.co.uk is certainly keeping interesting company here….

CompanyNames Fake DMCA

The DMCA takedown process requires that copyright owners submit a takedown notice to an ISP identifying the allegedly infringing content and declaring, under penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith belief that the content is infringing. The ISP must then promptly remove or disable access to the content. The alleged infringer can then submit a counter-notice, and if the copyright owner does not take legal action within 10 to 14 days, the ISP can restore the content.

Since these platforms are predominantly based in the U.S., the complaints are typically made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires online service providers and platforms to react immediately to reports or violations. Big Tech companies rarely have systems in place to assess the merit of each report. Instead, all bad actors need to do is clone a story, backdate it, and then demand the real thing be taken down.

 

Reputation Agency's Modus Operandi

The fake DMCA notices we found always use the “back-dated article” technique. With this technique, the wrongful notice sender (or copier) creates a copy of a “true original” article and back-dates it, creating a “fake original” article (a copy of the true original) that, at first glance, appears to have been published before the true original.

Then, based on the claim that this backdated article is the “original,” the scammers send a DMCA to the relevant online service providers (e.g. Google), alleging that the ‘true’ original is the copied or “infringing” article and that the copied article is the “original,” requesting the takedown of the ‘true’ original article. After sending the DMCA request, the person who sent the wrong notice takes down the fake original URL, likely to make sure that the article doesn’t stay online in any way. If the takedown notice is successful, the disappearance from the internet of information is most likely to be legitimate speech.

As an integral part of this scheme, the ‘reputation management’ company hired by Projectsdeal.co.uk creates a website that purports to be a ‘news’ site. This site is designed to look legitimate at a glance, but any degree of scrutiny reveals it as the charade it is.

The company copies the ‘negative’ content and posts it “on the fake ‘news’ site, attributing it to a separate author,” then gives it “a false publication date on the ‘news’ website that predated the original publication.

The reputation company then sent Google a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice claiming the original website infringed copyright. After a cursory examination of the fake news site, Google frequently accepts the notice and delists the content.

 

 

In committing numerous offences, Projectsdeal.co.uk either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about Projectsdeal.co.uk, ignorance does not excuse this wrongdoing.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. FSMSmart is certainly keeping interesting company here.

 

The Reputation Laundering

Rogue Reputation agencies use spurious copyright claims and fake legal notices to remove and obscure articles linking clients to allegations of tax avoidance, corruption, and drug trafficking. Most of these reputation agencies are based offshore, mainly in Russia, India, and Eastern Europe, and they do not worry about complying with US-based laws.

The content in all of the articles for which the fraudulent DMCA notices have been sent relates to allegations of criminal allegations, including corruption, child abuse, sexual harassment, human trafficking and financial fraud against businesses and individuals with ultra-high net worth.

 

 

In addition to the misuse of the DMCA takedown process, there is a notable absence of enforcement concerning perjury violations. The statutory requirement related to perjury is designed to deter copyright holders from submitting fraudulent or knowingly false takedown requests, as they may face legal consequences for making false declarations under penalty of perjury. However, to date, there have been no known instances of any individual being prosecuted for perjury in connection with the submission of false DMCA takedown notices.

This lack of enforcement has emboldened copyright holders to exploit the DMCA takedown process to suppress dissent, criticism, or other unfavorable content, without fear of legal repercussions.

Some of the people and businesses who have employed this tactic to remove legitimate content from Google illegally include a Spanish businessman-turned-cocaine-trafficker, Organised crime, an Israeli-Argentine banker accused of laundering money for Hugo Chávez’s regime, a French “responsible” mining company accused of tax evasion, child molesters and sexual predators. Projectsdeal.co.uk is in great company ….

What else is Projectsdeal.co.uk hiding?

We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [Projectsdeal.co.uk] + {Negative Keyword, such as Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Lawsuit, Sanction, etc} on Google. It’s likely if you scroll down to the bottom of this Google search results, you’ll stumble upon this Legal Takedown notice (pictured below)

 

 

To make such an investigation possible, we encourage more online service providers to come forward and share copies of content removal requests with industry experts and researchers. If you have any information on Projectsdeal.co.uk that you want to share with experts and journalists, kindly email the author directly at [email protected].

All communications are strictly confidential and safeguarded under a comprehensive Whistleblower Policy, ensuring full protection and anonymity for individuals who provide information.

Authorities we may contact and share this report with for further actions

GOOGLE LEGAL HEAD

Halimah DeLaine Prado

NEWS DESK

Washington Post & NY Times

The above decision-makers and authorities will be provided a comprehensive dossier of our findings, including anonymously submitted evidence and tips. We invite journalists to contact us to receive a copy of our complete investigation here

Credits and Acknowledgement

16/10/2024

Many thanks to FakeDMCA.com and Lumen for providing access to their database.

Photos and Illustrations provided by DALL-E 3 – “a representation of Projectsdeal.co.uk censoring the internet and committing cyber crimes.”

  • We’ve reached out to Projectsdeal.co.uk for a comment or rebuttal regarding this investigation. It will strongly suggest they were behind the takedown attempt if they remain silent.

    • Our investigative report on Projectsdeal.co.uk‘s efforts to suppress online speech is significant, as it raises serious concerns about its integrity. The findings suggest that Projectsdeal.co.uk has engaged in questionable practices, including potential perjury, impersonation, and fraud, in a misguided attempt to manage or salvage its reputation.

    • We intend to file a counternotice to reinstate the removed article(s). While this particular instance is relatively straightforward, it is important to note that, in other cases, the overwhelming volume of automated DMCA takedown notices can significantly hinder the ability of affected parties to respond—especially for those not large media organizations.

    • You need an account with fakeDMCA.com and Lumen to access the research data. However, accounts are not widely available since these non-profit organisations manage large databases that could be susceptible to misuse. Nevertheless, they do offer access to non-profits and researchers.

    • It’s unclear why U.S. authorities have yet to act against these rogue reputation agencies, whose business model seems rooted in fraudulent practices.

  • We’ve reached out to Projectsdeal.co.uk for a comment or rebuttal regarding this investigation. It will strongly suggest they were behind the takedown attempt if they remain silent.

About the Author

16/10/2024

The author is affiliated with Harvard University and serves as a researcher at both Lumen and FakeDMCA.com. In his personal capacity, he and his team have been actively investigating and reporting on organized crime related to fraudulent copyright takedown schemes. Additionally, his team provides advisory services to major law firms and is frequently consulted on matters pertaining to intellectual property law. He can be reached at [email protected] directly.

USER FEEDBACK ON Projectsdeal.co.uk

2.5/5

Based on 2 ratings

Trust
30%
Risk
80%
Brand
40%
by: Benjamin Perez
December 9, 2024 at 10:09 am

This company delivers poor quality and shows no respect for your needs or timelines. i think this company is not real.

by: James Anderson
December 9, 2024 at 9:52 am

Terrible quality! They don’t meet requirements or stick to deadlines. also they hold process halfway..

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