I recieved this today, has scam written all over it in my opinion. Sounded very familiar to some of the others I have been reading about! Sorry for the long post but I posted the entire email

the email was from atlanticrubber77@aol.com

Reference No:- LSLCO/2234/ 8464/03 HO Ref:99567
Batch No:- R4/A313/2-60 Port Ref:87024234
Application No:- LSLCO/2234/ 8464/03 FCO Number: 812774
Respondent:- Recruiting Officer

Hello Applicant,

We got your resume and your application for the job posted on Craigslist.com. Our HR Managers have gone through your resume and due to some certain factors you have been picked as one of our possible candidate to work in our Account team.

About us :

About us:
Distributor of in-stock & custom rubber products for medical & laboratory applications including gum rubber tubing, laboratory stoppers, O-rings, seals, gaskets & silicone products. Manufacturer of custom rubber products, including bushings, bumpers, grommets, seals, pads, boots. Industrial products include hose & hose assemblies, packing, O-rings, hydraulic products, die cut parts, custom molded & extruded parts, rubber sheet, strip & sponge, chute liner material. For the industrial, military, pharmaceutical & commercial markets. ISO 9001 certified.


Location :
Receivable Clerk/Book Keeper in the United States, Canada, United kingdom, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Scotland, Poland, Belgium etc.

Your primary task as our accounts receivable Clerk of the company is to coordinate payments from customers and help us with the payment process.You are not involved in any sales. Once orders are received and sorted we deliver the product to a customer. After this has been done the customer has to pay for the products but in most cases we make our clients prepay for orders or items they order for . About 90 percent of our customers prefer to pay through Certified Checks or Money Orders drawn from the United State based on the amount involved. We have decided to open this new contract -to-hire job position for solving this problem.

Your First Primary task(Collection of Payments):

1. Receive payment from our Customers or Clients.
2. Cash Payment at your Bank or any cashing facilities near you.
3. Deduct 10 % which will be your percentage/pay on Payment processed
4. Forward balance after deduction of percentage/pay to any of the offices you will be contacted to send payment to, You'll have a lot of free time doing another job, because this job is part time, you'll get good income .But this job is very challenging and you should understand it. We are considering your application because you satisfy our requirements and we are sure you will be an earnest assistant till we start running our branch office in your state.

Get back to us with information below information , so that we can add your mailing address to our Regional database and forward it to our customers for them to send payments.


JOB APPLICATION FORM

First name...................
Last name....................
Address Line 1...............
Address Line 2...............
City.........................
State........................
Zip/Postal code..........................
Home phone...................
Cell phone...................

Your response to this email is important, so that we can be sure you want to work for us and reconfirm your mailing address details we have in our database.

Thanks For Your Total Understanding.

Regards
Fortune Philip
Recruiting Officer
ATLANTICRUBBER COMPANY
44 70111 50140 | Direct
44 70111 50146 | Fax
44 84448 43845 x 221 | Staffing Support
37 Ayer Rd.
Littleton, MA 01460

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Deb Frawley
Gem's Virtual Office

Yikes, definitely a scam!

First signal - bad grammar
Second signal - talk of 'receiving payment on behalf of....'
Third signal - if they're local to MA (United States?) Why do they need a country code in the UK??
Fourth signal - They do NOT use an email based off of the company URL (which actually exists - but provides different numbers on the site atlanticrubber.com/)

Thanks for sharing this one Deb.

I would get in touch with the number listed on the actual website and let them know what's going around - they can either confirm it's validity or help step in to take action.

__________________

I have sent an e-mail to the info@atlanticrubber.com e-mail address that was on their home page.......I'll let you know what they say if they get back to me.

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Deb Frawley
Gem's Virtual Office

I received this email back from Atlantic rubber co, they responded almost immediately to me......

This is indeed a scam. We have reported it to a number of involved sources and frankly am quite disappointed that there is not a more responsive effort by responsible authorities to eliminate this criminal activity,

Thank you
Bill
Atlantic Rubber Co

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Deb Frawley
Gem's Virtual Office

It screams 'scam'.

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Carlana Charles - Ciboney Virtual Solutions
Web: http://ciboneyvirtual.com Blog:http://ciboneyvirtual.com/blog

I can certainly see how the email looks like a scam, and it's not something I'd tend to respond to, but here I am with one of my dumb questions ....
What exactly is the scam? I'm missing something here. I mean, if you sign up with them, what happens?
Anybody willing to educate me about this?

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Mary H. Ruth/Virtual Writing & Communications
http://www.writingVA.com

Hi Mary,

The scam is where they are asking you to cash checks on their behave and then send them the money. The checks would no doubt be bogus! Apparently there have been alot of instances of people forging money orders and certified checks. At least that is what I've been hearing. So if your depositing the checks into your account for them and then sending them money...the checks are going to come back to you as being no good! Someone please correct me if I'm wrong

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Deb Frawley
Gem's Virtual Office

Originally Posted by debs5

The scam is where they are asking you to cash checks on their behave and then send them the money. The checks would no doubt be bogus! Apparently there have been alot of instances of people forging money orders and certified checks. At least that is what I've been hearing. So if your depositing the checks into your account for them and then sending them money...the checks are going to come back to you as being no good! Someone please correct me if I'm wrong

This is exactly how I understand it too Deb.

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Shari Sultana
Online Business Manager (marketing for retail ecommerce)

For the record ANY "client" who approaches you with a money handling, check cashing, 'deposit in your own bank account first' kind of gig is 99% NOT legit.

And realistically, any client who does need a VA to handle funds is going to get to know him or her first and inquire about insurance, bonds, etc. instead of just jumping right in with an offer...

I feel bad for the company as they've got to be as frustrated by this as those who are rec'ving the scam emails and catching on. Good for them for writing back to you so quickly though.

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Additional to the explanation given, sometimes the cheques might be genuine or money orders as well (often Western Union) but the funds are stolen. What the 'client' gets you to do is bank them into your account, then send them a percentage of the funds and you keep the rest as your payment for the job.

I've heard of several instances where people have been taken to court and ended up in jail because of this scam - because it is actually money laundering and a criminal act. Those who end up in jail are often innocents who really should have investigated further instead of naively accepting that role. But people are so desperate to earn money that anything that might sound reasonable gets accepted without question. Sad really.

I have one client whose account I manage and I've been doing her work for 11 years. Can't even remember when I started doing it for her but I only log into her Paypal account and make payments for her or send invoices for her and I don't do anything else. I have in the past worked for not-for-profit groups and done their banking for them - into their own bank accounts from membership subs received. None of these payments went into my own accounts at all.