I have checked out some publicly available information that seems relevant to the above posts. What I have found out is, to me at least, a bit unsettling. You will have to make your own choice.
Here are the problems that I see in the job offer. First, the address given for "Ghana Gold Corporation" is in Garden City, New York. Telephone numbers in Garden City, New York should have area code 516, as it is located in Nassau County on Long Island, New York, just east of Queens. However, the area code given for the telephone number and fax of "Ghana Gold Corporation" is 203, which is assigned to southwest Connecticut. Granted, Garden City is not too far from southwest Connecticut, but it seems strange that they would use an area code assigned to another state when their address is in New York state.
If you look up the whois information for the domain "ghgoldcorp.com," you will find the following information:
Registrant Contact Details:
NW Web Design Enterprise
Nicholas Willys (
[email protected])
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor
New York
NY,10118
US
Tel. +1.12127361300
The same information appears under the headings Administrative Contact Details, Technical Contact Details, and Billing Contact Details. See
http://whois.domaintools.com/ghgoldcorp.com
for example to obtain this information. Please note for later that the domaintools.com report shows that NW Web Design Enterprise owns, in addition to ghgoldcorp.com, about 7 other domains, and
[email protected] is associated with about 8 domains, including ghgoldcorp.com. Also note that the first registration date is 31-Jul-2013, so its web site (and email addresses, by the way) have not been around for more than about 6 or 7 weeks at this point. I will get to that part of the report later.
For now, note that the address is 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor, New York, NY 10018. This is the address of the Empire State Building in New York. Pretty impressive, unless you also know that it is possible to obtain a "virtual office" in that building for $75 per month. See
http://www.davincivirtual.com/loc/us/new-york ... es/facility-700 .
This company provides a mail drop and a forwarding service for anyone who is willing to pay a relatively modest price. I don't know whether they have hourly rental offices on the 34th floor or not, or whether that is where they accept mail, but it very well might be the case that the address of the place that accepts mail is on the 34th floor.
Whether or not that is the case, the phone number for the domain name registration is even more suspicious. The number given is a US number of 212-736-1300. If you try to search for that number on the Internet, you will find out that it is the phone number of the facsimile machine at Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. See
http://www.hrw.org/contact-us and
http://www.hrw.org/about .
Thus, it is NOT the telephone number of "NW Web Design Enterprise." This suggests to me that the information given for registration of the domain name is bogus.
Who is the Nicholas Willys who uses the "
[email protected] address? I don't really know, but there are a number of sites on the Internet that indicate that he has previously attempted "419" scams in the past, that is, "a type of fraud … [in which] victims of the scam are promised a large amount of money … [but] victims never receive this non-existent fortune but are tricked into sending their money to the criminals, who remain anonymous. They hid their real identity and location by using fake names and fake postal addresses as well as communicating via anonymous free email accounts and mobile phones." The site from which that quotation comes gives "
[email protected]" as an example of an email address "that has been used in a known fraud before." See the example at
http://www.419scam.org/emails/2013-02/13/00372987.1.htm .
So essentially, to avoid using a free email account, it appears as though this person has purchased a legitimate sounding domain name using a fake company name and phone number to make sure that the legitimate sounding email address cannot be traced to him.
I was able to find several of the other domain names that are associated with
[email protected]. At least three of them, including one registered as recently on March 15, 2013, have been "suspended." In this status, the domain name is inactive and will not function.
See http://whois.domaintools.com/nbinternational.net for the registration information for nbinternational.net.
See http://whois.domaintools.com/online-utb.com for the registration information for online-utb.com .
See http://whois.domaintools.com/dhs-us.com for the registration information for dhs-us.com.
There is even a complaint from India about an entirely different type of email sent by "
[email protected]". In this one, he is posing as someone working for APEX Petroleum. He saw someone's profile in "www.eaupair.com" and sought to have them take care of their children, offering all travel expenses for that person to do so. See
http://www.complaints-india.com/seecomments/2 ... -COMPLAINT.html
By the way, a search of the corporation and business entities registered in the State of New York does not show any "Ghana Gold Corporation" authorized to do business there. See
http://www.dos.ny.gov/corps/bus_entity_search.html
and enter "Ghana" as the business entity name, select status type "ALL," search type "BEGINS WITH," and then click on "Search Database." If you do the same thing but enter "NW web" instead of "Ghana," you will see that "NW Web Design Enterprise" is also not a legitimate entity in New York.
So I would be very careful dealing with these people -- if you choose to do so at all.