The Latest in IT Security

I’ve been tracking NAPPPA (aka North American Program Planning and Policy Academy or NA3PA) for a few months now. One question eluded me – who is actually running this series of so-called seminars that have generated so many complaints and has scored a miserable F rating at the BBB?

There are two key bits of evidence here:

Firstly, we keep seeing an IP address of 173.55.115.38 which is responsible for sending out the emails. We know that this is in Hacienda Heights, California.and it belongs to a Verizon customer.

A second key bit of evidence is the phone number used in the original spam run earlier this year, (800) 649-6522. A Google Search shows that this number was in use last year for an outfit called “The Grant Writing Workshop” (sound familiar?) with a domain of grantwritingworkshops.info.

As it happens, the domain grantwritingworkshops.info has been deleted. But oddly enough, not because the domain expired (it was registered until April 2012), but because someone deliberately chose to delete the domain in May 2011. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that complaints about NAPPPA started to mount at about the same time.

Using a historical WHOIS service, we can see who the domain was registered to before it was deleted:

Registrant ID:ncr-6660904-9f1c
Registrant Name:PATCHREE PATCHRINT
Registrant Organization:THE GRANT WRITING WORKSHOP
Registrant Street1:655 S FLOWER STREET
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:LOS ANGELES
Registrant State/Province:CA
Registrant Postal Code:90017
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.8888146912
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:[email protected]

“655 S Flower Street” is the same Mailboxes & More store that NAPPPA uses for its correspondence.

The name “Patchree Patchrint” is highly distinctive. A Google search of that name indicates that there is exactly one person in the US with that name. And they live in Hacienda Heights, California.

There are several interesting matches for this name. One confirms a connection with NAPPA and names another individual, Anthony Christopher Jones, who has cowritten a book with this person called STRATCOMM101: Strategic Communication for Policy and Program Planning. (Sound familiar?) Just in case the book gets deleted from Lulu.com, here is a screendump:

Exactly what relationship Anthony Christopher Jones has with NAPPPA will become clear, but in the meantime here is his Yahoo! contributor profile. This says: Anthony Christopher Jones is a native of Compton, California who has lived in the metropolitan Los Angeles area his entire adult life. A quintessential Angeleno, Anthony is a passionate Lakers fan and enjoys all of the perks that comes with living in a huge, diverse, and contemporary city. He is a writer, college lecturer, and entrepreneur. His full-time business and passion involves real estate development and investment projects in Southern California. He also teaches program planning, proposal development, and strategic communication workshops and seminars throughout the United States and is co-author of “STRATCOMM 101: Strategic Communication for Policy and Program Planning”. 

We’ll find out more about Anthony Jones later.

There is more gold can be found digging into the name Patchree Patchrint though. This article from the Nonprofit Times names this person directly in relation to another grant company in 2008, along with Anthony Christopher Jones. Here is an excerpt:

More than 40 complaints have been made to various Better Business Bureau (BBB) affiliates against The Grant Institute, with some instructors alleging the organization hasn’t paid them and participants still waiting for refunds for courses that were canceled.

The Grant Institute, a Los Angeles-based entity of the Institute for Communication Improvement (ICI), hosts workshops across the country to teach nonprofits and medical researchers grant writing skills. Some instructors and attendees are upset with their experiences and are questioning the company’s business and financial practices. 

Sound familiar? You can see the BBB report for that operation here.. it scores F too.

The North Dakota AG’s office warned about The Grant Institute as well. In fact, there are masses of complaints about The Grant Institute, here are some of them:

• Vexed by Anthony Jones and The Grant Institute [archive]
• Complaints Board – The Grant Institute
• Epinions – The Grant Institute
• ArLiSNAP Comments
• ..and there are many that can be easily found on Google.

Digging further, we find the The Grant Institute used to have a domain name of thegrantinstituteonline.com  and the registrant details used to be:

Admin Name……….. Anthony Jones
  Admin Address…….. 900 Wilshire Boulevard #828
  Admin Address……..
  Admin Address…….. Los Angeles
  Admin Address…….. 90017
  Admin Address…….. CA
  Admin Address…….. UNITED STATES
  Admin Email………. [email protected]
  Admin Phone………. +1.2138175308
  Admin Fax………… 
There is a related domain at communication101.com (you can see it in this 2005 email promoting The Grant Institute):

Registrant:
DOSS Development Group LLC
   655 S Flower Street
   Suite 367
   Los Angeles, CA 90017
   US

“DOSS Development Group LLC” is registered as a foreign entity (from Nevada) in California (search for number 200815610040). The agent is.. Patchree Patchint.

We can search for DOSS Development Group in Nevada too, which confirms the name “Anthony Jones” and lists the contact address as a UPS store.

So, in brief, we started with an IP address and phone number. The IP address led us to Hacienda Heights, California. The phone number led us to another web site registered to Patchree Patchrint, also of Hacienda Heights. Patchree Patrchrint led us to Anthony Christopher Jones, and that led us to The Grant Institute dating back to 2005, which carries a BBB F rating and has been warned about by a state attorney general.

So who is behind NAPPPA? The evidence shows that Patchree Patchrint and Anthony Jones are behind this, and have been running the same scheme since at least 2005.