University of Antonius... huh?

Very good! Your credit card company should back you if they don't come through.

 

I hope that you haven't just been 'phished'. Remember that you are most likely dealing with a con artist.

 

This sounds really, really suspicious.

If they charged your credit card, they are supposed to, by card association regs, credit the charge back to your card.

If they are asking for your account number *and* taking time to "verify" it, I'm thinking you're at big risk for phishing. If I were you, I'd move all your money into another account and ask the bank to put a temporary hold on all transactions going out of that account if you've already given them the number.

One generally doesn't need to "verify" an account number to do an ACH or wire transfer transaction. You just process the transaction, and if there's a problem, it comes back as an error.

Please be careful!

 

No, they don't have my credit card number- I was a bit worried to do that.

I just scanned and emailed them a copy of a voided check. They will deposit it to my account. Still waiting.

 

That information can be used to draw money from your account. I pay my taxes by providing info off my check (I believe it is called an e-check).
Checks can also be washed or duplicated.

 

Oh boy...

I just checked my account, and I was quite excited to see that an adjustment in the amount of $425.97 successfully went through. Unfortunately, it wasn't a credit- IT WAS ANOTHER CHARGE!!!!

I left a message with their billing department, and have emailed them. This is getting insane. Why won't it just END?!

 

Greetings to all,

I work in the Public Relations department of The University of Antonius. I am posting now to address some of the concerns raised in this forum regarding the institution I work for.

Firstly, I apologize to you, Mr. Stitt, for the error in billing process. Despite the wary sentiments expressed by many here, I assure you that we are an honest bunch and would consider it detrimental to our long-term success if we let this issue go unresolved. I will contact the Vice President of Finances directly, and see to it that a follow up is made on this thread.

Regarding a previous thread that has been locked, I apologize on behalf of the University of Antonius. Several links were posted to our site, however, our third-party web host has been providing inconsistent service and we are in the middle of a long-term contract with them. Many were worried that the broken links meant that we were not a legitimate organization. We are. As of this moment, the link: http://antonius.edu is functioning correctly. If you have any more issues with it, please let met me know. Our technology and public relations department are scrambling to put together a server and transfer the website's data to it, while simultaneously attempting to buy out, renegotiate, or flat out cancel our contract with the third-party host.

Lastly, as previously mentioned on this site, starting February 1, 2010, all programs and courses from the University of Antonius will be accredited by the NCA-HLC. Please check with (attempt at faking out degreeinfo readers removed) to confirm our listing with them.

Thank you all for your dedication to all forms of higher learning. Feel free to contact me if there are any more questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Dr. Gary Shwinn, P.Hd
Director of Public Relations
University of Antonius
[email protected]

 

Dr. Gary Shwinn, P.Hd - Director of Public Relations - University of Antonius
just posted his first post as a registered user in this thread:

http://www.degreeinfo.com/showthread.php?t=29655&page=5

 

I would call this an EMERGENCY...seriously. You need to get in touch with your bank right away. Giving them your checking number is WORSE than giving them your credit card. With a credit card, you can get your money back. When they draw money from your bank, it's gone!...and there is nothing you can do outside of legal action. I think they are in another country, so forget about successful legal action!

IMMEDIATELY: You better call your bank first thing this Saturday morning and put some sort of "stop payment" on any further action from Antonious. Close that checking account, or draw all the money out and open a new one.

 

I'm beginning to smell a troll.
Perhaps Deaprtment Stitt and "Dr. Shwin, et al" are the same person.
I notice grammatical similarities in their posts.
How come no other member of this board has been able to find a reference to University of Antonious?

 

Wow! I know this question is off-topic, but where can you learn to do that? Are there any books or websites that show you how, or are you just a careful, experienced reader? I've noticed some literary and historical comentators suggesting multiple authors for a single text and I'm curious how they can come to that conclusion.

As far as anyone can tell (and this fact has oft been repeated on this board) the "university" of antonius doesn't exist. If Stitt is telling the truth, he might be the victim of a phishing scam. Although, I wonder why they would double-charge him rather than go about the traditional phishing method of clearing out the entire account.

This whole situation strikes me as odd.

