too good to be true

[Unregistered]

Hello!

My name is Laura Southwell and I am the manager of a Human Recourses department of Swiss Invest company.

The purpose of this message is to draw Your attention to a vacant position of a financial manager for cooperation with private individuals.

But first of all – a few words about our company.
Swiss Invest Ltd was founded in 1994. Our specialists grant services of purchase and sale, privatization, brokering and dealer transactions on stock exchange. We handle financial agency on equity market, using a great variety of investment instruments. Moreover we can conduct a private survey on stock market upon client's request.
Professionalism and conscientiousness of our company enables us to attract a large number of clients. Nowadays Swiss Invest firmly holds a position of a leading company on European equity market , which ensures our stable development.

So today, we are glad to offer You to:
- become a part of our company
- join a team of high qualified specialists
- get a prestigious part time job
- earn a good deal

In order to become our financial manager for cooperation with private individuals You ARE NOT OBLIGED TO HAVE ANY HIGHER OR PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. You will just be supposed to:
- have approximately 2 free hours a day
- have a bank account (or to be able to open a new one, especially for company needs)
- have a PC

YOUR PARTICIPATION IS ESSENTIAL TO enable us to grant our clients the best service in shortest dates.
YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES will be:

- to receive payments for the ordered stocks and bonds from the Swiss Invest clients (private individuals) to Your bank account
- to withdraw the funds and to transfer it further to our brokers in one of the countries where the desirable stocks and bonds should be bought
The transfer should be done by the means of Western Union or money Gram services to fasten the process of the delivery of the funds. Your SALARY is 8% commission out of every deposit that You receive on Your bank account.

If you are interested in the vacancy offered, please get some more detailed information on the following E-mail address:

mail@swis-invest.net

Our managers will be glad to answer any questions.

We are looking forward to working with You!
I am sorry if this letter has been sent to You by mistake. In that case, please be so kind to delete it.
Yours faithfully Laura Southwell






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[FW Admin]

Hello and welcome to FraudWatchers. I have moved your post to a new thread, to avoid confusion.

Basically, this is of course a scam, for three simple reasons: they "require" you to have a bank account, they "require" you to accept payments on their behalf, and they "require" you to submit funds to them in cash via Western Union or MoneyGram - two methods of transferring cash where a) they can be collected virtually anywhere in the world and b) the recipient in most cases can and does provide false identification when collecting the cash.

Essentially, payments are made to the 'representative' by sending a check/money order (in almost all cases this is a forgery) when they are instructed to deposit this into their bank. The way bank systems work, banks offer their customers a "clearance" period of a few working days before these funds can be drawn upon. Alternatively, a payment is allegedly made into the victim's bank account (account "flashing") from a bank account that is usually compromised (normally by means of "phishing") which is then subsequently 'reversed' when the real account holder of the paying bank notifies the authorities of theft. This again can take several days, by which time the bank has "cleared" these funds for the victim. It can take weeks, and even months, for a bank to receive confirmation from the paying bank that the transaction is fraudulent (forged check etc) whereupon the victim is fully liable for reimbursement of those funds.

By this time, the funds would have been withdrawn by the victim (on the instruction of the scammers) and by sending the cash in the manner prescribed, the money is literally lost forever.

The domain name swis-invest.net yields the following WHOIS result:
Domain Name: SWIS-INVEST.NET
Registrar: COMPUTER SERVICES LANGENBACH GMBH DBA JOKER.COM
Whois Server: whois.joker.com
Referral URL: http://www.joker.com
Name Server: NS1.OUTFITER.NET
Name Server: NS2.OUTFITER.NET
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Updated Date: 06-mar-2006
Creation Date: 06-mar-2006
Expiration Date: 06-mar-2007
As you can see, it is a very newly created domain (6 Mar 2006) with a one-year registration. Professional organisations expect to trade and have an internet profile for longer than one year. Also consider that the email claims that this organisation has been active since 1994.

Additionally:
domain: swis-invest.net
owner: Beverly Neeley
organization: bevalta
email: ukombatya@hotmail.com
address: 4150 US Hwy 83
city: Wellington
state: --
postal-code: 79095
country: US
phone: 806-447-2782 This is a fictitious address, and the registrant has a hotmail.com email address - free and anonymous to anyone who wants to spend around 30 seconds to set it up. A further sure sign of a scam. And finally, if you try to access the website at the domain name, at the time of posting, a server test page appears, showing that it has not been set up at all.

[Rob]

I'll take care of the domain.
/edit: I've contacted the webhoster. This site will (hopefully) be closed before it's up.:lol:

[topcop]

This type of set up can also involve you in "money laundering" - be very careful if you are going to bait and avoid if you are not..

