Job scam quick guide: it's a scam if...

  • they want you to collect and forward money in any way (a "money mule" job). You'll wind up engaged in money laundering, personally defrauded via expertly forged cheques, money orders, etc, or defrauding someone else who pays for goods that never arrive.
  • they want you to receive packages and reship them somewhere else. The goods will have been obtained fraudulently, and they're just using you to make the shipping address appear local. You will be aiding fraud.
  • they want up-front payment (either to them or someone else) of any sort for anything before you can get the job. This is advance fee fraud: there is no job -- it's just a big con to extract money from you.
  • they want you to buy any kind of "membership" or "kit" in order to start. Forget it -- it's not a real job at all: they're trying to sell you something, and they're probably making a bunch of other false claims about it if they're pitching it as a "job".
  • it's a job offer, and it's spam. There are LOTS of these scams about, as you can see.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

ProGenic Pharmaceuticals (impostors)

Fairly sophisticated job scam, based largely around a website pretending to be a company called "ProGenic Pharmaceuticals". There does appear to be a company of that name, but it doesn't have a website of its own that I can find. This particular group of impostors can't tell the difference between pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, because they've ripped off some images and text from Accuray's CyberKnife website. The job details aren't specified in the spam -- the "duties" are ridiculously vague -- but I'll take a wild guess and say that it involves receiving payments and forwarding money via Western Union like 99% of the other job scams around here.

Domain Name:                                 SURGERY-PROGENIC.BIZ <-- scam
Domain ID:                                   D17074717-BIZ
Sponsoring Registrar:                        THE REGISTRY AT INFO AVENUE
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID:                123
Domain Status:                               clientTransferProhibited
Registrant ID:                               DI_5870972
Name Server:                                 NS1.VIRTUAL-BGG.COM
Name Server:                                 NS2.VIRTUAL-BGG.COM
Created by Registrar:                        THE REGISTRY AT INFO AVENUE
Last Updated by Registrar:                   THE REGISTRY AT INFO AVENUE
Domain Registration Date:                    Wed Mar 28 11:06:28 GMT 2007 <-- new
Domain Expiration Date:                      Thu Mar 27 23:59:59 GMT 2008
Domain Last Updated Date:                    Wed Mar 28 11:08:43 GMT 2007

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: HR_manager <HR_manager@[redacted]>
Date: 29-Mar-2007 16:22
Subject: Genuine job offer  [redacted]
To: [redacted]

[images redacted]

ProGenic Pharmaceuticals Ltd. emerged in pharmacy and cardiology market in late 2003. Their inexpensive but advanced coronary stents made a revolution in cardiology, now these stents are main production and export product throughout the world. While operating more than three facilities in Australia and USA easily gained leadership in this field.

Now ProGenic have more than 400 employees all over the world with more than 2,000 workers at three main factories.

ProGenic has opened Regional Administrative Coordinator vacancies in Australia

Main duties are:
Contacts with company's clients
Coordinating internet sales projects.
Managing cash and balancing receipts
Operating within prescribed budgets

Wage Details: 52k AUD + benefits

Main requirements for the candidates are:

·  A bachelor's degree;
·  Willingness to work at home;
·  The ability to create good administrative reporting;
·  Prior customer service experience is a good benefit but not a must ;
·  Honesty, responsibility and promptness in operations;
·  Effective interaction with customers;
·  The ability to operate with more than one task effectively, and have an adaptable, flexible, professional attitude;
·  Effective dealing with tight deadlines and frequently changing priorities;
·  Must have good leadership skills and be ethical, polite, tactful;
·  The ability of stable communication with our company and on-time and detailed reporting;
·  No medical education is necessary

To the successful applicants we offer a position on a trial period (2 weeks starting from the beginning of work). This is the period when you will be trained. You will receive online support while working and being paid. The evaluation of employees on a trial period is usually done at least 3 days prior to the end of their trial period. During the trial period, the supervisor can recommend termination. At the end of the trial period, supervisor makes his final decision.