 

They double-charged him because they felt more likely to be able to get approval for that amount. That's especially true if the bank is also the issuer of the credit card and would have seen this specific amount from this specific *company* before.

They have no way of knowing what is in your account and trying to withdraw * 1,000,000,000 dollars * is a good way to get locked down for sure. So most scammers will hit you for ever increasing amounts until the bank says "Wait a minute..."

I've seen fraudulent charges come through for as little as $1. The key is establishing some type of credibility and then hitting it. Banks have fairly decent detection for this type of thing so 1 BIG charge is as likely to set off warning bells as are lots of little ones. A few mid-sized ones, however...

 

I was thinking precisely the same thing.

Google suggests that the only place that 'University of Antonius' has ever been mentioned on the internet has been right here on Degreeinfo. So this board and its responses is obviously the center of somebody's attention.

I sense one person having his own peculiar kind of fun.

 

Well, not only is the good 'Doctor's CHEA link not to the CHEA*, but when you go to the real CHEA site and take a look you get

Database of Institutions Accredited By Recognized
U.S. Accrediting Organizations
Search Results: 0 institutions found for 'University of Antonius'

So, its either a fraud or a troll... Yawn.

* It goes to cjb.net which is listed as
Registrant:
CJB Management, Inc.
3650 Edgewater Dr
Vermilion, OH 44089
US

Domain name: CJB.NET


Administrative Contact:
CJB Management, Inc. [email protected]
3650 Edgewater Dr
Vermilion, OH 44089
US
+1.8889252638 Fax: +1.8153013770

Technical Contact:
To report abuse, e-mail: [email protected]
3650 Edgewater Dr
Vermilion, OH 44089
US
+1.8889252638 Fax: +1.8153013770
Registration Service Provider:
CJB.NET
http://www.cjb.net/

Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 04-Feb-2009.
Record expires on 05-Mar-2010.
Record created on 06-Mar-1998.

Registrar Domain Name Help Center:
http://domainhelp.tucows.com

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.CJB.NET 216.194.70.4
NS2.CJB.NET 216.194.70.5
NS3.CJB.NET 216.194.70.3


Domain status: clientDeleteProhibited
clientTransferProhibited
clientUpdateProhibited

 

The Antonius link is dead and the "CHEA: link is not to CHEA, but to a spoofed website designed to resemble CHEA's. Why would you do that?

 

What is a P.Hd?

 

Well, thankfully, I got Shwinn to deposit my refund (both my original and the extra money they took from me, which they did even though it's Sunday).

I have a new checking account number, and had them refund me through paypal- an account which I promptly deleted.

I asked Shwinn if he could explain why the link to the site doesn't work, the fake CHEA link, why his degree is a P.Hd instead of a Ph.D, etc. and I thought you may want to see the response.

 

Oh, you don't know? That's the special degree offered by Antonious to go along with their special accreditation.

 

Aimed at fooling the naive, I suppose. The sad thing is that it often works.

 

Man, I don't often say it this bluntly, but the bullshit is getting really, really deep in here.

I think we can deduce that isn't the case by the rest of this post, alone.

and who is that, exactly? You?

If you're going to lie your ass off about your website, at least come up with a credible story. That one is not.

Again, the bullshit is getting really deep, to the point I need to go find a shovel. Sorry, what you said isn't possible. That domain name has never been registered, according to educause (owner of the .edu namespace) records, the Internet Web Archive, and Google's search database.

This takes about 15 minutes. In fact, you can register a new domain, have it propagated, live and resolving with full content in that timeframe. So if you had a site, you could easily have simply copied the files from your designer to a new host instantly, or copied them off the (nonexistent) antonius.edu site, had it ever been live, which as I've already shown, it could not have been. More of the same BS.

Wow, how lame. Note that I've corrected the CHEA link above to point to the REAL chea. Did you really, honestly, think nobody would notice? You put CHEA's real website (chea.org) as the text link, but linked that text to your phony imitation page. If you check the REAL CHEA database you'll find, to absolutely no one's surprise, that there's no such entity as Antonius University.

I really have to say, this about takes the cake for the absolute worst, lamest, sloppiest, attempt at lying I have ever seen by any fake school. At least most fake school operators are marginally swift at making up semi-plausible lies, but you, sir, have really set a new standard.