Job offer - Can't tell if scammer or moron

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 22 Jun 2016 Posts: 5

You know what they say, if it walks like a duck a quacks like a duck it's probably a duck. I'm pretty sure I've been baiting a scammer but I want to see what you guys think.

I'm a freelance graphic designer and I responded to an ad on a job posting site for someone to design a catalog for a furniture store. The first red flag was when the email the client sent me went straight to my spam folder. I opened it up and it seemed like it was typed to me through Google translate, the entire thing was mangled English. The client also used the word "kindly" a lot through our interactions. But he was offering me $2,000 for what would've been a few days' worth of work, so I figured why not.

He says he owns a furniture company in Florida but they don't have a website yet. I checked the IP address of his emails and it says they were coming from the Southeast United States, but something tells me they weren't - His mangled English and the fact that his most prolific period of emailing happened overnight tells me he's probably in another time zone on another continent.

The other red flag is he doesn't accept Paypal. Instead he wanted me to either use this app called Clover Go which I never heard of (But runs through Citibank) or Western Union. I have a WU account so I decided to invoice him a percentage of the deposit and see if he actually sends the money through. All day he's been saying he has to talk to his bank, but once he gets the okay he'll send it. So far no word. I also have to mention that we've been talking since Monday June 13th and in 9 days we've barely moved anywhere regarding the "project".

I've gotten hundreds of Nigerian spam emails before and ignore them, but I've never heard of scams being done through job posting sites. Either way, I haven't started any work or given him any personal information other than my email. I should just ignore him, but it's interesting in a weird way to see where this is going. And hey, if he's for real I'll be making some good money.

Thoughts?

Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2016 10:19 pm

If he has your "Real Life Info" drop him..

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 22 Jun 2016 Posts: 5

Removed unnecessary quote of previous post - bware419ers

Have you ever encountered scams like this before? My gut instinct tells me to run, and since my gut is always right.......

Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2016 11:22 pm

Sounds as fishy as hell but in any case, if you suspect it's bent and he has your real life information, just go silent and drop him.

As to how it works: could be a booking scam. They make a booking, cancel it and ask for a refund -10% for goodwill. You end up laundering payments from other victims and the police will be in touch in short order.

The real red flag is that he's offering large sums of money for the work as if he'd decided on an amount already. He's likely got that amount lined up from a victim somewhere and they are being hesitant paying - which is why nothing has moved for over a week.

You should make your excuses and leave Wink

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 22 Jun 2016 Posts: 5

Removed unnecessary quote of previous post - bware419ers

Both of these sound very plausible. In freelancing it's very common for a client to have a set amount they want to spend on a project, so when he threw out the $2,000 figure nothing was out of the ordinary procedure-wise. It can also explain why it's taken so long to get the money and why he's hesitant to use Paypal - Paypal has tons of safeguards built in to prevent scams and to keep customers from getting screwed. I doubt these other methods he wanted are that secure.

One other thing - Instead of sending the money to my WU account he said he'd give me the banking information so I could process it myself. Chances are the name he gave me would be the name on the card he stole. And I'm guessing that me using the bank information would show that I and only I made the money transfer making it look like I stole the information, not him. So therefore if I receive the money that can make me an accomplice to money laundering/guilty by association as a scammer?

Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 12:20 am

Hello Dizzle, and welcome to Eater.

To me, this thing screams "SCAM". It sounds like one of two things: either he will "overpay" you and ask you to send the difference to his accountant
(or whoever), after which the entire payment will be recalled by the bank (leaving you out of pocket), or he will pay you with a stolen account. I am no
expert, but you are right to be cautious that if you take the money from the account, your "client" has had no real involvement and you're left
holding the baby, so to speak.

Go with your gut.

Also, my advice would be to just drop him. Even though he's only got your email address, someone could still cause you no end of trouble just to be
spiteful.

Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 7:53 am

Please post the email. "Kindly" is one of the traits of West African English; most of us can recognize West African English, and I can tell, given enough text, West African English from mechanically translated West African French or vice versa. (Spanish mechanically translated from French, or vice versa, is harder to distinguish.) Also post the headers (omitting your info).

