Protect Yourself and Report the Latest Frauds, Scams, Spams, Fakes, Identify Theft Hacks and Hoaxes
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Have you received an email from Michael Wenzel of "Tourism New Zealand" in New Zealand (or ANYWHERE else) offering you a job as a "Financial Representative", "Payment Officer", "local agent" or "local representative" in which you "receive payments", deduct your "Processing fee", deposit the checks and then wire most of the money to an overseas "company"?
It is an AFF / Money transfer Scam. They'll send you counterfeit checks which you are supposed to deposit, take out some percentage (typically, 10%) for your work, and then MoneyGram or Western Union wire the remaining 90%. Notice that although you receive checks, they won't let you forward a check to them, only Western Union or Money Gram. There's a reason for this: Western Union and MoneyGrams are cashed immediately and are untraceable and irretrievable. Bank checks can take 1 or 2 weeks to clear!
Of course, since the check is fake, it will bounce a week or so later after you deposit it. But you have already moneygram'ed the scammers the 90% of the amount, and that is transacted almost instantly. So you now owe the bank for the full amount. You may also face criminal charges for passing counterfeit checks. See this page for a step-by-step explanation of how the scam unfolds.
Do you have a resume posted online? We'd like to hear from you about your experiences recruiting emails that turned out to be scams or misleading - click here to write us.
Notice the passages we have highlighted in the actual scam email below. They illustrate some of the additional clues that it is a scam, such as the email comes from a free email account (such as Yahoo.com, Hotmail.com, Aim.com, Gmail, cox.net, etc.). Wouldn't you expect a company to have its own website and email address (after all, it only costs about $200/year; every reputable company has its own website these days!) And don't be surprised if the scammers do put the names of real companies, real websites and events in their scams; it doesn't mean anything at all!
Re: Sales Rep‏
From: Wenzel (tnz.wenzel@gmail.com)
Sent: Tue 2/26/08 6:40 PM
Hello Amy, We have received and reviewed your resume. Your qualification is acceptable for Company Representative Position. You may find more information about salary, job functions, skills and requirements at: JOB DESCRIPTION.doc attached to this message. If you'd like to apply to this position, please follow next application process: 1. Read job description document and respond me back with you questions and/or agree word2. I will send you employment agreement and application form, you'll need to fill it out and send back signed3. I will forward your application documents to our hiring and security dept4. You will be noticed about acceptance by e-mail Please Note: Your resume will be verified by our security department for security purposes. This is regular process in our company. My job is to assist you in managing payments and I'll be happy to do the utmost to help you whenever possible.
Best regards,
Michael Wenzel
JOB DESCRIPTION
Company name Tourism New Zealand
Job location USA - All States
Position Financial Representative
Job Summary:
We are big touristic company located in New Zealand. We have a lot of offices around the globe. At this time we are looking for someone with superior communication skills to enhance our team. During all working process you will represent our company at US market. What will you do for us? You will communicate with customers and clients by phone/e-mail; you will manage company contacts and provide support for new clients; you will make billing records; you will be official representative of our company. Main part of your job is to provide to our dealers, partners, customers and clients financial assistant. It means that you will operate with money transfers too. We have multiple representatives all over the country; some of them handle meetings with clients and selling our tours, and some handle payment issues, delivering accepted from our clients' payments to main processing offices all over the world and so on. No movement from your location is involved with this job. Specifically your task will be to accept, process and deliver payments received from our US clients to us, the more we expand our exotic tours sale in US, the more clients we have and the more wages you get.
Primary objectives include:
- Relationship management with advisers on a day-to-day basis, mostly by telephone
- Solving adviser issues
- Actively supporting a team environment to flourish in this role you will need to demonstrate
- superior communication and organizational skills
- strong relationship management, analytical and problem solving skills
- an understanding of processing transfers and sending payments
- an enthusiasm for working in a target driven environment
Salary:
Tourism New Zealand provides two payment periods. During first, trial period (one month), you will be paid $2,000.00 per month plus 5% bonus on every transaction received and processed while working approximately 12-15 hours a week. Your salary will be sent in the form of wire transfer directly to your account. After the trial period your base pay salary will go up to $4,500.00 per month, plus 10% commission.
Fees and transferring rules:
All fees are covered by the company. The fees for transferring are simply deducted from the payments received. Customer will not contact you during initial stage of the trial period. After three weeks of the trial period you will begin to have contact with the customers vian email in regards to collection of the payments. For the first three weeks you will simply receive all of the transferring details, and payments, along with step by step guidance from your supervisor. You will be forwarding the received payments through transferring agents such as Western Union, Money Gram, any P2P agents or by wire transferring.
Skills and requirements:
- You need 3-4 hours a day of available time
- Simple computer skills (MS Word/Adobe Acrobat Reader/MS Excel)
- Internet, E-Mail, Cellular Phone, Home Phone
- Bank Account for transaction processing
Main duties for this position:
- Processing assets to/from our customers
- Making simple brokerage activities (percent salary)
- Advertisement activities at local business market
- Supporting customers by phone call or e-mail
- Making simple supervisors duties
- Making records of all incoming and outgoing transfers (MS Word/Excel)
There are a variety of sleazy scams that look, at first glance, like legitimate job offers. Before you write back to them, pause a moment and read about the scams below!
Some of the more common job scams are