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.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Bidding Expert

A quick search for "Bidding Expert Company" shows that this scam is already widely reported. This is a basic money mule scam, where the "employee" receives stolen money and forwards it overseas, typically via Western Union (although that is not explicitly stated in this email). Note that the scammer is pretending to send mail from careerbuilder.com.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: offer[@]careerbuilder.com <offer[@]careerbuilder.com>
Reply-to: job[@]careerbuilder.com
Date: 13-May-2007 14:39
Subject: Job offer from our company
To: ideceive@gmail.com

Hello

My name is Roman Frolov. I am a manager of Bidding Expert Company.

We would like to offer the perspective career to you. We propose a vacancy of the regional agent. The average salary will be about $2000-4500 monthly. You can familiarize with our current vacancy.

REASON : Most customers prefer to pay within their own country and it's much faster than sending an international Money Order. Small companies can't transfer international transactions. And have restricion to do international transfers. But our personal clients have business in Russia, Ukraine and other CIS countries, and they can't receive international payments. Your task is receiving and transferring payments to our clients.

You will receive and cash out several types of payments: Direct Bank Deposit, PayPal payments and rarely Money Orders. Having a PayPal account gives you an advantage of accepting even more payments.

1) Your salary is 15% from each payment.
2) You don't need to wait end of month to get paid. You salary share included to each payment.
3) You not spend your own money. All charges to withdrawal or transfer money will be shared at payment.
4) Your financial information will never reach to third parts. It's safe, private and secured type of PayPal payments.
5) You can work 1-3 hours per day or fulltime.
6) No matter what's your education or status.


You can contact with me and ask any questions by email: romanfrolovcorp@gmail.com


Best regards, Roman Frolov
romanfrolovcorp@gmail.com
Delovoj Tupik 37
109172, Moscow, Russia
+7 495 9230030
Posted by Spotter at 09:53

2 comments:

Spotter said...

A correspondent provides the following helpful information about this scam.

* Money is transferred from compromised PayPal accounts into the PayPal account of the money mule "employee".

* The mule is required to withdraw the money and transfer it via Western Union as quickly as possible, because the scammer must complete the scam before the victim noticies the unauthorised transfer and freezes it.

* My correspondent, who was the owner of a compromised account, was able to freeze the transaction before money was withdrawn. He was also able to contact the money mule to whom the PayPal transfer was sent, and discovered that the money was to be sent via Western Union to the following identity (partially redacted).

Receiver First name - Mark
Receiver Last name - Ageew
Receiver Country - Russia
Receiver City - Saint-Petersburg
Street: Oktyaborskaya 7, apt. [redacted]
Saint-Petersburg, ZIP 197337 (6 digits at zipcode)
Country: Russia
phone: +78124738493

Note that the above identity, "Mark Ageew", may not be the actual mastermind behind the scam, but wittingly or not, he was going to be a participant in it -- or he is the victim of identity theft. My intention in publishing these details is the same as with all the other data I publish: the hope that anyone asked to transfer money to this identity will be prudent enough to do a search and discover that it is associated with a known scam.

10:53 pm, May 16, 2007
Spotter said...

Received another one recently. Nothing much has changed about the spam, except that it claimed to be from "Maria Ivanova" with contact address "maria.ivanovabx@gmail.com".

6:36 pm, June 20, 2007

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