Nemo me impune lacessit

No one provokes me with impunity

____________________________________

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Article 1, Section 9, Constitution of the United States

If this is the law of the land...why in a republic (little r) and as republicans, do we allow mere POLITICIANS to the right to use a "title of office" for the rest of their lives as if it were de facto a patent of nobility. Because, as republicans, this should NOT be the case...just saying...

The Vail Spot's Amazon Store

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Job Scam

In the past few days, while I've been sick, I started getting email from someone in the United Kingdom about a job that sounded just too good to be true:
xchangingacc@aol.com


Dear Job Seeker,

Upon reviewing your resume on Careerbuilder.com we have decided to offer you a job opportunity with our company. The job position is for a Payment Manager/Payments Processor in your area with no obligation to relocate.

Job strong-point: commissions without sales.

Job Type:
- Accounting – Finance
- Admin – Clerical
- Customer Service

Requirements:
- Proficiency at using Microsoft Office
- Possibility to check e-mail three times per day
- U.S. citizenship or permanent residence/green card
- Desired education level: High School
- Experience: no requirements
- Required travel: no
- Relocation: no

Benefits:
-Bonuses and commissions for each processed order
- No contact with our customers

Salary and commissions:
- Salary plus commissions: $85,000-$95,000 per year
- Employment type: full-time or part-time

Please contact us by replying to this e-mail if you are interested and we will provide more information.

HR Department

You are receiving this employment opportunity email because you uploaded your resume on CareerBuilder. If your employment status has changed or you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can update your privacy and communication preferences from your resume by logging onto CareerBuilder.com or you can block this employer from viewing your resume and sending you candidate emails.

This email was sent from Account ID F893KIO989343KOA2 and by this logged in User OKDYW93499

You are currently subscribed to receive 'CareerBuilder.com Customer Messages'.

© CareerBuilder.com 5550-A Peachtree Parkway, Suite 200
Norcross GA 30092
  The original email looked and claimed to come from Careerbuilder.com and had the familiar orange border, but used an AOL email address.  I was at that point more than a little skeptical.  Here's the email I received today.

Thank you for writing to us,


Please allow me to introduce myself; my name is Carmen Judson and I am the International Human Resource Manager of Xchanging Trade. I am pleased to inform you that we have an open position for you within our company. Bellow you will find a short history of our company; please give me a bit of your time and allow me to present it to you.

COMPANY DETAILS
Our Company was founded in 2004 in the United Kingdom; Xchanging Trade is one of the largest equipment selling companies in Europe and our customers are various businesses, hospitals, groups and individuals. The Xchanging Trade is a renowned and trusted symbol of dependability. Naturally, you have great expectations regarding your career and that means you will need plenty of room - to grow, to explore your potential and to realize your goals. Xchanging Trade needs a responsible, honest, self motivated and reliable individual to work for the company as our Representative in USA for our newly opened market. This is in view of us not having an office presently in the USA but accepting orders from our American customers. You don't need to have an office and this certainly will not disturb any form of work you have going at the moment.

JOB DESCRIPTION, TERMS AND CONDITIONS
- No fees needed to get this job.
- No one at Xchanging Trade will ask for your bank account, credit card, social security number or any other sensitive info.
- You are not involved in any sales.
- Everything is legal under EU/USA and International laws.


The today's situation on the financial market requires us to open and fill several of these job positions within our company; the job opening is that of a Representative within the US. This opening will help our company to reduce the time it takes to receive funds from orders that we receive each month. And we offer you one of the highest incomes on the market today and the minimal expenditures of time.

Presently with the amount of orders we have we cannot put them on hold for fear of losing our customers, secondly we cannot cash these payments from the US soon enough, as international checks take about 28 working days to cash anywhere in Europe. We lose a lot of time and money each month because we have money transfer delays. Our clients could pay us where we want by sending checks to an US address. What we need you to do is to provide us an address where you can receive our customer checks. We need someone who can receive the money through this method of payment. Regarding the check process all you have to do is to receive the checks our customers will send to your address, take them to your bank, cash them and send the remainder amount to us after deducting all fees incurred and your commission. All fees for transferring the funds will be supported from our share. Bonuses will apply for cashing checks within 24 hours upon receiving a check. You will always take your commission upfront.

We make direct contact for sales of products. Once orders are received and processed we deliver the product to our customer (usually through USPS). The customer receives and checks the product and proceeds to send the payment. We accept all forms of payment but most of our customers pay using Bank Checks and so in order to solve this problem and not lose any of our customers we have decided to open this new job position. This job is legal according to the U.S. legislation as it is today. Local money transfers take but a few hours, so it will give us a possibility to get customer's payment almost immediately.

PAYMENT AND SALARY:

For example you receive a check as payment in the amount of 3000.00 USD, you deduct your commission (10%): 300.00 USD and then send to us the balance: 2700.00 USD. In the first month you will receive around 15-20 orders under 3,000.00 USD to process and after checking your performance records during that first month the orders you will receive may increase from 3,000.00 upwards to 6,000.00 USD. For example 20 transactions each around 3000.00 USD gives you a total income of 6,000.00 USD per month and after establishing a close co-operation with us you'll be able to operate with larger orders and you'll be able to earn more. You will also deduct fees that are related to this job (gasoline, western union fees, bank commissions, etc) from our balance, not from your commissions. At first the checks you will receive will vary from: $500.00 to $3,000.00. We will also send you a 1099 Form for tax deduction on your part. Our payments will be issued out in your name and you can have them cashed in your existing bank account, we don't accept newly created bank accounts because it slows the cashing process. Deduct your percentage and forward the balance to the company attorney manager via a western union money transfer, the name will be given to you later after cashing a payment. This job takes only 3-7 hours per week. You'll have a lot of free time for taking up another job; you'll get good income and a regular job. This job is very challenging and you should understand it. We are looking only for the employee who satisfies our requirements and will be an earnest assistant.

