Staffordish Limited Company Information

About Staffordish Limited

Staffordish Limited is a small shell company in Nicosia, Cyprus. Ntiana Tsamourlidou is the registered director.

Company information in Cyprus is from paid services. Because it is a paid service, only a few pieces of information are available.

There are many shell companies in Cyprus. People form companies in Cyprus for the low tax rate but also you can do so anonymously. You can pay a lawyer to set up a company and you need a court order to obtain real ownership.

An Internet Marketing Company

Not so much. Staffordish Limited purports to be a business to business marketing company, providing services in branding and sales marketing. They have a one page website, with some marketing platitudes. At first glance it might appear to be legitimate. Looking closer, it is just fluff and there is no real content on the site. See for yourself: Staffordish Limited Website

The Nail in the Coffin

I have looked at many of shell companies in these online dating scams. They all purport to be some sort of internet marketing company. If you look past the different stock images, they have nearly identical web pages – using the same or similar template.

Why the phony website?

I don’t know why this set up is in place. This is purely speculative, but in my investigations of online dating scam websites, they usually pass thru a click-generating/marketing server before landing on low-quality dating sites. I suspect that these shell marketing websites are tied to owners of the click generating servers. How Staffordish is related to this scheme, is what comes next…

Staffordish Limited and White Label Dating

Staffordish owns a series of private label, or branded dating sites. Here are a few:

FindTrueRomances.com
FixYouWithLove.com
ShineLoveOnMe.com

A branded dating site is a front end to a white label dating service company. A white label dating company provides website operations, a pre-populated membership database, and billing services for the branded dating site.

When you set up a branded dating site with a white label dating company, the white label dating company runs all of the site operations, customer service, billing and collecting the money. They take their share (usually about 30%) off the top, and give the branded site owner the rest.

Set up cost for the entrepreneur is very low. In fact, the white label dating company doesn’t charge you anything to get started. You will need to purchase website names (domains); you will need some artwork or stock photos, and you need a starting marketing budget. It would be a good idea to set up a limited liability corporation to own the site. In theory you could get started for $200.

The problem with white label dating

At first glance, it would seem that the white label dating arrangement is a fine idea. There is a large population of actively dating people, so in theory, the website customer has a better chance to meet someone.

There are a few issues…

When you sign up for a site, your profile now part of hundreds, perhaps thousands of sites. You might have signed up for something themed like “Find True Romance.” However, when you sign up, your profile is also displayed on many other sites. That other site could be “Dog Lovers Date”, or it could be a site with an adult theme that might not suit your preferences. I have seen many (loud) complaints over this situation in my web surfing travels.

Another issue, and possibly at the root-cause of why you are here, is that online dating is a very crowded market space.

White label dating companies enable this proliferation, because the cost of entry is so low. One leading white label dating company boasts that they have more than 10,000 sites world-wide.

This is where trouble lurks. The crowded space means that it is extremely difficult, and expensive to drive traffic to your new site in a legitimate fashion. So even though the cost of entry is low, operationally it gets costly. Also, valuable time is spent for little or no return.

That’s when the temptation arises. Some people have turned to unethical means to get sign-ups to their site.

Unethical means of sign up

Here are the common scams that I have found, that lead to white label dating and adult oriented sites.

Get Verified Scam

The way this works, you meet someone online, they want to meet but first you have to verify yourself first. Your “date” sends you a link to a verification site. In reality, it is a façade for one of the branded dating sites. When you sign up, you are registering for a 2-5 day trial period, then you are billed after that. The terms that reveal what you are signing up for are usually hidden or hard to find.

The platform can be any site where people meet. What I hear most from readers is that they met someone on Tinder, who referred them to an Instagram account, where they trade messages.

Cam Scam

You sign up for an adult oriented site, and in the terms there is a sign up for a free trial period to the branded dating site.

Free online game Scam

You sign up for an online game, often of an adult nature. If you look closely at the fine print, you find trial memberships to dating sites. Readers have reported to me that they were signed up to Fix You With Love from an online game signup, I have not found Staffordish based companies in this scam. I have found many others.

