FAKE COUNTRY

BY KEITH NUTHALLTHE INTERNATIONAL Chamber of Commerce is claiming the credit for closing down an audacious cyber-scam, the creation of an entirely fictitious country that existed only on the Internet. The problem with the Republic of Port Maria, said the ICC, was that not only did it have its own website, it offered bogus offshore banking services to the unwary.A banking member of the ICC's Commercial Crime Bureau spotted the fraud when he discover that the cyber-republic had set up a hyperlink from its site to his bank's own web pages. Said an ICC statement: ...


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