I think I might be getting set up for a job-offer scam.

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 06 Jun 2009 Posts: 6

Hey guys I'm new round here. I heard about the site from the This American Life show and I've always held this address in the back of my mind for times like this.

Anyway, here's the situation. I was looking at the job listings at craigslist and stumbled upon a personal assistant job. The guy was offering almost double what I make at my retail job in his ad for basic office work, answering phones, scheduling flights, and whatnot. I set him an e-mail saying I'd like the job and here's what he sent back me.

"Dear ,

Thanks for your interests in the position,I will deeply appreciate all genuine efforts to help me monitor and keep up to date with all my activities.

I have had a previous PA who has been very commendable in her activities and who has been part of my life for the past 6 months, she has since returned to her country. I sincerely hope I will be able to find someone again who will be as efficient as she has been.

I'm Mr. Martin Bruce, 39, originally from Australia,but I have spent a whole lot here in United State.I'm a lawyer by profession and I have been pretty successful in a handful of ventures I get involved in; from the Angel Investment Network in Canada and United State to various welfare and community service programs, I most very often get my hands occupied, so it is imperative for me to have a worthy assistant who can monitor and keep me up to date with my activities.

As my assistant, your activities amongst other things will include;
*Running personal errands, supervisions and monitorings.
*Scheduling programmes, flights and keeping me up to date with them.
*Acting as an alternative telephone correspondence when I'm away.
*Making regular contacts and drop-offs on my behalf.
*Handling and monitoring some of my financial activities.

Basic wage is $500 a week

This position is home-based and flexible, working with me is basically about instructions and following them, my only fear is that I may come at you impromptue sometimes, so I need someone who can be able to meet up with my irregular timings.There is also a very sensitive issue on trust and accountability which I believe will resolve itself as time goes on. This is only an introductory e-mail, as time goes on we should be able to arrange a proper meeting to get things started officially.

I'm currently in the Queensland Australia now for a summit, however, I do have a number of things you could help me with this week if you will be available for me. This can act as a stable foundation to our working relationship.

Hope to hear from you again.

Regards.
Mr. Martin Bruce."

So there are a couple of things here that are kind of upsetting to me.
1) He didn't type my first or last name in the title. He literally put "Dear ,". This make me think it might have been sent out to numerous people at a time.
2)The English is very spotty even for an Australian (No offense to you Australians out there).
3)He's asking me to potentially do work for him while he's not there. That's kind of weird I think.
4)In my first (so far only) email to him I made kind of a fuss about transportation to work. I told him I didn't have a car and that I wanted to know if that would be a problem. He didn't mention this at all in his reply.

So what do you guys think? Am I being too paranoid or is this some kind of scam that you've run into before? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 9:28 am

Hi galacticronin and welcome to Eater.

It sounds like he could be setting you up either for a cheque cashing scam (where you get sent a fake check, cash it and send the money via Western Union) or a mule scam (where you get deliveries of stolen goods and forward them onto a third party).

Could you post the headers of the email (remove your personal details) and we might be able to get a better idea of where he is emailing from.

EDIT: A search on some of the activities leads to a match on our sister site ScamWarners here.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 06 Jun 2009 Posts: 6

You mean this stuff? Sorry I'm kind of new to this.

from Martin Bruce <[email protected]>
to My Name <myemailaddress>
date Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 2:01 AM
subject Thanks for the reply
mailed-by yahoo.com
signed-by yahoo.com

Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 9:34 am

No, what we need are the full headers. Are you using Yahoo?

If so when you're viewing the email, you will see a link that says 'standard header'. Click on that and you will get an option that says 'full header' if you select that it will pop-up a window with the full headers in it. If you copy that and just remove your email and name.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 06 Jun 2009 Posts: 6

No, I'm using Gmail. 1 sec let me check again.

Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 9:38 am

OK, when you are viewing the email, next to the word reply, you will see a down arrow. Click on that and you'll get a load of options, one of which will be 'Show original'. Select that and it will display the full message, including the headers in a new window.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 06 Jun 2009 Posts: 6

Fantastic. Thanks B8er you totally saved me from potential huge disaster. This is an awesome site for sure.

So what now? I kind of want to send an email back cussing him out or something. Should I just ignore it? Or do something else with it?

Again thanks so much for the help. I really appreciate it.

Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 9:43 am

The email originates from 41.219.195.69 which is Nigeria (Lagos) so it is a definite scam.

BTW you might want to edit your previous post, you've left your email address and name in there.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 06 Jun 2009 Posts: 6

Fantastic. Thanks B8er you totally saved me from potential huge disaster. This is an awesome site for sure.

So what now? I kind of want to send an email back cussing him out or something. Should I just ignore it? Or do something else with it?

Again thanks so much for the help. I really appreciate it.

If I wasn't looking for a job right now I'd definitely donate to the site for the help. It's nice to know a place like this exists to help all the naive young kids out there.

Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 10:00 am

Since he's got your real life details, I would just ignore him. He might send you a few more emails (you can set up a filter in Gmail to delete them straight away), but in the end he'll give up as there's no money in it for him.

Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 10:48 am

If you want to bait him, set up a baiting account at Gmail, and reply from that.
He won't realise that he he hadn't emailed you at that address.

Posted: Sat Jun 06, 2009 2:59 pm

Hi galacticronin, Welcome to Eater! Good job in spotting the scam. Please don't send him a note telling him off, because that might educate him as to what he did wrong. We don't want to educate them. In fact we try to de-educate them. Wink

Getting caught up in a scam has nothing to do with age, there are a lot of "mature" adults that fall for these things too.

As Mr. T suggested, you can setup a new email account with Gmail and contact him from that. Make sure the new email account does not tie to your personal details in any way. Set it up using a fake name, different location, etc. You could also post up his info on this site and let some of the other baiters play with him.

Don't feel bad that you can't donate. You can help us by joining in on the baiting and doing your part to make the scammers' lives a little bit more miserable.

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 1:10 am

Wow, that's the first time I've seen that particular format. And I'm always on the look for job scams, because I LOOOVE to collect fake checks.

I do want to say...GOOD JOB in recognizing the scam! You definitely caught all the key clues. Sadly, this format probably WILL attract some victims who won't recognize the red flags. For a scammy format, it's actually probably a pretty effective one.

Which makes me want to bait this lad even more. I see all kinds of possibilities for wild fun with him.

I'll drop him a response. You're right - he probably HAS sent that format out to hundreds...so a reply from an unfamiliar email won't catch his attention, he'll just think that some poor shmuck has bit.

Oh, and just to add my voice to the others...drop him. Safe baiting 101: never bait from your real email addy.

Thanks for posting this!

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 1:36 am

I sent him an email, we'll see where it goes. I've seen quite a few scams posted on Craigslist recently where there is no mention of checks until later on. They're getting very sneaky. Mad

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jan 2009 Posts: 1440

It's also handy to Google a few key words when you get emails like that.

If you Google "Angel Investment Network", you'll see they dont' use a Yahoo email address. Scammers pretending to be from big corporations always use free email addys. Pretty good clue!

http://www.angelinvestmentnetwork.ca/contact

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 06 Jun 2009 Posts: 6

Go ahead and do whatever you want with this guy. I don't think I really have the time to get into this until I find a new job. I only got a couple months this summer to save up for college this fall.
I was thinking maybe this is something that needs to be taken to Craig @ craigslist. Though he might be a little to busy with other stuff I guess. I still can't believe this happened to me I feel like such an idiot.

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 8:12 am

B8er wrote:

It sounds like he could be setting you up either for a cheque cashing scam (where you get sent a fake check, cash it and send the money via Western Union) or a mule scam (where you get deliveries of stolen goods and forward them onto a third party).

If this is the case then don't that mean that galacticronin will need a PO box to receive the cheques/items?

We too have just started a similar bait, but if we need a valid address then we may have to drop him.
Although I do have a friend that would be willing to have things posted to him, but although he don't care about being involved, I wouldn't want to have an ITP involved if possible.

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 8:56 am

^^^^galacticronin wasn't looking to bait them, they received the details following a RL job enquiry.

Also, I definitely wouldn't try and receive packages from scammers. It is one thing to have fake cheques sent to a PO Box, but another to have stolen goods sent to you.

Even if the PO Box is anonymous, the police will still find out who it belongs to and you will find yourself being investigated for handling stolen goods.

Posted: Sun Jun 07, 2009 10:29 am

^^^
Yeah we understand about not having parcels sent to us but getting a few fake cheques would be cool.

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