Free iPhone Scam

You register for a chance to win a free iPhone, and in the terms there is a sign up for a free trial period to the branded dating site. As you can imagine, there are many variations on this theme.

Note: I have not been able to find this particular scam. I learned about it from readers, and have found complaints about this time of scam in some consumer forums. If you know of one, send me a note via the Contact Ronin feature, and I will check it out.

To be clear, just because someone is running a branded dating site, doesn’t mean it is unethical. I am sure there are many fine operators of these sites. I found multiple websites owned by Staffordish Limited by knowingly clicking thru an obvious scam.

The Biggest Issue: Risk of Identity Theft

You do not know who really has your financial and personal information. Staffordish Limited is a shell that outsources operational functions. The one of most concern is payment processing.

Staffordish is Unknown — Who operates the Staffordish Limited websites is unknown.

The white label company will have a payment processor who handles the financial transactions. There are good ones, and there are bad ones. Some of the payment processors are off-shore. That limits their liability / exposure to the U.S. Regulators and Law Enforcement.

The white label dating company for the Staffordish Limited is unknown. The payment processing company is also unknown.

Try and track your information here: A date Verification Site –> Staffordish –> White Label Company –> Customer Service Company Payment Processor. Where else? I surely do not know.

These unknown companies, with unknown security practices create the risk of data breaches and Identity Theft.

No Real Privacy Protection

The dating sites have been updated, an now have stated privacy policies that comply with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The policies say all the right things – except they are sharing your information with unknown business partners. This is not like you gave your credit card to amazon.com and have a reasonable expectation of privacy and security. They are sharing your information internationally.

Things to note:

GDPR applies to EU citizens conducting transactions in the EU. GDPR does not apply outside the EU.
Updating the policy does not magically change the company operations. Call me a skeptic.
GDPR does not mandate operational security audits like you would find in a reputable retailer or bank

Who Owns Staffordish Limited?

We really do not know. Owners of shell companies usually appoint a “Director” to be the public representative of a company. In order to find out, you need to know the shareholder, or the lawyer who set up the shell company. What that means here is that Ntiana Tsamourlidou is probably just a figure-head administrator who is paid a fee to be the public name for Staffordish Limited. So to be clear, nobody should go harass her on social media or any such thing.

You can find a little bit of information on companies in Cyprus here: https://i-cyprus.com.

My Personal Experience

I found branded dating sites owned by Staffordish Limited by knowingly clicking thru Date Verification Scam websites. I have not ever actually signed up for one of the sites. You can see how I did it in the more reading section below.

Low Quality Sites

I do not have any personal experience, but I can read the Terms of Use for the sites owned by Staffordish Limited. The terms state that the dating website has “Website Hosts”, whose purpose is to “stimulate conversation”. The Terms further state that pictures and profiles of the “Website Hosts” do not represent real people. Here are a few snips from one of the terms of use pages:

Staffordish Limited websites use fake profiles

You Can’t Tell from the Name

A common trait of white label dating billing, is that you will see a short, gibberish looking website name followed by a toll free number on your credit card statement. For example:

ghrkps.com (866) 271-5923

That short name is used for discreet billing purposes. That part is understandable. The annoying part is that you cannot tell from the website name, what the name of the dating site is. If you go to the gibberish named website, it will not tell you. You need to chat or talk with the customer service representatives, and you need to provide them your account information before they will tell you anything. ghrkps.com is the billing name for the Staffordish dating site FixYouWithLove.com.

Another Staffordish Limited

In the UK, there was another company with the same name. That company has been dissolved since February 2014. I read the annual return, financial statements and other corporate filings for Staffordish Limited or LTD in the U.K Companies House Directory. I have not found any connection between the two companies, but as noted before, I cannot determine who owns Staffordish Limited in Cyprus.

Further Research

I have found several sites that are operated owned by Staffordish Limited. If you have a credit card charge from Staffordish, you can use my billing site search, to see if I have any information on that site. If the site on your credit card statement is not found, leave a note in the comments section, or send me a note via the contact Ronin feature.

Click here for the Billing Site Search.