employment scam

Reader Ervin sends another employment scam. This one is a new one for me…

Dear Job Seeker,

How are you today? I am Mrs Mary Scott I manage my own small payroll business called M.S Payroll Service Inc., I am a Payroll Specialist working from home, I am from Kingsport, TN 37660 and I am married and has 2 kids and I use to encounter a lot of stress when going about my daily payroll
activities because I work as a chartered payroll specialist from my own virtual home office for many companies, but I need an assistant to assist me on the task that is why I am mailing you because I have to work hard to make my money, I want to employ anybody who has experience in payroll check printing as my payroll assistance and data entry typist from his own home or
office, I need some one who is ready to buy items needed for the job, you will need items like assorted business size blank checks like 250pcs, good printer for printing payroll checks and a good software for printing payroll checks and you need a computer experience with a computer connected with high speed internet at home, I required a person who will be honest, trustworthy and able to work hard, and who will also handle the printing of checks with the data information of people on payroll list of each company I work for and I will provide you with the UPS, Fedex or DHL account which will be made for you to dispatch the checks to various destinations and I
will take care of other accounting and tax issues, you are only to process, print and dispatch, so I will like to know if you will be trustworthy enough to entrust mine and my clients company’s vital information and signatory with you, please I want you to be sure that I will be paying you $2,500 monthly salary for a start, if you performed very well, I will increase your salary to $3,000 as your performances impress me after a couple of months so, please get back to me today to know your interest and if you don’t have the materials, I want you to get the money to purchase all the materials, it will only cost you $300 to purchase the materials, so if you are ready, here are the list of materials you will need to start the job:

*A good computer system with fast internet connection.
*You will buy VersaCheck Gold 2008 software. It will come with 150 blank
checks so you might not be buying blank check anymore
*You will buy VersaInk Nano 4X Life MICR Ink - 34MX Black ……. 1 units
*You will buy Versajette M400 Print, Copy, Scan Inkjet Printer
*You will buy Business-size checks 250 pcs
*You will pick up some UPS, DHL and Fedex Envelopes like 100 to 200 pcs
from any UPS, DHL and Fedex drop off locations (it should be free)
*You should know how to use UPS, DHL and Fedex account to print shipping
labels for sending out the checks on a next day delivery basis

You can purchase the materials as stated earlier from local store in your city, any office depot or Wal-Mart store around you or you can get it from www.g7ps.com or www.samsclub.com. You can email me back as soon as possible and I will let you know when to start working from the comfort of your home at the most convenient time for you (you will only be working 2 to 4 hours per each day you choose to work in a week) and you will be earning $2,500 or more every month. You can start today if you are ready with all the items needed for the job, Please do have a nice day while I wait for your response on the job offered.

Note: You will only need about $300 to buy the items needed and the $300 will be return to you after working for 10 days, I can best be contacted by email as I am on computer every time, I will be expecting your response soon.

Thanks
Mary Scott
M.S Payroll Service Inc.,
2324 North Pointe place
Kingsport, TN 37660
Te: 315-642-4212
Email: M.S.Payroll.Services@yellow-jackets.com

I’m not exactly sure what the scam is but I’m pretty sue forgery is involved.

Anyway just a little detective work can show you that this is obviously a scam. According to Google Maps there is no North Pointe Place in Kingsport, TN. Secondly the 315 area code is in Syracuse, New York. Not exactly close to Kingsport. Not to mention the fact that she is married and has two kids.

Apparently LOLCats are running craigslist scams now.

I received the following e-mail from reader Ervin about his job serach on craigslist…

I have posted my resume on Craigslist and you wouldn’t believe all the scam job offer’s that are emailed to me daily. I finally did get a local legitimate job in my field (I started today and was called by the Director of Manufacturing to interview last week). I am glad that I was able to get this job. But, these scammer’s have sunk to new lows by using the Coca-Cola name to scam people now. Were you aware of this new scam? I am going to
paste it for you to share below.

Thank you,
Ervin

Here it is:

JOB OFFER!!!
Monday, November 17, 2008 12:23 AM
From:”Admin Admin”

Dear Sir/Ma
You’re Ref: 2810/04/TF-ATW
Coca - Cola Company offer you the position of offshore financial manager
..
This is to inform you that after critical and proper review of your new contact email address, we are please to inform you that you have met the requirements needed for the post of Payment Officer / Book Keeper with The Coca - Cola Company.

Furthermore, Your duties as the Payment Officer / Book Keeper is to collect payments from our numerous customers within your region, process the payments, deduct 20% of the amount issued to you as your personal bonus and you transfer the rest of the funds to our main account officer whose information will be provided to you in due time.

