If you are like me and have email box full of Google Alerts, you may have also received about a dozen alerts for the phrase ‘e-gold’ in the past few days. The one which caught my eye said the company was bankrupt! I’ll admit reading the first fake release, shocked me, but that only lasted about 10 seconds. It was obvious the report was a fake. Moments after that I caught another alert from DigitalMoneyWorld, and Benson was confirming the fake press release.

Also, one of the Net’s oldest and largest reputable exchange agents, AnyGoldNow stepped to the plate on the Gold Crypto Email list with this early comment:

Hi All, Just to inform you that I talked to Doug (Jackson) last night. He advised me that the “egold bankruptcy filing” being circulated on various forums is totally bogus. e-gold has NOT filed for any “bankruptcy”, and they are fighting the govt more than ever.

Regards, Patrick,
http://AnyGoldNow.com
THE Exchange Provider
Any Gold, Any time, Anywhere

(that last sentence is good to hear)

Today, I also see that on his blog, Dr. Jackson has also confirmed not only the fake press release and also some big DDOS attacks.

July 09, 2008

Fraudulent “Press Release” and accompanying DDoS attacks

Beginning July 7, 2008 a fraudulent press release was sent to multiple online publication services claiming that e-gold Ltd. and Gold & Silver Reserve, Inc. had filed for bankruptcy. The announcement was a fraud and did not come from either company or anyone associated with either company. Concurrent with the fraudulent press release there have also been intermittent denial-of-service attacks against the e-gold.com website, probably originating from the same perpetrator. An investigation is underway seeking to discover the source of both this malicious misinformation and the denial of service attacks.

Thanks for that information Dr. Jackson, we hope you are able to track down the DDOS creeps.

The two fake releases I saw, originated from very strange places. One was issued from Washington State and the other came from Bulgaria. They both were obvious fakes but some webs and forums actually took the bait. The usually accurate and informative Ecommerce Journal had a lot to say and they fell hard for the fake news. The discussion on their web seemed to have brought up more old personal grips about e-gold than anything new.

As Benson says over at DMW, don’t get fooled and never trust the release unless it’s from the actual source.