The scam e-mails sure have increased since the latest updates of my resume. Go figure, some actually refer to finding me on MSN’s Career Builder. How disappointing.
While some scammers try to look like legit businesses (I’ve written about several of them over the past few weeks), others are just blatant 419 scammers. The latest style of 419 scammer claims that they need someone in America to process payments for their organization. You process payments, they give you 10% of the processing as payment.
What are they after? Your bank account information. That simple. One of my most recent ones went into great detail on their supposed business. And I know they got my address from one of the resume sites. Why do I know it? It’s an address I don’t make public anywhere, and only use it for my resumes. Prior to listing the resumes I received no spam in the account. Since listing, tons of spam. Here’s part of their e-mail:
All work will consist of the following stages:
1. You should fill in and sign the contract and EMPLOYMENT APPLICATION.
2. To send us by e-mail or fax:
A) a copy of the signed contract and the employment application.
B) Yours Photo ID(In a staff department of EuropeTrade Group
will your personal labour book, therefore your photo will be attached to
the labour book)
C) Copy of the ID documents (Driving licence, the passport or
other)
3. After that you will receive a position of Sales Representative in our
company.
At this stage we inform our customers about you.
Some our customers will use checks for payment of our goods,
therefore they will write out checks for your name.
There can be some customers will want to transfer money directly in your
hands.
But it will be possible only after that
As we shall send you a employer card of our company.
You should present this card to all our customers.
Without this card our customers have not the right to transfer money
directly in hands.
4. Other customers who will prefer to use checks, will write out it for
your name and to send
On your home address regular mail.
5. We inform you how many, when and from whom you receive checks.
6. After you receive checks, you should exchange it for cash.
7. Then you should send money (90 percent from the sum) to our Financial
Manager in Russia.
** Money Gram fee should be taken from the sum of the checks
Gee, sounds real to me, right? Nah, one of the dead give aways on these types of spammers is their command of the language.
Keep your eyes out for these work from home opportunities. If it sounds to good to be true, it is. The most amazing part, people fall for these things every day. Sad, just sad.
The other more legit looking job scam I received today comes from SixQ dot biz (not linking to them). A “person” named Dave Handley got in touch and claims to want to know if you’re still looking for work. He represents the company as a head hunter group. If you e-mail back you get an instant response back in e-mail to go to a web link to apply. The instant response is an “auto-responder”.
Instead of filling out their application, I poked around the site. They list many career tracks that they represent, so I clicked on them to see what they really had. Amazingly enough, each of the tracks I followed led to outside advertising for jobs, none of which were part of their “company”. For the less wary job seeker, the group might actually look legitimate. They’re not.
Just to be sure I did a Google search on them. Once again, this organization came up on several fraud and 419 scam sites.
The bottom line. There are a ton of people out there looking to get your identity, account information, or even just confirm your e-mail address. Be wary gang! In my case, I signed up with a fraud alert agency a while ago. Traveling the country I think one should be extra careful!
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