Since documenting various email scams such as the UK National Lottery Scam, and the Lady Rita Mosley Scam turned out to be really helpful to so many people, I decided to tackle another spam that appeared in my mailbox recently. It’s the “Part Time Job Offer” thing that you may or may not heard of. Here is the lovely email I found:
Dear Sir/Ma,
I am Raphael Smith; we are Aloevera Company looking for a representative to represent the company. We have sales representatives all over the world to distribute our products. You know, that it’s not easy to start a business in a new market (being the USA). WE ARE BASED IN UK, BUT WE HAVE BEEN RECEIVING ORDERS FROM NORTHERN AMERICA. There are hundreds of ompetitors, close direct contacts between suppliers and customers and other difficulties, which impede our sales promotion.
We have decided to deliver the products upfront, it’s very risky but it should push up sales on 25 percent. Thus we need to get payments for our products as soon as possible. Unfortunately we are unable to open Bank Accounts in the United US without first registering the company name.
Let me interject here for a second. How hard is it to register a company in US? Can’t be that hard, can it? I mean, think about it: if companies like allofmp3.com were able to sell to US customers despite shaky legality of their operation, then why would it be so hard for a hand cream company to do the same? Oh, yeah – cause it’s a scam. I forgot. Carry on.
Presently with the amount of Orders we have, we cannot put them on hold. For fear of loosing the customers out rightly. Secondly we cannot cash these payments from the US soon enough, as international Checks take about 14 working days for cash to be made available. We lose about 100,000 USD of net income each month because we have money transfer delays. Your task as a
representative of the company is to coordinate payments from customers and help us with the payment process. You are not involved in any sales.
Wait… Out rightly? I think you are looking for “outright” but that would still not make much sense.
Once orders are received and sorted we deliver the product to a customer (usually through UPS).The customer receives and inspects the products. After this has been done the customer has to pay for the products. About 90 percent of our customers prefer to pay through Certified Checks and Money orders drawn from the United States based on the amount involved. We have decided to open this new job position for solving this problem.
Your tasks are;
1. Receive payment from Customers
2. Cash Payment at your Bank or any cashing facilities near you.
3. Deduct 10% which will be your percentage/pay on Payment processed
4. Forward balance after deduction of percentage/pay to any of the offices you will be contacted to send payment to. This is done either through western union money transfer or Moneygram.This job takes only 3-7 hours per week.You’ll have a lot of free time doing another job; you’ll get good income and regular job. But this job is very challenging and you should understand it. We are looking only for the worker who satisfies our requirements and will be an earnest assistant. We are glad to offer this job position to you. Interested in the position, kindly email back with the following details of yours:
NAME to be written on Checks or Money Orders………………………..
ADDRESS (This should be a physical address or post office addresses. where You can receive the payment sent via regular mail from the united state) CITY—————
STATE—————
ZIP CODE—————
COUNTRY—————
PHONE NUMBER (S) ———-Contact Telephone Number
(This is important Because a representative of the company will need to give you a call directly)
GENDER—————
MARITAL STATUS—————
AGE—————
NATIONALITY—————
EMAIL ADDRESS-Urgent Attention is Imperative.
Reply your full address (dont click reply just copy this email) send reply to: aloevera_plc_raphael02@yahoo.co.uk
Regards,
Raphael Smith.
Manager
+447011135972
Sounds good eh? All you have to do is to cash some checks and wire the money overseas few times a week and you get a hefty percentage. What could go wrong? Other than spending some quality time in the federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison that is. Yes, boys and girls – if you take one of these “part time jobs” you are essentially laundering dirty money on behalf of your “employer”.
The checks and money orders you cash are usually earned via fraudulent Ebay auctions, illicit transfers and etc. When the person who was defrauded catches on and calls the police, the money trail will lead them directly to you. And guess who is going to get stuck with the bill?
Do not respond to these emails, and most importantly do not agree to transfer anything for anyone. In the best case scenario, you will get scammed in a classic 419 way. In the worst case, you will become an accessory to a crime and you may not only end up in debt but also suffer legal repercussions.
Some further reading:
- Payment Transfer Job explained in detail at Hoax-Slayer
- How to avoid Online Job Scams tips for job seekers.
- List of known Job Offer Spam emails – and some tips on how to avoid them
- Good blog post on this topic by a security consultant Debra Radcliff
If you got implicated in one of those things, stop everything call your Lawyer, and then call your Bank and the Police. Note that ignorance is hardly ever an excuse in our legal system, so you will likely be liable for all the transfers you already made.
This has been a public service announcement for the benefit of mentally handicapped people who fall for these scams.
[tags]email scams, job offer scam, 419 scam, spam, scamers, money transfer scam[/tags]
these kinds of scams all appeal to greed and ignorance and as a result i don’t feel sorry for those who fall for this. After all if ya read this letter above it hardly makes sense.
First it says
And then
Come on now if that were the case i believe any company would registering the company name and do whatever it took to do business legitimately instead of relying on complete fucking strangers to “help” for a fee. If you are so blinded by greed or stupidity perhaps a little prison time might give ya some time to think about things. While i honestly don’t believe in prisons falling for this scam is right up there with falling for Dateline’s Internet predator scam/sting operation…i’d mark it up to karma.