If you are interested in this vacancy and you feel, that your qualifications correspond to our requirements, please visit www.Surgery-ProGenic.biz to fill in an application form.

Thank you for your interest to this job.
Sincerely,
ProGenic Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

 

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response.

6 comments:

alex said...

Hi,
Looking for a job and posting my resume on the net I got the response from "progenics"
After sending them a resume and my introduction letter, I received this from them:
Thanks for confirmation.

Now I?d like you to review the outlines of the project you?re going to coordinate during your trial:

Project: Increase of Internet sales of the ProGenic equipment.

Solution: To attract more customers to our web site we suggested launching a new marketing campaign on the Internet - a group of web sites will be driving traffic to the main company site.

Your Responsibilities: Your essential responsibility will be to coordinate activities of project personnel.

1). Be the primary point of contact for assigned project staff.
2). Distribute all incoming and outgoing correspondence (tasks) for assigned project staff.
3). Review project proposals or plans to determine time frame.
4). Controlling and processing financial transactions on behalf of Finance Representative (sometimes you may work on behalf of Finance Representative for a few days to cover an absent staff).
5). Communicate project progress to Customer Service Representative.
6). Submit progress report directly to the client (you should be able to easily communicate with clients in case CS Representative is absent).
7). Obtain and file all project information.

Next Step: Download the agreement form:
MS Word: http://pro-genic.com/doc/agreement_PrG-1744.doc

Please read carefully, complete, sign, and forward back to me via email. I will be your supervisor during the probation period. For the commencement date, please choose any date that is convenient for you but not later than 2 weeks from now. If you have any questions please email at human_resources@pro-genic.com


Yours sincerely,

Robert Milman
HR manager
ProGenic Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
human_resources@pro-genic.com

This did look good and I was searching for additional information on them and came across the Scam alerts....
Sad how people exploit you!

Regards
Alex

alex said...

Progenics followed....
next step:
Hi Alex,

Thanks for signing up with ProGenic Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

Monday will be the first day of training for you and another applicant. Each of you possesses similar qualities and knowledge that?s why the trial period is so important to decide on one of the competitors. You need to understand we are making an extremely large investment (of time and money) in training our entry level hires and want to make sure we hire only the best.

I will assign some basic, introductory tasks for the first week of training to make sure you can handle them on your own a short while later. Before you can start I?d like you review the tasks for the first few days and what we aim to achieve. During your training you will learn to coordinate adequately your Virtual Team. This firstly implies better understanding of what other members of the Team do. By the end of the week you should prove your ability to perform the essentials of the Finance Representative and the Customer Service Representative. As mentioned before you will be functioning for them in their absence. The activities for the first days are:

Week 1 ? gathering data, handling transaction, reporting transaction details to the client.

As you can see on your first day of work you?ll be asked to gather some information about yourself and provide it to our Finance Representative working here in Australia. I?d like you to contact Julie Brown at Julie_Brown@pro-genic.com for clarifications and assistance with your first task, as it?s within her responsibilities to handle transactions for ProGenic in Australia. She?s aware of your training plan and its contents and has kindly agreed to guide you through your first days of work.

She?s an extremely caring and sympathetic manager and I?m sure you?ll benefit from working with her.

Please keep in mind that you?ll need to email me a report with the progress you?ve made on each day of work. You should be as specific as possible describing possible complex issues. I also encourage you to come up with your own ideas about how things might be improved, and where I agree, we will follow up these ideas and develop them into practice. If everything goes smoothly with your first tasks and the feedback from the parties involved is positive overall, then we?ll be able to proceed to the 2nd part of your training.

Week 2 - As a coordinator of a project, you will self-register your project in the Company?s database. Thus you?ll be able to distribute all incoming and outgoing correspondence (assignments) for other project staff. The database will give you access to important contacts necessary to carry out the job. 2nd week of training is primarily aimed at making you feel much easier in digital contacts and so-called virtual cooperation.

Though your work involves more showing rather than telling, I do not want you to feel uneasy about anything related to your duties, so feel free to ask or talk to me about anything relevant to your work. Thank you once again for joining us, I hope you?ll really benefit from your training and will enjoy working at ProGenic Pharmaceuticals Ltd.


