Just got the following slipping through my spam filters. I'll post the text and then we'll look at the big red flags that show it's a scam.
From: kippar chinpan >2vivarais.transactions@century21france.fr<
Subject: Admininstrative Officer Required - 1500/weekWe are a Germany company, we are doing business all over the Europe, our main activities are real estate investments and digital currencies exchanges.
As a result of expading our business in North American region, our company must keep up with our American customers accepting the most popular payments in the United States: Paypal. We are currently seeking an dependable and enthusiastic US representative to handle the transactions.
Being located in Germany, a transfer via Paypal system sent here can take up to 14 days to arrive, therefore we need a US representative with an US paypal account who able to accept the payments from our US customers.
This will significantly improve our business, that's why we can pay 5% from every transfer processed.
Almost anyone is accepted, but a verified paypal account is required, an account where you will be receiving the transfers.
If you are interested to find more about this position, let me know at: martin_rohwerder@live.comThank you,
Martin Rohwerder
Dibag Industries AG
Big red flag #1: The person who ostensibly sent the mail, Kippar Chinpan, is not the person who signed the mail, Martin Rohwerder.
Big Red Flag #2: The company the mail was ostensibly sent from, Century 21 France, is not the same as the company that's supposedly recruiting you, Dibag Industries AG.
Big Red Flag #3: If they have such a huge internet presence as to send you all these PayPal transactions to process for them, why are they using a free/throwaway e-mail account from live.com?
Big Red Flag #4: "Almost anyone is accepted"... for a $75,000 a year job? And why are they spamming people for it? If they were legit, you'd think friends and relatives of their employees who were in the U.S. would be knocking down their doors for the jobs. People would be competing for such easy money. Furthermore, to make $1500 a week on 5% commissions, you'd have to be processing $1.5 million a year in payments for them. They're just going to start funnelling $125,000 a month to "almost anyone" and trust that it will be handled properly?
Last Big Red Flag: Their complaint is: "being located in Germany, a transfer via Paypal system sent here can take up to 14 days to arrive, therefore we need a US representative." So they're going to pay you 5% plus the Western Union fees to get their money 14 days earlier. Two weeks at 100% interest is only 3.86%. If they had an investment guaranteed to double their money in a year, it would still be cheaper to wait 2 weeks than pay you 5% plus pay Western Union fees.
You've probably heard of "phishing," where scam artists try to trick people into divulging their PayPal login and password. This is the second stage. Once they have all those passwords, they can't just transfer all the money into their own verified PayPal accounts. They'll be caught.
They need dupes. They get people to register for this "job" and then send them payments from the compromised accounts. The dupe receives the payment, cashes it out quickly and sends it off. A day or two later, when the fraud victim notices the money PayPal took out of his account, he contacts PayPal and complains. You have no proof that there was any legitimate business transaction with this person and PayPal returns his money, withdrawing it from your account.
When you complain to your new "employer" so you can get the money returned... good luck ever finding them again.
No legitimate business abroad needs average shmoes in the U.S., Canada, or Australia to process payments for them. There are banks and financial services firms that handle this kind of thing when it's needed and charge lower rates. The only companies offering these jobs are criminals looking to use you as a dupe in their PayPal or check cashing scam. And unlike an identity theft victim who gets their money back in many cases, you actively participated in the scam, so you're on the hook to pay back every penny you sent to these scam artists.
The scam artists make money, Western Union makes money, you get screwed.
Best of luck. Stay sharp.
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Just received same e-mail with same text funny enough i Dibag industries AG into search engine and came to this website, to me its money laundering, may be but the way it sounded to me when i was reading it i was 100% sure its fraud and thanks a million for investigating all the technicalities as not all of us are able to do that.
nice work
Got it again at 3:27 this morning at another unrelated address, only this time the sender was "Guillermo Adair" (jvix@brandintelligence.com) and the address to respond to was dibagiassistant@gmail.com. The rest of the text was pretty much the same and the person to reply to remained Martin Rohewerder.