[FW Admin]

Thank you, Rob for dealing with the website! And topcop is absolutely correct - money laundering can also be on the agenda for these types of scams. Thanks topcop for pointing that out :)

[topcop]

Any Time --- TC

[Unregistered]

Well you really have taken care of it rob!
not!
Im still being targeted and its the 8th of april now!
glad you've had it closed!
not
NO BODY PANIC, ROBS GOT IT SORTED!!

I'll take care of the domain.
/edit: I've contacted the webhoster. This site will (hopefully) be closed before it's up.:lol:

[FW Admin]

Although your frustration is understandable, sometimes all we can do is offer the evidence to the company with whom the domain is hosted, and request them to discontinue the hosting of such services. At present, there is no site that hosts this domain, and therefore it is used solely for email purposes. The DNS can be set to any domain name service server, and sometimes these are run on personal computers, over which there is no control.

The name server for this domain resolves to NS1.OUTFITER.NET, with an IP number of 24.58.102.211. This IP hosts 7 websites in all, and reverse-resolves to what seems to be a personal DSL connection in the US:cpe-24-58-102-211.twcny.res.rr.com. This is a Road Runner account, and is based within the USA. You can forward the email (including header information) to abuse@rr.com to advise them that their service is being used for fraud.

As I said, anger and frustration is understandable; however, this should really be aimed at those that are trying to defraud you, and not those who volunteer their own time and resource to help and assist. Rob is a valuable support group member and has helped many hundreds of people in similar situations such as yourself. We will keep trying to help and assist everyone we can until the public at large know and understand what to do against internet fraud and its perpetrators, instead of insulting and denegrating those of us who fight against these crimes.

[joewein]

The fake domain is in the process of being deleted, according to this item in the WHOIS entry:

status: hold,invalid-address

These things take time and it's largely volunteers like us who are driving it, or no action would get taken against scams like that. Money transfer offers like the above are the flip side of "phishing" scams. Once the gang gets online banking details they set up a fake money transfer to the account of a person recruited via a job offer like the one above. The person then withdraws the money that arrived in his/her account and sends it to Russia by Western Union. When the original transfer gets detected as fraudulent and is reversed, the person who received and withdrew the money is left owing the full amount to the bank. They end up being the real victim of the phishing scam. People typically lose $3000-$5000 in such scams, depending on limits for online transfers. These criminals are *extremely* dangerous.

[Nyla]

We all volunteer our extremely valuable personal time in order to keep this site running, offer advice to scam victims, and to attempt to shut down scammers and their resources where and when possible. Rob spent a portion of his personal time, which I'm sure could have been more enjoyably spent, researching this domain for you and writing up a formal abuse complaint in the hopes that the webhost would do the right thing and promptly shut it down.

All we ask in return is a modicum of politeness. A small measure of gratitude would certainly be a bonus, but is not strictly required. If our free service and advice is not to your liking, you're welcome to go out and spend some money to hire someone else who has the knowledge and ability to file an abuse complaint for you, or to spend a few hours of your personal time educating yourself on how to do so on your own.

As the closing of the domain is entirely up to the discretion of the company hosting it, your totally unnecessary rudeness and sarcasm is being directed at the wrong party, here.

[Rob]

Just to clarify the situation a bit: After your initial post the aformentioned web-site has not been filled with content, as far as I remember, there was just a test-page or something similar. Now that I've send a formal complaint to the webhoster, the website is completely inaccessible and therefore unusable for the scammers (for now).

[Aeval]

Rob,

Thank you so much for taking your time to make a complaint about this web site and getting it shut down. It is very much appreciated. :)

The original poster,

NO BODY PANIC, ROBS GOT IT SORTED!!

You may want to restrict your use of sarcasm for more suitable situations. Since our members have already pointed out to you that you were venting your frustrations at the wrong person, I will spare you those details.

Still, I do have a suggestion for you. Based on my experience in dealing with internet fraud, I would advise you to locate the "Delete" button in the e-mail program that you use, and employ it liberally upon encountering another message from the scammers.

[Caaz]

I can symathise with all the sarcasm that gets aimed at them, I help run an animal rescue on a totally volentery basis and know the feeling. When these people get sarcastic though you have to just think of it as a normal human reaction, because we are sometimes affraid to take action against the ones who have really abused us we get huffy with the people we know will help even when we abuse them slightly.

So it only goes to show that Rob is one of the "good guys"

Caaz

PS I've spent the last 2 yrs sending loads of these scams dodgy e-mail and bank account etc and only found out recently there is a whole load of people doing the exact same thing. Whey Hey there are some nutters like me around, who dedicate their time to helping for nowt!!!!!

[John Fairheart]

Hi Caaz, thanks for the kind words, and welcome to Fraudwatchers.

I've spent the last 2 yrs sending loads of these scams dodgy e-mail and bank account etc and only found out recently there is a whole load of people doing the exact same thing.

There sure are... www.scambaits.com is another nutty bunch of scam baiters who waste the time and resources of the '419er' and other associated scammers. If you need any hints and tips on how to bait safely, then these guys and gals will help out ;)