What job scam is this?

[dflower]

I sent an email and attached my resume for a job on Craigs List. This is the reply I received. It sounds odd. They could have called me as they have my phone number. What do they hope to gain? Is it unsafe to use Craigs List?

Hello there,

Thanks responding to the job post advert. I received your email with interest in the position posted but unfortunately that position is taken but I have a smaller offer for you if interested. I want to believe and hope I am dealing with an honest, responsible person because I usually would not hire anyone this way but I urgently need the services of a Personal Assistant due to my very busy schedules.

My name is Clara Theodore, an Interior Designers, Decorators & Art collector with a large client base and because of my job I’m constantly out of the State. My former Personal Assistant just got married and moved to Canada. If you accept my offer, I will need you to take charge of my mail pick ups and drop off’s as well as errand running during your spare time outside of work. The job is flexible so you can do it wherever you are as long as there is a post office in the area. I will pay for the first week in advance to run any errands, and will also have my mails/packages forwarded to a nearby post office where you can pick them from at your convenience.

All errands will be in your city/town so it is not a must you have a car, but if you do it might be a plus. When you get my mails/packages, you will be required to mail them to where I want them mailed too. The content of the packages will be business and personal mails. All expenses and taxes will be covered by me and you are to work for just 2 days per week (4 hours daily). You will be doing this for 3 weeks until I get back to town so we can formally meet and discuss about the possibility of making this arrangement long term if I’m satisfied with your performance.

How much will you charge per week? Am willing to pay $300 weekly including gas and others expenses. That is not a bad offer is it? If you accept this offer please reply with the following details:

Full Name, Physical/Residential contact address, Apt #, City, State, Zip Code, Cell number, Home number, Current Occupation and Available hours.

I will be needing your service immediately, so once the information above is received, I will request your first week payment be mailed to you along with the pay to run errands for me.

Kindly get back soon and have a nice day.

Regards,

Clara Theodore.

[Duckster]

Run a Google search on “Am willing to pay $300 weekly including gas and others expenses. That is not a bad offer is it? If you accept this offer please reply with the following details” and you will have your answer.

[dflower]

Oh I see. I thank you.
Sure is hard to find a job now days.

[Joey_P]

I didn’t google the line Duckster mentioned, but when I got to the part about paying you $300 in advance, I’m willing to bet that first check is going to be for $3000 with an apology and request for you to send the $2700 back to them.

[MeanOldLady]

It’s clearly a scam. I seriously didn’t even make it past the first sentence before my brain shouted “Scam!” but I still don’t know what they want even after Googling. Is this one of those Western Union scams where they make a phony wire transfer, then you have to pay them (for some reason) with real money, and find yourself SOL?

Edit: Looks like it.

[The_Second_Stone]

@Joey_P

I didn’t google the line Duckster mentioned, but when I got to the part about paying you $300 in advance, I’m willing to bet that first check is going to be for $3000 with an apology and request for you to send the $2700 back to them.

Some variation on that. Call the bunko squad.

[Dallas_Jones]

Craigslist on its own is just one long running criminal enterprise. I still fail to understand how the operators of this web site can remain so legally disconnected from the illegal activities that take up such a large amount of their traffic.

[MeanOldLady]

Craigslist used to be a swell place. Now it’s where stray dogs go to take a shit.

[guizot]

They send you a bogus check for a large amount then find some pretext to ask you to wire a part of it back. You deposit their bogus check and it seems like you’ve got the money in your account, because it takes your bank a while to determine that the check’s no good.

This scam is done with other Craigslist ads, too, such as those looking for a roommate.

[Isilder]

You can tell its a scam, because there’s so much it says wrong. Its not spelling out a formal occupation … it suggests you work form home and pretend to be someone else.

It definitely highly impractical that they chose someone who they did not already meet in their own town… If you wanted such a person, you’d just ask your retired relative to do it. If you were family-less then someone who is a relative of someone you did know… someone highly dependable and not likely to “move to Canada”.

There are other angles on the scam - it may be helping to scam other people and not necessarily costing you cash , it might not be a “upfront payment to unknown persons” scam, but it surely is not a real and valid enterprise to be involved in.