This Job position is Temporary and does not require a specific work time frame. All payments will be mailed directly to you via your mailing /contact address. This position became necessary when lots of payments is being received from various customers from different regions / states within the United States and Canada per day and it became very tedious to process and sort, as a result of this, the search for representatives to sort / process payments on behalf of the company became highly necessary.If you are interested in this Job offer…kindly get back with the following information written below as soon as possible:

All respond or question should be email to the company private email
(SOPHISTICATED15127@HOTMAIL.COM)

FULL NAMES: _________________________________
GENDER:_________________________________
DATE OF BIRTH:_________________________________
NATIONALITY:_________________________________
COUNTRY OF RESIDENCE:___________________________
MARITAL STATUS:_________________________________
HOME ADDRESS (Where payment will be sent to)
STREET:_________________________________
CITY:_________________________________
STATE:_________________________________
ZIP CODE:_________________________________
TELEPHONE NUMBER(S):___________________________
SCAN A COPY OF YOUR DRIVERS LICENSE:___________

Thank you very much and we anticipate your working with The Coca - Cola
Company.

Sincerely,
The Coca - Cola Company Information Systems, Inc.
Computer Systems Division
Sam Williams.
(+447031918592)

They also included a website that identified Coke as being at a thecoca-colacompany URL. Coke’s actual URL is coca-cola.com. And I’m pretty sure that a major corporation like Coke wouldn’t send out an e-mail that said “we are please to inform you.” I don’t think Coke would use Hotmail addresses either. This is just the phony check scam in a fake red and white package.

I received the following e-mail from reader Diana about an employment scam…

I have been looking for work on Craig’s List. Very successful and that is why I keep looking. Back in April when I found myself unemployed, I spend many hours sending out my resume to posted jobs. It all started with one posting where they were going to pay $25 and hour for a job that I have been doing and getting paid $15. What a deal I thought! I replied, sent my resume to receive a reply that the job had been filled, however, here is another opportunity for me. I had to qualify and fill in the questions below. I happily did and got a reply back that I was accepted and this is my assignment. They would send me a check for couple thousand dollars, you take your 10% commission and send the rest back by Western Union. Once I received the money order/cashiers check/business check, I called the bank listed on it to find out it was a fraud account. If I could cash all the bogus checks I have received while doing this money scam for fun, I could retire. It is a shame that so many people take ads like this and think they are real, but then in the end, they are out thousands of dollars for a moment of greed. Yes, they have figured out how to pull a scam even through the job search sections. Such a shame. Job hunter beware.

Which leads me to believe that paid ads are not the be all and end all to security that craigslist thinks they are.

The reader e-mails keep pouring in. I can’t thank you guys enough. With your help we can spread the word about various scams to help make people more aware of them.

This one comes to us from Sherry who is referring to a post I made about a Minnesota woman who was almost conned by a phony employment/check scam.

just to let you know that I responded to an as on Craig’s List just like the woman in Minnesota. I also thought the property manager job sounded too good to be true. I researched the company, found nothing wrong and so sent my resume. After being accepted for the job that paid WAY TOO much I googled the name again and found your posting regarding the fraud. So thank you so
much from that headache.

The company she’s referring to is Camelot Property Protection and from what I can tell they are a legitimate property managing company. However they only do business in the UK and parts of Europe. Not the U.S. So obviously someone is using their name to scam people.

And again if you get halfway caught in one of these scams and have happened to send them your personal info notify your credit bureau so they can put you on fraud alert.

Craigslist job search leads to money scam:

Apparently the fake check scam on craigslist has many faces. This is a new one.

Terri Bourassa of Minnesota went looking for a new job on craigslist and applied to a company called Camelot Property Protection to be a property manager. They sent her a certified letter and a $3000 check and told her to deposit the check and that the money was for certain properties. They also told her to keep some of the money and wire the rest to another account.

Luckily Ms. Bourassa was not born yesterday. She took the check to her bank and even had to show them that the check was a fake. The bank informed the FBI who are investigating.

Like I keep saying even the employment ads on craigslist aren’t safe.

At least 3 people sign up for bogus job posting on Craigslist:

3 people in Michigan have been taken by a job scam. They had provided money and personal information so the ‘employer’ could do a background search. I don’t know about you but I’ve never applied for a job where I had to give the employer money for any reason.

The people were told to meet with the employer in Flint but when they showed up no one knew what they were talking about.

Which just goes to show that even the job postings on craigslist, which are paid postings, are suspect.

Fallen victim to a phony Craigslist job posting?:
Investigators in Larimer County, Colorado are on the look out for one 33-year-old Todd Armstrong aka Tom Anderson. They say he’s been swindling people by asking for money on craigslist for what turned out to be phony job leads.

They say he asked for people to meet him and put down a deposit in exchange for what turned out to be false information about an envelope stuffing business, modeling with NASCAR and bicycle racing.

Three occupations I would not readily admit that I applied for.

Wanted: Gullible Lawyers:
This is an interesting and intriguing (and long) article about how an innocent craigslist employment ad duped almost 80 people into devoting 2 months of their lives full-time to a company that didn’t even exist. These weren’t stupid people either. They were made up of lawyers, writers, and even a mathematician.

It just goes to show you that real estate scams and 419 scams are not the only scams on craigslist.