Your tasks are:

We have health insurance and the 401K retirement savings plan as well as all the other standard benefits that a major company usually provides. Unfortunately we can only start talking about this after the first month has passed since you're working for us. We consider the first month as a trial period. In any case you do not have to pay for anything in advance, there are no hidden costs for performing this job. Any fee you might encounter will be deducted from our share of the funds before you send it to us.

1. Receive payment from our customers. All check will be written in your name.
2. Cashing the checks at your existing bank account.
3. Deduct 10% which will be your percentage/pay on each payment processed.
4. Forward balance after deduction of fees to any of the offices you will be informed to send payment to. (Payment is to be forwarded by Western Union Money Transfer).

You will receive 10% for every check processed in the first month. Within one month after receiving the first check you will get an extra $1,000 if you will manage to cash checks in a timely manner, also this bonus includes internet bill, phone bill, gas/bus tickets. We will support all bills you have to pay for your internet and cell phone. PLEASE NOTE: This bonus will apply after one month starting the day you will receive the first check.

After two months of working with us, a secondary bonus will apply. You will get 15% from all our sales. If everything works as we will expect and it will, you will be able to do up to $1200 - $1300 per week + the bonus of $1,000 every month.

Bonuses regarding cashing checks are as follow:

a) Cash the check same day and you will receive a bonus of $150 for each check cashed.
b) Cash the check within 24 hours and you will receive a bonus of $100.
c) Cash the check within 48 hours and you will receive a bonus of $50

The salary will be paid to the Representative by cashier check.

WORKING HOURS

This depends of how many checks you will receive but it won't take more than 2 hours to deposit the check and send an e-mail as soon as the check arrives to you. Also as soon as checks arrive we will send you further instructions and all details in order to complete the process with Western Union.

Unfortunately we cannot setup any interviews now as we do not have any representatives in US. We will be able to come and meet within the next few months when the new offices will be opened in your area!

Please let me know if you are still interested and I will e-mail you the contract. Also include phone numbers and e-mail address where you can be reached. Within 24 hours after we will receive this information we will forward you a copy of the contract you have to fill in, sign and e-mail back to us.

Carmen Judson
Xchanging Trade
Ballards Lane, London, N3
United Kingdom
FAX 011-44-456-998-5879
FAX 011-44-112-980-1574
 But I answered that I was interested in such a position, but I also googled it.  The only site that came up was this:

http://www.delphifaq.com/faq/scams/f1057.shtml?p=26

That's a site that has 27 pages of entries detailing how people had been scammed into opening bank accounts and then helping these people launder money through them.  When the banks realize that the money being funneled through their bank is coming from hacked accounts within the bank, the new account holder (the person this company "hired" to open the account) is then held accountable for ALL of the money funneled through the account.  Nice...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've also had contact with the contact enclosed, and am in full agreement with various threads posted on this. However, has anyone actually gone as far as receiving and cashing these checks? I had looked into this while awaiting these so called payment transactions, but couldn't help but think....I've disclosed no sensitive personal information; nor provided any bank information, if one was to receive one of these checks, and actually cashed it, the only way you'd get burned would be to send back the funds right away, WITHOUT WAITING 2-3 DAYS, TO BE SURE THAT THE CHECK CLEARED AND FUNDS AVAILABLE. With this in mind, and fully aware of all these threads....my curiousity overcame me. After all my research and forewarnings, poof, a PERSONAL check came via regular mail.? Strange as it sounds, I went to my bank, cashed the check for 2700.00. Bank advised that it would take 2 days to verify.
With cash in hand, I emailed the contact advising of obvious concerns, and no interest in RUSH PAYMENT BONUS', and would wait 48 hours or as long as necessary for the check to clear, to avoid getting burned.
At this point, I expected no further responses, and assumed this "exchang" character to cancel the check, and move on to a more naive target. But I received a response;

"Hello,
Ok, I wait for the payment
information. As soon you will
send it you will start receiving
the next two checks

Have a great day,
Support department"

Although a surprise response...still means nothing. I guess I wanted to follow up on all the scam threads, looking for examples like this....I suppose I'll be the "lesson learned" guy, but again, I see a small bank fee if this goes sour, as expected.

Someone please advise if I am unaware of a deeper, not so obvious aspect of this scam, but it seems to be targeted to people who jump on the RUSH PAYMENT BONUS structure in the contract; sending funds same day without confirming check validity; basically covering the check by cashing at account holders own bank, and finding a few days later, a chargeback for the full amount. I figure; if the check is cancelled or bounces; at least I'll have the cash to replenish the chargeback, and shame on me, maybe an extra returned check fee.
Bottom line....besides the obvious, this scam doesn't seem worthwile for the scammer, unless a large volume of people "trust" total strangers, to such an extent to "cover a random personal check". If I'm in over my head, and there is some geek hack way of tracking this check, and using this as a means to get personal account info....than this scam is a bit more serious; and someone advise. Otherwise, common sense is what to use when dealing with these online things....scams or not, there are gift giving type jobs that are legit, to my knowledge.
Will update as events transpire....

Rich Vail said...

Thanks for posting your comment. Please let me know what happens.

Rich

Rich Vail said...

Evision, your link is bad.

Anonymous said...

so what happens if you just keep the money and dont send it on? if it is a scam they arn't going to get the authorities in to get their money back are they? think about it? is it real or a scam if it is a scam maybe you could keep the money to teach them a lesson

anon