But yes always be careful to never send payment to someone who approached you.
The $300 advance mentioned is to win your confidence or to obligate you.

[bengangmo]

@guizot

They send you a bogus check for a large amount then find some pretext to ask you to wire a part of it back. You deposit their bogus check and it seems like you’ve got the money in your account, because it takes your bank a while to determine that the check’s no good.

This scam is done with other Craigslist ads, too, such as those looking for a roommate.

Would there be anything wrong with taking the cheque, banking it - but not returning any money until whatever period had expired and you could be assured the cheque was good?

(yeah - I know you have some thing in the US about having to credit the money within two days, but it taking longer to properly verify the cheque so having the funds in your account is not a guarantee)

[bengangmo]

@Isilder

You can tell its a scam, because there’s so much it says wrong. Its not spelling out a formal occupation … it suggests you work form home and pretend to be someone else.

It definitely highly impractical that they chose someone who they did not already meet in their own town… If you wanted such a person, you’d just ask your retired relative to do it. If you were family-less then someone who is a relative of someone you did know… someone highly dependable and not likely to “move to Canada”.

There are other angles on the scam - it may be helping to scam other people and not necessarily costing you cash , it might not be a “upfront payment to unknown persons” scam, but it surely is not a real and valid enterprise to be involved in.

But yes always be careful to never send payment to someone who approached you.
The $300 advance mentioned is to win your confidence or to obligate you.

If the job were legit - but the “packages” weren’t (i.e it turned you into some form of drug / illegal goods mule) what sort of charges would you be on the hook for, what sort of precautions could be taken?

[chappachula]

@bengangmo

If the job were legit - but the “packages” weren’t (i.e it turned you into some form of drug / illegal goods mule) what sort of charges would you be on the hook for

I dunno, but if you might be able to write a book and a TV series about it.
Oh… it helps to be a blonde, and have a distinctive name (who names their kid Piper, anyway?)

/end of snark,
and now back to a serious question:

what sort of precautions could be taken?

I once knew somebody after high school who had a legit-looking job as a driver “delivering used cars” from dealers in one city to another.He gradually realized that the cars were apparently part of an organized crime setup, so he quit. But even if he was innocent, proving it would have been tough…As he told the story, he was grateful that he didn’t ruin his life.

[Derleth]

@Dallas_Jones

Craigslist on its own is just one long running criminal enterprise. I still fail to understand how the operators of this web site can remain so legally disconnected from the illegal activities that take up such a large amount of their traffic.

For kind of the same reason the phone companies aren’t liable if their phone system is used to arrange a criminal activity: Even though they’re not “common carriers” under the law, the courts still recognize that they can’t effectively filter their content for illegal activities. There was a case which found that Craiglist is not liable for prosecution under the Fair Housing Act for hosting blatantly discriminatory ads. Here’s a snippet:

@CHICAGO LAWYERS COMMITTEE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER LAW INC v. CRAIGSLIST INC (United States Court of Appeals

Online services are in some respects like the classified pages of newspapers, but in others they operate like common carriers such as telephone services, which are unaffected by § 3604(c) because they neither make nor publish any discriminatory advertisement, text message, or conversation that may pass over their networks.   Ditto courier services such as FedEx and UPS, which do not read the documents inside packages and do not make or publish any of the customers’ material.   Web sites are not common carriers, but screening, though lawful, is hard.   Simple filters along the lines of “postings may not contain the words ‘white’ ” can’t work.   Statements such as “red brick house with white trim” do not violate any law, and prospective buyers and renters would be worse off if craigslist blocked descriptive statements.

An online service could hire a staff to vet the postings, but that would be expensive and may well be futile:  if postings had to be reviewed before being put online, long delay could make the service much less useful, and if the vetting came only after the material was online the buyers and sellers might already have made their deals.   Every month more than 30 million notices are posted to the craigslist system.   Fewer than 30 people, all based in California, operate the system, which offers classifieds and forums for 450 cities.   It would be necessary to increase that staff (and the expense that users must bear) substantially to conduct the sort of editorial review that the Lawyers’ Committee demands-and even then errors would be frequent.

