Email Scam

[Mike]

Hi all

Obviously know this is a scam but wondered how it would develop to get my money ???

Frist email

We require representatives in UK for customer service/administrative job.No special knowledge in computer/it required! No relocation fromUKrequired, you will operate from your current location. EU citizens arealso welcome to apply.Job schedule is mostly in the morning or in the afternoon, 2-3 hours a day.Shirtz Unlimited Ltd. operates in USA and develops web-products(databases, c++ applications, mysql) for customers from UK. Ourclients have to pay with bank payments due to the contracts. We do nothave representative office in UK. So, we cannot accept payments by bank transfer inside the country.Job duties are: to receive invoice payments from our UK customers, 3 times a week, process it and resend to our main office.You are paid 5 percent commission from each payment + 4500 EURO base salary a month + all travel fees, bank charges and taxes.You can use your own bank account for this job, or open new one. It doesn't matter for us and is for your convenience.We don't ask any secure details and never ask any money to start job, we are serious company and the job is 100 percent legal.You are paid commission instantly 3 times a week and based salary at the end of every month.No relocation required, you can do the job in your area.Please, confirm if you accept the job, I will send you further details and application form.Send confirmation in format: I, “name”, accept this job, “date”.

Second email

[I]Good day.
Please, see application form in the attachment. Note, we do not ask any secure details, only usual information required for bank transfers and personal information required to contact you. Please, fill forms and send them back to us by e-mail.
The job starts in 1-3 days as soon as you send back filled application forms.
Our manager will call you with full description of job duties and instructions.
Please, leave reachable phone numbers, we will call you every time transfers take place.
You can either fill the forms by hand, scan them and send back to us by e-mail or fill it electronically and send back also by e-mail.
You will receive transfers to your account 3 times a week.
Every time you receive the transfer, you have to pick it up from bank
(ask your bank the maximum amount you can pick up daily), subtract
your 5 percent commission and resend the remaining amount to our head
office. We pay all fees connected with this job (bank fees, travel
fees, etc.). Usually it will take you not more than 1-3 hours to reach
the bank, pick up cash and resend it. The based salary (4500 EUR) is paid at the end of every month in addition to commission earned.
Commission is paid every day.
Feel free to ask any questions.
We will start as soon as you send back filled form.
* In case you cannot open or read attached application, e-mail us back, I will resend you files in .pdf format.
Thank you and have a nice day

What do people think !

[Kymmy]

It's an old scam, they get you to cash checks/transfers through your bank account thus laundering money..

[Dai]

Or the cheques deposited turn out later to be counterfeit, by which time you have sent money to the fraudsters. You end up with the bank charging you for the phoney deposits.

[Russ]

And you'll get a visit from the local Fraud Squad.

[cookie_365]

And find your name added to a list of suckers and traded with other fraudsters.

[Peter_]

you would have to be pretty damn stupid to reply to such an email with all the information they have asked for, but these emails only exist because the are many stupid and greedy people out there all to willing to give it a go.

[Kymmy]

Stupidity is irrelevant..

It's just simple experience.. We know from experience on the internet that it is a scam.. Just look at the recent Land sale scams where level headed people looking for investments have been caught out paying £10,000 for a plot of land that has no building rights and never will have that have since been valued at £75..

Is the discoverer of fire stupid for putting their hands in the flame?

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

Stupidity is irrelevant..

It's just simple experience.. We know from experience on the internet that it is a scam.. Just look at the recent Land sale scams where level headed people looking for investments have been caught out paying £10,000 for a plot of land that has no building rights and never will have that have since been valued at £75..

Is the discoverer of fire stupid for putting their hands in the flame?

This kind of scam has been around for centuries in so different forms as the is always someone that is to greedy and stupid to know any different or even think that the offer is just to damn good to be real.

[Kymmy]

Again you use the word stupid..

Few of the victims are stupid including most of the elderly who fall prey to the con-men.. Again it's experience and few of the elderly have experience with the internet or even advanced banking..

We used to live in a trusting society (hence the usual "I used to leave my front door open") and that's the sort of trust the poeple who fall for the scam put in these people. Calling them stupid is just making it worse and I'm very surprised by that viewpoint

[techguyone]

Not stupidity or even greed.

Scammers will use every trick to sucker you.

Lets take the case below - designed to make you think that you'd paid for something that you hadn't, and you'd login on the site to see - Bingo caught.
Not greed or stupidity in this case, but fear. Different emotion, same effect.

Scammers are getting very very sophisticated now, I've recently had at least 2 emails from 'Paypal' and you'd be really hard pressed to know it wasn't Paypal, in fact on the last one, I had to actually check my Paypal account first to make sure it wasn't genuine. My wife wouldn't have done, and we'd be in deep trouble now.
(I use Paypal extensively for Ebay & other things)

I compared the two sites side by side, and apart from extremely minor differences, they looked identical, scarily similar.

The old adage of 'if it seems to good to be true, it generally is' holds up well.

Just be careful out there, there's some really really sophisticated scams going around nowadays and greed & stupidity are no longer the only part of the equation.

[Kymmy]

The URL is the easiest way of confirming if you're on paypal or not from an email. Also paypal will use your real name in all correspondence. I've even had to double check a few times when the emails have popped up.

[techguyone]

Yes URL was really close actually, in fact about the only difference on the whole site was the fact my name wasn't used.

[Waldo Pepper]

Sadly most who reply to this kind of scam are NOT stupid. Simply uninformed.
This covers the elderly who are scammed everyday without a computer.

I am so glad my elderly father does not need or want a computer. He is far too clever for that.