I responded to a posting about a job on craigslist and this is the email I received back and I need to know if it is the real deal or just a big scam.
Hello ,
How are you doing today? I’m very happy that you want to becoming part of our company by working for us. Thanks for the mail…I am looking for someone who can handle my personal and business errands at his/her spare time.Someone who can offer me these services: Mail services Receive my mails and drop them off at UPS(nothing illegal)Shop for Gifts,Art works,Bill payment ( pay my bills on my behalf)Sit for delivery( at your home) or pick items up at nearby post office at your convenience. It does not matter where you are located as long as you reside in the united states.Let me know if you will be able to offer me any/all of these services.
Where are you located? I would love to meet up with you to talk about this job but I am currently away on business. I am in Australia so there will be no interview.I will prepay you in advance to do my shopping. I will also have my mails and packages forwarded to your address. If you will be unable to stay at your house to get my mails, I can have it shipped to a post office near you and then you can pick it up at your convenience.When you get my mails/packages; you are required to mail them to me or our customers. You don’t have to put money out of your pocket, all you have to do is have packages shipped to your house and do my shopping. You are allowed to open the packages to reveal its content.The content of the packages are computer and electronics,art works,antiques business and personal letters.. All expenses and taxes will be covered by me. You will work between 15 and 20hrs a month..I will pay $450.00 weekly, That is not a bad offer is it? I need your service because I am constantly out of town. I work in a realestate and I own an Art Gallery in Australia. I will return to USA in September,2011 so this process will be on going till then.If you don’t mind, I will meet up with you when I return and then we can talk about the possibility of making
this long term. Well, let me know if you are able to handle the position.Hope to hear from you.I will email you the list
and pictures of what to shop for when I am ready. No heavy packages is involved! You can do the shopping at any nearest stores.
I will provide you with my personal UPS account number for Shipping.
All you have to do is provide my account number to UPS and shipping charges will be applied into the account.I will provide clear set of instructions for each task I need done as well as the funds to cover them. If I were to mail you money to do my shopping plus upfront payment for your service, where would you want it mailed to? How should your name appear on the money?
Kindly,provide me with the following details below
Full Name:
Full Address:
(NO P.O.BOX)
City:
State:
Country:
Zip Code:
Phone Number:
if you have yahoo messenger or hotmail to chat with you also about the job….
Age:
Thank you!
Jones Collins
100% scam.
There is no job.
There is only a scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money and maybe your freedom.
The next email will be from another of the scammer’s fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the "assistant" and will demand you accept packages purchased with stolen credit cards, hi-jacked paypal accounts and spoofed bank transfers, at YOUR home address. Then you are suppose to use a stolen UPS/FedEx billing account number to send the electronics, clothing and jewelry overseas. When the websites, credit card/paypal/bank account owners and UPS/FedEx discover the fraud, you get the real life job of paying back ALL of them. Then the local law enforcement comes knocking asking why are you fencing stolen merchandise for someone you never met, don’t know their real life name and have no idea in what country they really live.
Another email will be from the scammer and will demand you cash a large fake check sent on a stolen UPS/FedEx billing account number and send most of the money via Western Union or moneygram back to the scammer posing as the "supply company" while you "keep" a portion of the cash. When your bank realizes the check is fake and it bounces, you get the real life job of paying back the bank for the bounced check fees and all the bank’s money you sent to an overseas criminal.
Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever.
Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his ‘potential sucker’ list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of being the perfect buyer, great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.
You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information.
Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don’t bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn’t worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.
Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.
6 "Rules to follow" to avoid most fake jobs:
1) Job asks you to use your personal bank account and/or open a new one.
2) Job asks you to print/mail/cash a check or money order.
3) Job asks you to use Western Union or moneygram in any capacity.
4) Job asks you to accept packages and re-ship them on to anyone.
5) Job asks you to pay visas, travel fees via Western Union or moneygram.
6) Job asks you to sign up for a credit reporting or identity verification site.
Avoiding all jobs that mention any of the above listed ‘red flags’ and you will miss nearly all fake jobs. Only scammers ask you to do any of the above. No. Exceptions. Ever. For any reason.
If you google "fake re-shipping job", "fraud money mule scam", or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near victims of this type of scam.