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Job and Recruiting Scams:
Payment Officer Scam
DreamProject Ltd, Russia
Vladimir Voldin, www.dreamprojectltd.com
Have you received an email from Vladimir Voldin of "DreamProject Ltd" in Russia (or ANYWHERE else) offering you
a job as a "Financial Manager", "Payment Officer", "local agent" or "local representative" in which
you "receive payments", deduct your "Processing fee", deposit the checks and
then wire most of the money to an overseas "company"?
It is an AFF / Money transfer Scam.
They'll send you counterfeit checks which you are supposed to deposit, take out
some percentage (typically, 10%) for your work, and then MoneyGram or Western
Union wire the remaining 90%. Notice that although you receive checks, they
won't let you forward a check to them, only Western Union or Money Gram. There's
a reason for this: Western Union and MoneyGrams are cashed immediately and are
untraceable and irretrievable. Bank checks can take 1 or 2 weeks to clear!
Of course, since the check is fake, it will bounce a week or so later after
you deposit it. But you have already moneygram'ed the scammers the 90% of
the amount, and that is transacted almost instantly. So you now owe the
bank for the full amount. You may also face criminal charges for passing
counterfeit checks. See
this page for a step-by-step explanation of how the scam unfolds.
In the email below, there are some many red flags, we
can't imagine any way it could be legitimate. But you can try emailing "Vladimir Voldin"
back and asking:
- What is your company's physical address and phone number?
- Where is your company registered / licensed and what is the
business license number?
- Does your company have a web site? If so, what is the url?
- What is the business email address for the company? (the email address
you supplied for reply is a
free, non-business email account - gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc., not a
commercial email account)
- What is the value to the company of people like me receiving
payments (checks, wires, etc.), cashing them and forwarding the money?
- Why aren’t the payment deposited directly into your own banking
account, as any major bank can receive checks and wires drawn on any legitimate bank
anywhere in the world, in any currency?
Try cutting and pasting those questions and emailing
them back to the person offering the "job", "Vladimir Voldin" in this case and see how he
responds. We’ll bet it will be with hostility, like:
“Why are you asking me these questions? We are
offering you a legitimate job, but you are treating us like we are scammers!
If you are not interested we can find someone else; it is YOUR loss!”
Which, of course, is how a scammer caught with questions
that expose his scam, will reply!
In this case, the bottom line is simple: do you honestly believe that you can
trust a Russian company that approached you at random by email? We
sincerely hope you are not that naive!
Do you have a resume posted online? We'd like to hear from you about your
experiences recruiting emails that turned out to be scams or misleading -
click here to write us.
Any highlighted
passages in the actual scam email below are to draw your attention to clues (the
highlighting itself was not present in the original email).
They illustrate some of the additional clues that it is a scam, such as the email
comes from a free email account (such as Yahoo.com, Hotmail.com, Aim.com, Gmail,
cox.net, etc.). Wouldn't you expect a company to have its own website and
email address (after all, it only costs about $200/year; every reputable company
has its own website these days!) And don't be surprised if the scammers do put
the names of real companies, real websites and events in their scams; it doesn't
mean anything at all!
From: Vladimir Voldin <
manager@dreamprojectltd.com >
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 5:28:35 AM
Subject: JobOffer:
Other Jobs Scams
There are a variety of sleazy scams that look, at first glance, like
legitimate job offers. Before you write back to them, pause a moment and read about the scams below!
Some of the more common job scams are
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