California resident Walter Horsting discovered something similar when he sued 360 Digital Marketing in small claims court last year, after hiring a company called Vox Ghostwriting to help write, edit and promote a spy novel he’d been working on. A Texas firm recently charged with conspiring to distribute synthetic opioids in the United States is at the center of a vast network of companies in the U.S. and Pakistan whose employees are accused of using online ads to scam westerners seeking help with trademarks, book writing, mobile app development and logo designs, a new investigation reveals. The FIA said the defendants operated a large number of websites offering low-cost trademark services to customers, before then “ignoring them after getting the funds and later demanding more funds from clients/victims in the name of up-sale (extortion).” The Pakistani law enforcement agency said that about 75 percent of customers received fake or fabricated trademarks as a result of the scams. In April 2025, California resident Melinda Will sued the Texas firm Majestic Ghostwriting — which is doing business as ghostwritingsquad[.]com — alleging they scammed her out of $100,000 after she hired them to help write her book. According the Pakistani authorities, the accused also ran countless scams involving ebook publication and logo creation, wherein customers are subjected to advance-fee fraud and extortion — with the scammers demanding more money for supposed “copyright release” and threatening to release the trademark. Meanwhile, business records show 360 Digi Marketing LTD is a U.K. company whose officers include former Abtach director Bilwani; Muhammad Saad Iqbal, formerly Abtach, now CEO of Intersys Ltd; Niaz Ahmed, a former Abtach associate; and Muhammad Salman Yousuf, formerly a vice president at Axact, Abtach, and Digitonics Labs. The authorities called it “the biggest money laundering case in the history of Pakistan,” and named a number of businesses based in Texas that allegedly helped move the proceeds of cybercrime. The Google ads promoting quranmasteronline[.]com were paid for by the same account advertising a number of scam websites selling logo and web design services. The lawsuit was filed pro se by Leigh Riley, a 64-year-old career IT professional who paid 360 Digital Marketing to have a company called Talented Ghostwriter co-author and promote a series of books she’d outlined on spirituality and healing. Google’s Ads Transparency Center finds 360 Digital Marketing LLC ran at least 500 ads promoting various websites selling ghostwriting services . Bilwani is perhaps better known as the director of the Pakistan-based IT provider Abtach Ltd., which has been singled out by the USPTO and Google for operating trademark registration scams (the main offices for eWorldtrade and Abtach share the same address in Pakistan). Also incorporated at that Pacific Avenue address is abtach[.]ae, a web design and marketing firm based in Dubai; and intersyslimited[.]com, the new name of Abtach after they were banned by the USPTO. “The main reason I hired them was because I didn’t understand what I call the formula for writing a book, and I know there’s a lot of marketing that goes into publishing,” Riley explained in an interview. For example, the FIA complaints named Retrocube LLC and 360 Digital Marketing LLC, two entities that share a street address with eWorldTrade: 1910 Pacific Avenue, Suite 8025, Dallas, Texas. However, an investigation into the company’s founders reveals they are connected to a sprawling network of websites that have a history of extortionate scams involving trademark registration, book publishing, exam preparation, and the design of logos, mobile applications and websites. The Texas businesses promote websites that sell logo and web design, ghostwriting, and academic cheating services. That lawsuit helpfully showed an image of the office front door at 1910 Pacific Ave Suite 8025, which featured the logos of 360 Digital Marketing, Retrocube, and eWorldTrade. In 2021, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) charged Bilwani and nearly four dozen others — many of them Abtach employees — with running an elaborate trademark scam. “Other companies once they have you money they don’t even respond or do anything,” the ghostwriting team manager explained. “In October 2016, a Pakistan district judge acquitted 24 Axact officials at trial due to ‘not enough evidence’ and then later admitted he had accepted a bribe (of $35,209) from Axact,” reads a history (PDF) published by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. KrebsOnSecurity reviewed the Google Ad Transparency links for nearly 500 different websites tied to this network of ghostwriting, logo, app and web development businesses. Prior to my notifying Google about the extent of this ad network on April 28, the Google Ad Transparency network listed over 500 ads for 360 Digital Marketing; as of this publication, that number had dwindled to 10. A list published in 2021 by Pakistan’s FIA of different front companies allegedly involved in scamming people who are looking for help with trademarks, ghostwriting, logos and web design. Mansoor’s U.K.-registered company Maple Solutions Direct Limited has run at least 700 ads for logo design websites since 2015, the Google Ads Transparency page reports. Rameez Moiz is a Texas resident and former Abtach product manager who has represented 360 Digital Marketing LLC and RetroCube. In an interview, Horsting said the prose that Vox Ghostwriting produced was “juvenile at best,” forcing him to rewrite and edit the work himself, and to partner with a graphical artist to produce illustrations. The CEO of Digitonics Labs is Muhammad Burhan Mirza, a former Axact official who was arrested by the FIA as part of its money laundering and trademark fraud investigation in 2021. In 2023, 360 Digital Marketing LLC and Retrocube LLC were sued by a woman who said they scammed her out of $40,000 over a book she wanted help writing. Other businesses registered at this address market services for logo design, mobile app development, and ghostwriting. 360 Digital Marketing’s website 360digimarketing[.]com is owned by an Abtach front company called Abtech LTD. “Our policy against Enabling Dishonest Behavior prohibits products or services that help users mislead others, including ads for paper-writing or exam-taking services,” the statement reads. “Axact took money from at least 215,000 people in 197 countries — one-third of them from the United States,” The Times reported. In 2023, prosecutors in Pakistan charged Mirza, Mansoor and 14 other Digitonics employees with fraud, impersonating government officials, phishing, cheating and extortion. Will’s lawsuit is just one of more than two-dozen complaints over the past four years wherein plaintiffs sued one of this group’s web design, wiki editing or ghostwriting services. Reached for comment, Google said in a written statement that it is constantly policing its ad network for bad actors, pointing to an ads safety report (PDF) showing Google blocked or removed 5.1 billion bad ads last year — including more than 500 million ads related to trademarks.
This Cyber News was published on krebsonsecurity.com. Publication date: Wed, 07 May 2025 22:29:56 +0000