Got the following scam e-mail slipping through a few minutes ago. I'll post the mail and then show you how to tell it's a scam:

From: hkphycdcr@br.zurich.com
Subject: Earn up to 2000$ a month extra!

Point Focus LLC is now expanding! To deal with the international payments processings we are now looking for people willing to facilitate establishing of our all-round-the-globe business connections and assist saving considerably by tax disbursing reduction. This position of the Financial Assistant involves accepting payments from our Australian, UK and US ( rarer Spanish) clients to your account and resending to our partners.

You are getting paid right by the moment you cash the payment. It's the commission in amount equal to 4% out the sum posted on your account. This very amount you're deducting before sending anything out. So,estimated roughly, you can make up to 2000$ extra monthly.

Plus, you get:
- flexi-time (usually 2-3 hours a day)
- Saturdays & Sundays off

Requirements:
- Have to be aged 21 or above
- No criminal record
- Regular Internet access
- Ability to accept payments using your bank account
- Ability to resend the money through Western Union

If feel qualified, please, attach the following info to start up with:
- Fist Name:
- Last Name:
- Age:
- Sex:
- Country
- State, City, Zip
- Phone number (home and cell)
- Valid email address

NOTE!!!! the email address you use to contact us for the first time is: jade.focuswork.lawn@gmail.com , in the subject field put "interested".
Please, use only mentioned email address, otherwise we'll fail to receive your response.

Couple of simple ways to tell it's a scam.

First, no legitimate company needs people to cash checks for them. They can actually do it through a number of banks or financial services companies for WAY less than they're offering to pay you.

This is an old scam. They send you forged checks. You take them to the bank. They pass first inspection and the bank cashes them for you. They go to the clearinghouse, get nailed as fraudulent, the bank comes back to you and asks for its money back. You've already sent it to your "employers" and now you're on the hook for paying the bank back, plus you're an accessory to a felony.

Second, why is someone at Point Focus LLC mailing you from zurich.com (a large insurance and financial services company that would have no problem with U.S. financial transactions) and asking you to mail back to someone at a free mail account on Google's gmail? This is a very common red flag of these types of scams: they mail you with some random return address that is not related to the company they claim to represent and then ask you to mail back to a free e-mail service like Gmail, hotmail, Yahoo, etc. (though gmail is the most common).

Last, they tell you that you'll earn $2,000 a month for 10-15 hours a week of work. They're offering you $30-45 an hour for an unskilled part time position. As my father taught me: if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

I know you wanted this to be real. We all do. Times are tough and who couldn't use $2000 extra a month? But I'm sorry to say that if you bite this hook, you'll get gutted.

Best of luck to you all and God bless.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Job Hunting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.