The ruling was a bit more complex than that, because Craiglist relied on the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the court had to interpret that law, but that’s the upshot.

In any case here’s the remedy the court suggested:

Using the remarkably candid postings on craigslist, the Lawyers’ Committee can identify many targets to investigate. It can dispatch testers and collect damages from any landlord or owner who engages in discrimination.   See Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 102 S.Ct. 1114, 71 L.Ed.2d 214 (1982);  Gladstone, Realtors v. Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 99 S.Ct. 1601, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 (1979).   It can assemble a list of names to send to the Attorney General for prosecution.

Don’t shoot the messenger.

[Alley_Dweller]

@bengangmo

Would there be anything wrong with taking the cheque, banking it - but not returning any money until whatever period had expired and you could be assured the cheque was good?

(yeah - I know you have some thing in the US about having to credit the money within two days, but it taking longer to properly verify the cheque so having the funds in your account is not a guarantee)

In the US, banks typically charge a hefty fee when you deposit a check that gets returned later.

Also, it’s a bad idea to get involved with a criminal enterprise. KNOWINGLY passing a forged check is a crime. You deposited it (or tried to deposit it). If it’s a counterfeit cashiers check or a forged check on some other account, the bank is going to turn it over to the authorities. You were the last one who touched it, so you will become the first suspect in the bad-check passing investigation. Yeah, you may be able to clear yourself after spending some time in handcuffs. If you don’t succeed, you’ll have to pay your own lawyer fees whether you are innocent or guilty.

It’s not worth it for just $300.

Check from a scammer bounces victim into jail

[Mangetout]

@bengangmo

Would there be anything wrong with taking the cheque, banking it - but not returning any money until whatever period had expired and you could be assured the cheque was good?

A big bouncy payment might ring alarm bells for your bank and end up getting your real funds frozen or some such nonsense.

Apart from that, the whole idea of accepting and and attempting to present payment from an obvious criminal seems like it could end badly in an assortment of different ways.

For example, if it happens to be the case that law enforcement agencies are already closing in on the fraudster, you may get sucked into the mess - which in theory is no problem if you’re innocent, but in practice, having the police show up unnanounced at your workplace or home might not be what you want.

[wolfpup]

@chappachula

I dunno, but if you might be able to write a book and a TV series about it.
Oh… it helps to be a blonde, and have a distinctive name (who names their kid Piper, anyway?)

Not the same situation. When Kerman smuggled drug money she did it knowingly and willingly. She was lucky to get off relatively lightly.

My first thought on this scam was that it was some type of drug mule operation, but from the Google results it does look like a classic bogus-check scam. Best precautions against both? Don’t fall for obvious scams. Nigerian princes were still offering millions to the greedy and gullible – and still occasionally getting one on the hook – even after the scam became a tired cliche and the butt of jokes.

[Jackmannii]

I want to believe and hope I am dealing with an honest, responsible person

This alone sets off the Scam Alarm.

Is it unsafe to use Craigs List?

It’s not safe.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

“Hello, Mr. Total Stranger. I would like you to have access to my mail, which is likely to contain large checks because I am a successful interior decorator and art collector. What? No, I don’t need to meet you first or run a background check or anything. I’ll just cross my fingers and hope you’re honest.”

Yeah, seems legit. 419 scammers’ grammar is improving, though.

[wolfpup]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

419 scammers’ grammar is improving, though.

Dear Friend and brethren,

It is my gladness to hear you say that. For we have tried to educate our selfs the better to improve our modalities to the best cause.

I am fine though my whole very wealthy family was just shot by Nigerian rebels and how are you today? I have nothing in this world now except $29 million (Twenty Nine Million United States Dollar) which is presently deposit in a large safe of the Acme Security Company. It was the supplicatory wish of my widow wife, ejaculated to me in her dying breaths, that I should find a reputable gentleman such as your self, Sir, which I know from my investigations that you are wholesomely trustworthy, to which I might consign this entire sum for Safekeeping and Investment, and on which matter whereof and forthwith I shall be in further conferentiality with you very shortly, respecting especially the particulars of your safe and secure banking account which I am deliriously anxious for you to nominate to me.

Yours for the love of God,
Prince Obokumba