New Scam

[lostit44]

"Dear Sir/Madam,
We are the company located in Russia doing export and import
of general products. We have a lot of clients in the USA and Europe.
Right now we are looking for some employees to work for our company.
The work is simple and we pay good money. The idea is that you will
need to collect the money to your bank account or to your paypal
account from our clients and send it to us by Western Union or
bank wire.
The reason we are looking for employers is that paypal or other
convinient methods are not available to Russian market.
You will be collecting the money and sending it us. The work
is simple and we will be paying 15% of the payment amount received
by you. So for example if you receive $1000 us dollars from our
client then you will keep $150 to yourself and send the rest to us.
Very simple. Very easy.
If you would like to work for us then please reply back with the following
information:
1. Name
2. Address (city, country)
3. Your paypal account email
4. any other payment methods you can accept (money orders, checks, bank wires)
Email us back your information to : poseidonservices@pochta.ru
Do not reply to this email because we will not reply.

Regards,
Poseidon Services Ltd "
The address from sender was just letters but the email address is in Russia best thing to do when receiving this type is delete
Sorry if this scam has been posted before I havent seen this one.

[Katja]

I haven't seen this one before, though. It does make me think about a few things, though...

First of all, is PayPal really unavailable in Russia? Sounds a bit weird to me, but okay. That could be possible.

Another thing is that they don't seem to ask for a password or whatever. But maybe they will do that in the second email, claiming they need some control over your PayPal account. The scaml will probably be somewhere in the follow-up after some helpful (or greedy) dumb-ass decided to help them.

Or maybe they will just try to guess your PayPal password using brute force and some other information that they'll try to collect about you. Google, for example, is a very helpful tool with that!

[zencoder]

Do you have any message headers still? I'm curious to see what the source is. This is pretty typical. Katja, I think they are full of crap about the Russia Pay-pal thing...that's just a way to 'legitimize' their request to the uninformed/gullible.

You're right, I'd expect email #2 to ask for a lot more information. That, or this is a scheme by someone to do some money laundering in a VERY risky way. Whose to say you don't bail on them and keep their money? Yeah, I'd suspect later on they will ask for a LOT more info/access.

[Katja]

Now that I think about it, you might want to send this email to the PayPal anti-scam department. I think they have one, somewhere. They will be interested in the full source of the email, though.

I don't think this is a money laundering trick, though. I don't think they will take that much risks, because who is going to stop you from keeping 100% instead of the 15% they offer? So they will most likely use a second email to anyone who responds to collect more useful information about them.

I did something more. I visited http://www.pochta.ru/ just to check out their email service. Is it their real email address? It seems to be some (free?) email service, but it's in Russian. Fortunately they do offer a partial English translation. So I checked it out a bit more and it is a free email provider. And a website with FTP upload options. I now have the email address katja_bergman@pochta.ru and even a website at http://www.katja-bergman.pochta.ru so it's fun. I can pretend to be Russian now...

So, a warning. I'm from the Netherlands. This scammer too could be located everywhere. He could live next-door to you. Piss him off and you might take a big risk if he manages to find out who you are. So better just delete these messages after reporting them to the proper authorities. (I tend to report these emails to http://www.spamcop.net when I'm bored.)

[ThePastorGang]

The reason we are looking for employers is that paypal or other
convinient methods are not available to Russian market.

Hahaha, oh yes, I'm going to trust something like this from someone who can't spell "convenient" correctly.

[zencoder]

Originally posted here by ThePastorGang
Hahaha, oh yes, I'm going to trust something like this from someone who can't spell "convenient" correctly.

Javohl! Vot is wrong vit der spelllink of der vurd "convinient"?!?</colonel klink accent>
hehe.

SpamCop is a good place to report it, as well as pay-pal.

Protect yourself from fraudulent emails Emails that seem to be from a well-known company can put you at risk. Forward suspicious emails to: spoof@paypal.com

[ThePastorGang]

Javohl! Vot is wrong vit der spelllink of der vurd "convinient"?!?</colonel klink accent>
hehe.

Hah! That wouldn't of been the same if I were more sober.

[lostit44]

Sorry folks I juct copied the email message and deleted the other from my email. I did not even think to send it to paypal or Spamcops my first reaction to these is delete.

[crashburn181]

It is sad to think that people are scamed buy such a method. I can't belive a person would even try to use this kind of scam. If you would try to scam somebody you think you would use something more beliveable.

[gauravjulka]

Well we have sited such scan emails from ppl claiming to be situated in African Continent... They contact IM savvy teenagers from Yahoo's chat rooms and woo them for their BankA/c no....

Other things are their social engineering techniques clubbed with stolen identities of innocent folks.