Sometimes it is hard to see what the scam is with some of the job offers, except that undoubtedly it IS a scam. This job offer from the ficticious "Ran-De-Vou Co." offers a proofreading job which is kind of unusual at first glance.
Subject: Successful Positions Available
Dear Job Seeker,
We are glad to inform you about new vacancy opening in the area of proofreading at
Ran-De-Vou Co.
Part time job Description:
We provide you with business messages which require revision and your task is to
make necessary
corrections as an english speaking person, and e-mail them back to us.
Payment:
There is no fixed salary for this vacancy. We offer $5.00 per 1Kb of the text which
you revise (the workload is about 4-5 Kb a day).
The salary is paid once a month, and begins with the date of the first revision you
make.
(Example: by editing 5Kb of texts a day you earn $1000.00 a month)
Requirements:
-Applicant must be a US citizen
-Applicant must be of a legal age: 21+
-Applicant should be skilled in computer usage, and American English
Feel free to submit the application form which follows only to e-mail:
ran.devou.gr@gmail.com
__________
FULL NAME:
HOME ADDRESS:
CITY, STATE, ZIP CODE:
Phone number (home or cell, but SHOULD BE available any day time):
E-MAIL:
AGE:
OCCUPATION:
EDUCATION:
----------
You will receive a response from us in 24 hours.
If you have any questions please reply only at our e-mail: ran.devou.gr@gmail.com
Sincerely, Ran-De-Vou Co. Team
Unlike the usual money mule and parcel reshipping scam jobs, this really does seem to be asking for a proofreader. And given the poor quality of English seen in some of these scams, it is easy to understand why. In fact, there is a whole underground fake career network aimed at recruiting virtual office staff for these bogus outfits. Unfortunately for these "employees", they are usually the people that end up having to deal with the police when the scam gets busted.
Avoid.
13 comments:
Thanks for the advice. This looked a bit odd (compaired with others that cross my desktop) but not totally strange. If something looks too good to be true, it generally is.
How do you know this is a scam? Has anyone ever followed up on this?? Please let me know. FYI, I sent them my info and here's the response I received:
Good day,
Thank you for your information. You are suitable for the job. We will send
you the first texts for correction today or tomorrow.
Please revise these texts at the SAME DAY and send them back to us as we have
to mail them to our clients and employees!!!!!
Be in touch every day as we need to be sure of you and we rely on our
long-term cooperation.
Check your e-mail every day
You will be activated and will start getting texts for correcting from the
nearest business day (Mon-Fri).
You will get your salary EVERY MONTH at the SAME DATE you have been
activated.
Amount of the salary will depends on the amount of Kilobytes of the texts
you have corrected dureing the month.
1Kb=$5.00
Sincerely,
Ran-De-Vou Co. Team
P.S.
Please pay attention,
We represent United European Corporation which consists of the several
partner companies and has
branches worldwide. You will be directly communicating with one of our
branches located at St. Petersburg, Russia.
Our physical address is as follows:
Bol'shaya Myasnitskaya st., 135/2, office #7
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Phone/Fax: +78362423000
Our company connects people from all over the world with the help of
Internet.
Some of our most popular and authoritative websites include:
www.dating.ru
www.dating.de
www.datinguk.com
Please, feel free to visit our websites and find out more about our services.
Currently, we have more than 1 million constant customers and more than one
thousand employees around the world.
Since our clients and employees are from various parts of the world, they
speak different
languages. This leads to great communication difficulty. US customers are the
majority, so, we are in need for
assistance in the US in terms of communication.
We offer to you the position of editing texts and letters which are addressed
to our employees and clients
on a daily basis. The list of vacancies in dating area of our business is
quite wide. The vast majority of
openings are in the area of finance. It is essential that our financial
reports do not contain mistakes.
Again, we would like to offer to you an editing position in this area and are
willing to work
with every potential editor.