Regards,

Robert Milman
HR manager
ProGenic Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
human_resources@pro-genic.com

Spotter said...

Domain Name: PRO-GENIC.COM <-- scam
Registrar: THE REGISTRY AT INFO AVENUE D/B/A IA REGISTRY
Whois Server: whois.iaregistry.com
Referral URL: http://www.iaregistry.com
Name Server: NS1.VIRTUAL-BGG.COM
Name Server: NS2.VIRTUAL-BGG.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 28-mar-2007
Creation Date: 28-mar-2007 <-- new
Expiration Date: 28-mar-2008

Spotter said...

Thanks for the feedback, Alex. Obviously they are being extremely reticent about actual job details. If they continue to communicate, money transfer will become involved sooner or later. Please keep posting correspondence if you receive it.

alex said...

Hi,
This was supposed to be my first day of training,obviously they are not keen in getting me up to speed with my new position and may have found a more naive person to seduce...
Have no news yet at 5.45 PM and is is time for me to move on...

alex said...

Hi,
The crunch finally came...
Check this out!
.....
How are you? Hopefully you’re fine. Today you’re going to start your training and you’ll actually have to do quite a few assignments, so let’s get started.




To begin with you must realize what my job is about. As a matter of fact I own a local coffee shop with internet access, though can easily continue my employment with PG-P Ltd. (ProGenic Pharmaceuticals Ltd.). All I have to do is assisting our clients by acting as a bridge between the "virtual" Internet world and the "real" financial world.




I work in close contact with the Administrative Coordinator (i.e. you) and our team of in-house and freelance staff. You are the first to keep me informed of any payments sent to me by our customers from all over the world, providing all relevant payment information and contact details required to handle the transaction. Once I receive the payment I’m supposed to forward it further to our company account in the USA or some other destination as assigned.




I do not receive basic salary as I work on a commission fee basis. If I’m absent you’ll be handling transactions on my behalf each earning you up to 8% per transaction (depends on funds destination). I use my business account to receive payments from PG-P’s customers, so if you own a business you’ll be able to use your business account, otherwise you’ll be able to use your personal account as well.




During your trial you are supposed to handle at least one transaction. Let me make this point very clear using our project as an example. Our web design staff from Ukraine needs to get paid and payment is scheduled to be made within these two coming days. Once I receive the payment from the head office I have to wait some time till it’s cleared and available in my account. Then I’m going to forward it to our web designers via bank transfer. If they prefer another way of sending money to them (usually it’s a money transfer system like MoneyGram or Western Union), then I have to physically withdraw the money from my bank and then send it to Ukraine. I’m yet to hear back from them as to which method of payment they prefer.




Anyway you should be able to send payment using any of the above methods, and here’s what we’ll do to avoid possible mistakes.




1) If you’re not familiar with the process of sending money through payment systems like Moneygram or Western Union, then take a look at a sample form at http://pro-genic.com/doc/westernunion.jpg you’ll be asked to fill in a similar form when sending the payment.

2) You need to find the nearest locations of both Moneygram and Western Union and email their addresses and phone numbers to me.

3) You should call your bank to find out how much you can withdraw from your account per day. The limits may be too low without you even knowing, so please check this one out. Also check with your bank if you can make international transfers and how much this will cost you.

4) I will provide the client with the banking details of yours for one single payment I mentioned earlier so the details required from you are as follows:




Account Holder's Name:

Name of the Bank:

Account Information: BSB: Account No:




By giving me your account information you also agree with the following:




The Company will not reveal your details; and will only remit agreed funds to the account at the times and dates specified prior each transaction. The Employee will not attempt to use any of the Company funds – even though they are properly insured against theft - other than those deposited in relation to the employment as agreed remuneration, and commissions.




I will also supply your details to our head office in the USA so they could arrange your first salary payment on Friday.




Email me back as soon as you gather the required information.







Thank you,




Julie Brown

Financial Representative

ProGenic Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

Julie_Brown@pro-genic.com