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DreamProject Ltd
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!
Sample "Payment officer" scam emails:
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