The exact job process entails:
*On a daily basis you would receive 4Kb-10Kb of text. Editing this volume of
text would bring you $20-$50 a day;
*Tasks are e-mailed to you before noon on working days;
*In total, it would take you about an hour to edit the required volume of
the text;
*We should receive the revised text back from you the same day.
The first month of your work is considered to be a trial period.
After the first month, we may end the arrangement or, hopefully, will
continue on with a contract.
You are paid for the services once a month. This means that your first salary
is payable by the end of
30 days of work. We are keeping track of your work and pay you by any method
that is convenient for you.
We will discuss the total amount and payment method with you several days
prior to the date you
are to be paid.
The description above covers the basics of what the editing position entails
and the payment process.
It is of the utmost importance to us that you are comfortable with the nature
of the work, our
company, our policies, and our procedures. You will learn more as you
continue working with us.
Thank you and, we look forward to our cooperation.
Sincerely,
Ran-De-Vou Co. Team
There is no such company as "United European Corporation", and no company of any sort with the address "Bol'shaya Myasnitskaya st., 135/2, office #7" according to Google.
datinguk.com is owned by DatingAgency.com Ltd, dating.de is owned by Telecall Services GmbH, dating.ru is owned by a private individual who is most likely unconnected with this approach.
Some other telltale signs - the orignal email had a fake "from" address using the domain of a US brewing company. The originating IP was 189.95.77.62 in Brazil, which is running the Cutwail spambot (see http://tinyurl.com/5a2adj)
yeah, but where is the scam. I assume they ask for your banking information to 'pay' you and that is where an idiot would give out his pin number or something.
i did not send them my info, but i did request more info and got the same exact reply as anon.
Well, given the fact that they are clearly not who they say they are, and they represent a fictitious company that does NOT own the web sites that they suggest... do you really think working for them will end well?
Most likely you will do a load of work and not be paid for it. Or worse, you WILL be paid for it and later find that you have to explain your involvement to the law.
There are some more details on this type of scam here.
I just read your blog. I've been doing this proof reading thing for about a week or so. I haven't gotten paid yet, because, like you read, you get paid once a month.
I've made $120 from them, yet, again, I haven't actually gotten paid. And I didn't give them any of my bank info. I just told them to pay me paypal.
It's cool if you guys don't believe it or whatnot, it means I get more kbs to edit anyways. If you have any questions, just email me at Juicehenderson@gmail.com. Or facebook me at Justin Juice Henderson or even myspace me at myspace.com/juicemann13.
See, I am a real person lol
Juice never got paid. What happens in this scam is that after a week they say they no longer need you as a proofreader, and offer you a job processing payments from their customers. You open a new checking account and accept anonymous payments into it. You keep 5% of the money and wire the rest to Russia. Since you don't have any of your own money in the account, it seems safe to you. Unfortunately, the money that is deposited into your account has been stolen (by forged checks and maybe other ways), so you are sending stolen money to Russia. Not a good idea.
yanogator ~ how do you know juice never got paid?
Well, I went all the way and gave them my bank information, the account is empty and I checked with the bank, in no way any check can be cashed against this bank account unless my signature is on the check. The bank is liable for this. I tried to call them, but the number does not connect.
I have past experienced with a Nigerian scam, but there they wanted computer products and yes the checks used were stolen. (I got the US Secret Service involved). In the Dating Service issue, I am at a loss what they can get out of this. The editing was kind of fun, it became clear that they showed me how much you could earn in the "Local Agent" position, but what is the use?
Oh, by the way, the address I have is in Moscow not St. Petersburg.
I have done some more work. The telephone number used is indeed in Moscow, but the number is not complete. This is indeed strange, it seems not to serve any purpose, other than finding persons who are willing to transfer monies to Russia. But why do they keep asking for other people. Once they have a few, go with them. I once had a criminal minded partner, so I had to think along those lines, but it always about gain, never about uselessness.
Has anyone have an idea?
Jack
http://juicehenderson.com/?p=35
Here is some more info. :)
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