And btw if ya gotta go to prison federal prison is at least among the “best” ones to end up in. honestly not much like your aphorism you seem fond of using, “federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison” In a way the idea that rape and violence are common in prison is part of the gov FUD campaign hoping to keep people scared enough to do as you are fucking told. For the most part prisons are full of pot heads and they are hardly violent (Genghis Khan was perhaps an exception but he is long dead. haha)
Prisons are usually less dangerous than the town I find myself living in, unless of course ya go in there with an attitude. then you are in for a “reality lesson”. lmao
Actually, “federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison” is a quote from Office Space. Here is the original bit of dialog::
As you can see, the federal prison was juxtaposed against the “white collar resort prison” that has conjugal visits and etc (which probably doesn’t even exist). Anyway, it’s a hilarious movie – I highly recommend it.
To tell you the truth, I have no clue how prisons are like outside of what I have seen in the movies. And I really don’t want to find out how it is first hand. :P
As for the scam – totally agree. The letter hardly makes any sense. Hundreds of foreign companies do business in US every day, completely legally. I can’t think of a single legitimate reason why would a company need to use random people recruited via email to handle this kind of stuff.
But then again, look at the comments – especially the ones on my UK Lottery thread linked above. People still fall for it. So by posting this maybe I can save some retard from getting himself involved in criminal activity. :)
I have saw office space and i totally love it :) It is a classic for sure.
that certainly does exist.
And btw I’m pretty radical so i’ve did my time in prison before, long story and something I’m actually rather proud of. Oddly enough the libraries are unreal and rather radical in content … bettern alot of colleges. Aside from they don’t really understand vegetarianism it was a hell of alot more comfortable than my life now.
And yes people do fall for scams…that is why scammers exist. perhaps public attention to the issue might help some avoid it but i feel it is alot like clicking on dancing bunnies. greed and stupidity will get the best of a lot of people. And I get those damn UK Lottery e-mails, had one today in my spam box. Crazy damn world we live in is about all i got to say. haha
Wow, really? I always kinda figured that a prison library would be full of really shitty paperback action and mystery novels, self improvement books, bunch of the classics that everyone hated reading in HS and generally neutered content screened for political correctness.
I get the UK Lottery things every day. Fortunately the Gmail filter finally learned to block them. Thank God. There was a time these would go straight into my inbox.
Hmm let see i studied Euclid, Archimedes, and Appollonius in prison…I am rather fond of classical geometry. A great book on graph theory a book on topology and one on abstract analysis. Read tons of science fiction and lots of fantasy alot of philosophy (Kant Nietzsche Bertrand Russell plato et al) buddhism and taoism and wiccian a few hacker books. All from the prison library they also had an academic book on anarchist political theory practically everything Timothy Leary wrote as well as carlos castaneda’s fictional psychedelic anthropology (and bunches of other pro drug books) and oddly Karl Marx, Lennin, Mao and that whole school of thought (that surprised me!) and lots more. Academic and semi academic books of all kinds and so on.
I “worked” ( spent my time reading be more like it lol) as a GED tutor and even had some internet access (wasn’t exactly supposed to but they had spyware problems and i could fix it haha)
Certainly the library wasn’t screened for PC. Tho of course those kind of books were there as well as Fundie christain books and radical muslim. (including malcom X and black panther stuff) They also had more mainstream classics of theology (mostly catholic stuff) but not limited to it (Martin Buber’s stuff was there as well as Allen Watts). Satanist lit was there too of course and other off the wall “cultist” literature…a lot of satanist in there btw because they could get drunk once a week in religious ceremonies, that kinda made the religion popular.
Of course they also had self improvement books the so called classic lit books, pulpish trash fiction of all kinds, crime thrillers and an odd assortment of other bs. But they spent serious money on books and new books ever month as well as donations from colleges universities and individuals. On the sci fi thing every award winning sci fi book was there (hugo nebula and such), i of course love sci fi!!
Oddly enough my yahoo e-mail always identifies the uk scams as spam and always has. I only get one or two a week and only in my yahoo addresss. I get different spam in my other e-mail addresses, lmao.
Oh wow. That’s pretty good. But I guess it kinda makes sense. I guess there is not much else you can do on your “free time” other than reading, and maybe working out.
Anyway, I’m glad to hear that the butt raep is not as common or prevalent as they make it to be in the movies.
Some read and some didn’t. Ones like me read all the time, alot got high all popular drugs were there…the guards ignored pot but anything else they would freak out on. Not that that stopped anybody. A popular saying was “what they gonna do put me in jail.” lmao
The crime prevention school of thought thinks that illiteracy contributes to crime (maybe some truth in that if ya mean real “crime” and not drugs and such ) hence all the cool books in the library and of course the ged program.
there is of course some violence mostly over money (gambling and dope debts) or over ghetto gangster disputes. Not like they show it on TV tho. And the guards are completely chicken sh*t they run if there is any problem and they certainly don’t cause any…they are badly outnumbered after all.
I suppose some prisons are rougher than others that is just what I saw.
Woah woah woah! Are you trying to tell me that companies don’t seek out random people (as evidenced by the generic salutation) and offer them jobs with great pay? Are you saying that companies that are making so much (gotta be making a lot if they can lose $100k a day) would ordinarily not have spelling/grammar errors in every sentence? Are you saying “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is?” I must raise the bullshit flag.
This is a totally legitimate job offer! You’re just lucky to be contacted! It’s a good thing they were able to track down your email address; you better start this job today! Just be sure you have some “street cred” before you let the CEO know that Aloe Vera is two words and that yahoo email addresses aren’t exactly professional.
[quote comment=”6297″]Just be sure you have some “street cred” before you let the CEO know that Aloe Vera is two words and that yahoo email addresses aren’t exactly professional.[/quote]
Yeah, I love how they always try to make their yhoo or hotmail address more company like by doing something like uknationalbank.co.uk@yahoo.co.uk
lol
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