There are job scams and scams directed at businesses. See those sections of Scamwarners for lots of them.

If you want to bait this sort of lad, set up an email account for a fictitious business and reply to the ad from that account. One of my email accounts is for a small manufacturing business that makes grammeters and the like.

Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 10:25 am

If this guy is using gmail or yahoo, the header won't tell us much, but the email would be helpful.

In response to the OPs question, receiving or moving any money if this is a scam is money laundering. Yes, you can get in trouble for this, especially if you already suspect it's a scam. Best course is to drop him.

Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 11:13 am

It stinks of a scam and most likely a "booking" scam or an over-payment scam.

He will send the money to you using a compromised account or credit card (or get a victim to do it), and then one of the following will occur:

* He will need to cancel the project and as Nailgunner said ask for a refund (allowing you to keep some money for work done)
* He will find a reason to send you extra money (or do it by "mistake") and ask for the excess to be sent elsewhere or refunded.

Eventually his payment to you will be identified as fraudulent and reversed and you will have lost the money that you sent.

Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 12:26 pm

Dizzle wrote:

I'm pretty sure I've been baiting a scammer but I want to see what you guys think....I should just ignore him

I think you already found your answer. This is scammy as all get out and you're using your real life email. That's not "baiting," it's just unsafe. Drop him, block him, ignore him. You already know no good will come from this. It will possibly lead to other fake job offers, too.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 22 Jun 2016 Posts: 5

vonpaso xlura wrote:

Please post the email. "Kindly" is one of the traits of West African English; most of us can recognize West African English, and I can tell, given enough text, West African English from mechanically translated West African French or vice versa. (Spanish mechanically translated from French, or vice versa, is harder to distinguish.) Also post the headers (omitting your info).

There are job scams and scams directed at businesses. See those sections of Scamwarners for lots of them.

If you want to bait this sort of lad, set up an email account for a fictitious business and reply to the ad from that account. One of my email accounts is for a small manufacturing business that makes grammeters and the like.

Yeah, I did some research last night and a lot of people said that "kindly" is a word used by scammers. Here's his initial email:

http://i.imgur.com/5ZwudDq.jpg

Mod edit to change image to a link in order to prevent forum blowout. - JF

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 22 Jun 2016 Posts: 5

B8er wrote:

It stinks of a scam and most likely a "booking" scam or an over-payment scam.

He will send the money to you using a compromised account or credit card (or get a victim to do it), and then one of the following will occur:

* He will need to cancel the project and as Nailgunner said ask for a refund (allowing you to keep some money for work done)
* He will find a reason to send you extra money (or do it by "mistake") and ask for the excess to be sent elsewhere or refunded.

Eventually his payment to you will be identified as fraudulent and reversed and you will have lost the money that you sent.

You nailed it. I got an email from him this morning saying when he heard back from his bank he'll send me $1,500 as a deposit, then $2,500 upon completion of the work - He said his budget is $2,000, yet he's suddenly upping it to $4,000? This sounds like he's going for exactly what you mentioned. I ignored the email and will ignore all others.

Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2016 2:49 pm

There is no doubt: that is the untranslated English writing of a West African. (Maybe someone from the Bantu area, but I've heard those are West African expats.) Please post it as plain text, not an image on Scamwarners so that other victims can recognize it as a scam.

Baiting Guru Joined: 10 Oct 2010 Posts: 3876

wow, this really cries scam.

the lad wasn't really creative at the companies name, and in that text: who would ever write "this company is really based..." really? this sounds like a questions: please, believe me, it's really not a scam.

another modality they use: in their initial mail, they already reference back to an earlier mail exchange.

and: they usually buy the script and then adapt it. since west african computerkeyboards often use arabic letters + capslock for latin capital letters, the lad was unable to write in that script with regular letters. he had to use caps.

so, please stop corresponding with him and report him at scamwarners.

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