Warning if you are buying Domains with PR - Massive Scams going on

There are "other" webmaster forums (which name i won't mention) where there is an active market for selling and buying domains.

The vast majority (90%!) of domains offered there with high PR, like PR3-PR8 etc. are fakes.

The problem is that for the inexperienced, the fakes are not always obvious since those fake pagerank domains do indeed validate ok in all the usual sites where people check whether PR is valid.

The scheme is always the same:

Someone sells a domain which has PR3, PR4 or even higher.

The majority of domains is only several weeks old, a WHOIS search for example reveals that the domains(s) were created last December or maybe in November.
(Needless to say there is no way that a new domain only weeks old has PR4 or PR5)

None of the domains has significant backlinks in Google, most have NONE at all. (Search in open-site-explorer or backlinkwatch etc.)

The sites are sold and advertised as "with valid PR" with proof of the PR validation.

Some of the sites might also be advertised as "aged" but it doesn't matter - if a site doesn't have backlinks it cannot have PR.

98% of the people advertising the fake domains are from INDONESIA.

Technical:

The way they do the scam: They redirect their domains to some high PR authority site which gives them a "fake" PR once Google spiders the site.

Before they sell the site on the forum, they remove the redirect. The PR seems "valid" until the next spidering by Google.

If you are in business to buy domains, please do your research, WHOIS etc..check the creation date and use tools and sites to check for existing backlinks.

G.