March 11, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — According to reports, US prosecutors made several indictments last month against Lexitrans Inc. and other shell companies based in Overland, Kansas, alleging that they ran adult Web sites and 900 numbers, defrauding customers by illegally charging for subscriptions to services that were advertised as free.
Lexitrans is alleged to have been founded by members and associates of the Gambino crime family. According to reports, the scams ran by Lexitrans netted around $230 million for the perpetrators.
The company’s operations included 7,000 square feet of data center space, redundant power and fiber-optic pipes. Former employees of the company said the adult sites hosted were very successful, attracting large volumes of traffic. Other sources backed up these claims, reporting that the operation was paying $50,000 a month in Internet access fees and $100,000 a day for search engine placement. Programmers employed at Lexitrans also developed pop-up ads designed to entice users to sign-up for free tours. According to the indictments, the technology was designed to illegally trigger charges to credit cards as users proceed through the free tour.
