Agile Electronic GmbH

[goliath74]

I received a following email from a person who claims to have purchased something from me on eBay (which IS possible):
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Hello Eugene,

This is Eric Braun, I recently made a purchase from you on Ebay. I also work as the US affiliate of a German company - Agile Electronic GmbH, and I'm writing you because I need an Ebay member, with permanent Internet access, to fill in for me for about five weeks, while I'm on vacation.
If your schedule allows you to work one hour a day - weekdays only, and if you could use an extra income (7.5% of the transactions) please let me know.

Sincerely,
Eric



Eric Braun
2009 Belmont Road NW
Washington DC 20009
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Is this a scam? The address and the name do sound like a name and an address of someone who purchased once or twice from me on eBay.

This sounds like an easy money opportunity, which raises my suspicions.

When I said I was interested, he sent me another email:

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Eugene,

I'm leaving on Saturday, the 1st of July, and I will return on the 11th of August. If this should not interfere with your schedule, this is what the job entails:
The distribution company that I work for - Agile Electronic GmbH (http://agile-electronics.net) has extended its retail business in the US market and like most of the European merchants, Agile uses an affiliate payment processor for US orders that are paid with bank wire.

Basically, here is what I have to do for each order: First I am notified when they receive an order and the customer chooses to pay with wire (local bank transfer) - the amount and date of the payment. After the buyer has completed the payment to my account, I have to confirm the receipt so Agile can ship the product. I keep 7.5% of each payment (my commission) and then I send the amount due to Agile (total order amount minus 7.5%) by postal Money Order.

Of course, you will keep the entire commission for the period that I will be away, should be about $400 per week, depending on the company sales. If you think you can handle it I can ask Mr. Schneider - the manager, to send you full instructions. Please let me know at your earliest convenience, I want to settle this before I leave.

Sincerely,
Eric
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I have gone to the site. It is in German. I do not know if it is legitimate. Can you help? Thanks!

[FW Admin]

This website and domain registration is 100% fake and designed to lull people into a false sense of security. It is a "representative" scam, and has been taken one step further by appealing to the memory of a previous transaction (whether real or not).

The domain registration is for one year only (the minimum required period) and the registrant details on the registration have been taken or lifted from the internet at random. I have actually spoken to the person named as registrant, and he has absolutely no knowledge of this matter and will ensure that his details are removed from the domain. This will likely cause the registrars to re-check method of payment and will probably find it having been funded by stolen or fake credit card details which in turn will result in the closure of this domain.

Many thanks for posting this.

[Daneel]

Yep, they scam people with the site and they want you to launder the money for them. So when the police come looking for the money, they wont find the real scammers. Somewhat unusual methods they are using though, and the site is German only, normally it's just in English...

[goliath74]

In addition, the address of the person who sent me the email is etrbraun@yahoo.com . I wonder if that account has been lifted too, without the owner's knowledge.

[FW Admin]

All @yahoo email addresses are free, easily available and take around 30 seconds to create.

Any details given during the application process can be faked; there is no verification method. Scammers create several Yahoo and other freely available webmail service accounts precisely for that reason; they are wholly anonymous and disposable.

[joewein]

Somebody who was not a native German speaker stole bits and pieces from various German sites to build the fake.

For example, I searched for the VAT registration number listed on the fake site and came up with http://www.agile-gmbh.de, a legitimate German company. Bits of their site were rehashed for the scam, as were a couple of other German sites.

[Agile is a scam]

I found this thread by searching this company after I received these emails. I received the SAME EXACT emails, word for word! I sell on Ebay for 100% of my income, so I'm pretty busy at it. I did actually remember the name of this person, and they DID actually buy something from me on Ebay. That's what makes this scam quite complex. I'm assuming this isn't the real person, they just simply stole his name and either stole his yahoo email account or started a new one using his name. We went back and forth a few times because I wanted to see what they would say.