The person involved used Craigslist to advertise for an assistant. Contact is made and reports his name as Jon Chen a photographer, indicates you are hired as an assistant. He reports he is out of the country and will email you and that the best way to communicate is Yahoo Messenger. He asks for name, address, office equipment that you have, server used and whether you want to have direct deposit or check mailed. NEVER give your bank account information.
His real name is JOHN DEWEY LIM, and he is a FEDERAL FELON and an evil chunk of fecal matter. He is in custody AGAIN, but if all the victims do not report him to authorities or crimestopper anonymous tip lines, he will be on the loose again soon.... just Google him. Search on Facebook. He is defrauding people nationwide and has been every time the worthless [***] is released from prison... LET'S STOP HIM FOR GOOD THIS TIME!!!!
The person involved used Craigslist to advertise for an assistant. Contact is made and reports his name as Jon Chen a photographer, indicates you are hired as an assistant. He reports he is out of the country and will email you and that the best way to communicate is Yahoo Messenger. He asks for name, address, office equipment that you have, server used and whether you want to have direct deposit or check mailed. NEVER give your bank account information.
Craigslist Scammer - looking for a photography assistant. Uses the name of someone who I believe is a real photographer, Roel Bergler, with info from his website.
Wanted me to send him a list of the office equipment I have, contact info, and download Yahoo Messenger. Last request was for me to pick up FedEx and USPS express envelopes.
Told me he was planning a trip to the states "next week". Everything happened very fast. We emailed on Friday and he sent me an email the next day stating that it was my first day on the job.
Thanks to everyone who posted previously and saved me from this scam.
Classic "Work from Home" money laundering scam.
The purpose of a money laundering scam is to make worthless money, in this case checks, into real money as in cash.
What the scammer does is promise you a salary based on the number of checks you can process, be it checks for services you perform or transferring funds from one account to another.
You will be instructed to take the checks you receive, cash or deposit them, then use a portion of the funds for your salary and the balance to be sent to another party or account.
The funds sent need to be transferred via wire transfer, like Western Union or such, or via prepaid money cards, like Green Dot, MoneyPak or such.
So, the checks start arriving via FedEx or UPS, rarely now via USPS, and you do as instructed and cash/deposit.
You take then money to send, less your cut, from the cash you receive or from the account you deposited the check into and wire/pre-paid it off.
You do this every day or few days, as the checks still continue show up, until you get the call that the check you cashed/deposited earlier has bounce due to it being forged, stolen, or counterfeit. As it can take several weeks for banks to discover the checks are bad, you may have already moved thousands of dollars.
The money you sent off is unrecoverable, you can't have wired/pre-paid funds reversed.
You are now fully liable for the face value of each check, fees for bounced checks and over drafts, and face criminal charges for passing fake/forged/stolen checks, a felony.
If you receive the checks, simply possessing them is a crime.
See below for the proper way to report and turn over these checks to the authorities:
http://www.fraudaid.com/solution_center/solution/draftsoption1/2b.htm