If your job has recently been outsourced, offshored or even rightshored or bestshored, then don't despair - a unique employment opportunity is about to hit an inbox near you.
You might know that you shouldn't respond to an email asking you to update your bank or paypal information -- that would be a scam trying to drain your bank account. What you may not know is that they can catch you on the other end, too.
Phishers (the people who send those 'bank update' emails) need a go-between to help them steal money so they themselves don't get caught. How to do it? They advertise jobs. Here's an excerpt from a recent sample:
We are looking for honest and smart people for business offer.
Company Slim Display Corp is the seller of plasma TVs and also the representative of the largest manufacturers of electronics in the Pacific region ... We plan to push sales in {insert your country or region here}, so we're looking for sales representatives ... Work of the sales representatives will be to advertise our production, to advise the consumer, to arrange seminars in the advertising purposes and to accept wire transfers from our clients with the subsequent sending to one of our legal representatives ...
It's that last part that ought to be a red flag. Since when does a sales rep accept wire transfers and then send them onward to someone else? This is an attempt to launder money, with you as the loser. Here's how it really works:
- First, the phisher collects a number of bank accounts through traditional phishing (the email scams listed above) or keylogger trojans (programs installed on your PC that log keystrokes and wire them back to a central source).
- Since phishers don't want to directly extract the money, they recruit people via fake jobs to act as (unwitting) mules. The mules are asked to have bank accounts within the same bank as the compromised accounts.
- The phisher then transfer a large amount of money (normally just under $10,000 AUD as that what trips most banks security checks) from one of the compromised accounts to the mule's account.
- The mule is then asked to withdraw the money (minus a percentage which is normal 5-7 per cent for their "wage") and wire it directly to an overseas bank account (essentially a direct deposit). Since wire transfers are anonymous and fast this works very well for the phishers. There have also been cases of people being asked to withdraw the money and hand it to someone in person.
- When the missing money is brought to the bank's attention, the transaction trail leads to the mule who made the cash withdrawal and there it ends.
- Someone in a blue (color varies by locale) uniform appears at mule's door -- "Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?"
There are all kinds of scams floating in email these days. If you don't already know what it's about (e.g. you asked for this email or opportunity), it's probably a scam. When in doubt, delete.