Agreed! I knew it was a scam, but I wanted to dig a little deeper and see what kind it might be. I think you have hit the nail on the head! When I googled the company, the first few responses seemed to be that it was a reputable german company, but I thought those could be planted websites by the scam artists. The stupid people they are trying to fool probably wouldn't go to much more trouble than that. When I added the word SCAM, your site popped up!
Great job trying to help unsuspecting people! It's wonderful that there are people in the world like you.
I am so glad I did my research, I recieved the exact e-mail and was actually considering opening up a pay pal account. Thank you so much for making sure we all know it's a SCAM.
i just got it too! I usually dont even open these emails but decided to let my curiosity take lead...
same text but sent by joshua subhdail and reply to dibagassistant@gmail.com. I googled it and decided to read YOUR site instead of theirs. They sure look like money laundering to me!
thanks for being so clear and helping clean the internet !
best
kathryn
I received the same e-mail only my red flags were the fact that they are a German based company but the e-mail came from Canada "cedric ariella [nymegan.mdrks@2flycanada.com]" and the e-mail they wanted you to respond to was a gmail account
(martin.assistants@gmail.com)
I received this same email today. This time around, the sender was: jozef glendon at yramer@ewa.at. Martin's new email address is: dibagassistants@gmail.com.
I received the same, I hate to give away what I use as hints to garbage emails but I will. I look at sentence structure, grammar and the like. I figure a reputable company will do a more professional job and of course I also use the old adage 'if it seems to good to be true, it probably is'. I may have missed out on one or two awesome opprotunities but I am sure to have missed out on several scams.
Carol,
I'd normally agree with you, but there are a lot of people working in the recruiting industry for high-tech who speak English as a second or even third language. I've gotten more than my fair share of "I have client who looks for [Name of Skill] Expert for 6-12 months contracting".
The job opportunities (not offers, just opportunities) are legit, but quite often these recruiters stumble around grammatically.
I take grammar into account, but weight it lower than other factors. Perhaps even more than the "too good to be true" factor is the indiscriminate nature of the contact and offer that happens with these check and PayPal scams.
If a company is hiring anyone with a pulse, then even if the job is legit, it's a bad deal. Usually, the only reason to hire so indiscriminately is because of heavy churn, i.e. the job sucks so hard that most of the people who take it end up quitting and you have to hire a ton of people to get a handful who'll stick. Either way, whether it's a high-churn job because they're crooks or because the job sucks, you want to stay away from it.
I got one of these the other day, and decided I would try to take the person for a ride. I figured they would try to compromise my account, but now that I read your text, it all makes sense. I got a paypal payment of nearly $500. They want me to withdrawal it to my bank account, and Western Union it to them (minus my fee). What I'll do it refund the paypal payment, and then tell them I've sent it Western Union (but the wrong location). Make them spend money and time going to a fictitious Western Union place. Suckers!
Edward,
Not to be a party pooper, but a lot of these scams are run by organized crime. Do you really want someone from the Russian Mafia knocking on your door, saying "so you think you're funny, huh"? The idea is to stay off these people's radars, not to play games with them. Playing games with them can be dangerous.
Unfortunately i did not do my homework and i got scammed and now have a negative balance on my PayPal account. I have tried contacting "Martin" but of course no response after the job is done. Now what?
Kelly,
There's no way you're getting your money back from "Martin". He's in another country and even if you succeeded at the extreme long shot of getting him arrested there and then extradited here for trial, actually recovering assets would be next to impossible and it would all take years.
You can throw yourself on PayPal's mercies. They might be willing to reduce the negative balance, but I'm pretty sure you're going to have to pay at least some of it back.
Last, but not least, drop e-mails to the news tips addresses at your local paper(s) and local TV news. If you're willing to tell them your story, you could save someone else from getting hurt like this.
I also got this email few weeks ago. That guys is trying to convince me and already transfer $ 499.99 into my paypal account, transferring under a different name. I am suspending what he is tricking. I am not going to do with that amount of money. I will find out and try to contact a sender name a reason he/she transferred money into my Paypal account. Can anyone tell me how to deal with it? my email address is: chukfree@gmail.com
Serey, I was left an email from PayPal notifying me about the unauthorized funds in my account and they just paid the customer back. If the funds are still in your account, leave them there so you don't go negative.