Spam: Seek-Employment.com

I'm not reporting a scam -- or at least not knowingly reporting a scam -- with this post. Rather, I am offering a strong recommendation against using the services of " seek-employment.com" on the basis that the "chairman and founder" is a spammer. I don't know whether he scraped my email address off my blog, or off careerbuilder.com , although I suspect the latter for obvious reasons.

This particular spam originated in Australia and promotes an Australian business, and is thus in breach of the Australian Spam Act. The fact that this person is breaking the law in order to promote his business is hardly a ringing endorsement of his integrity. The Australian authorities may take action against him for spamming sooner or later, but I felt it important to name and shame in the meantime, since people should have fair warning before associating with a spammer. This is doubly important when the matter is employment, since such websites are often used by scammers, even if not run by them.

Here is a partially redacted extract of the WHOIS data that leads me to believe the registrant is in Australia.

Registrant:
   Top Chef
   XX Connemara Drive
   Perth, Western Australia 6108
   Australia

The following are the full mail headers associated with this spam. These also show that the country of origin is Australia, or more specifically the ISP "Amnet IT Services Pty Ltd".

Delivered-To: ideceive@gmail.com
Received: by 10.114.14.3 with SMTP id 3cs22579wan;
        Fri, 13 Apr 2007 02:41:36 -0700 (PDT)
 Received: by 10.100.133.9 with SMTP id g9mr2323956and.1176457295956;
        Fri, 13 Apr 2007 02:41:35 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <office@seek-employment.com >
Received: from seek-employment.com (203.161.72.73.static.amnet.net.au [203.161.72.73 ])
        by mx.google.com with SMTP id c40si2914339anc.2007.04.13.02.41.33;
        Fri, 13 Apr 2007 02:41:35 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral ( google.com: 203.161.72.73 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of office@seek-employment.com)
Message-Id: < 461f504f.1c72d3df.2e81.3de2SMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com>
From: Seek-Employment <office@seek-employment.com >
To: ideceive@gmail.com
Subject: Seek-Employment
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:42:08 +0800
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="de96afae-7651-4381-9dce-7b4afae7fbff" 
Reply-To: office@seek-employment.com

Images have been redacted from the spam body, which follows. Images were externally hosted at " seek-employment.com" and "topchef.com", which appears to be the property of the same registrant (if WHOIS is to be believed).

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Seek-Employment <office@seek-employment.com>
Date: 13-Apr-2007 19:42
Subject: Seek-Employment
To: ideceive@gmail.com

If you could help forgotten children in crisis, by doing nothing but what you already do, would you? Sign up here
Dear Employer / Recruiter,   Seek-Employment is a new job board, with a greater purpose than being just another employment site. We want to positively impact the lives of suffering children across the globe.   Seek-Employment's goal is to provide exceptional online services to Employers, Recruiters and Job Seekers in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. A regular job ad is 100% FREE. Seek-Employment will raise money through added value advertising on its site. We will donate 100% of this revenue to Riverview Children's Foundation. By advertising your job vacancies on Seek-Employment for FREE, you help us generate greater site traffic, which makes it worthwhile for companies to invest in Seek-Employment's added value advertising, which raises money to help suffering children world wide.   You can now post your vacancies on Seek-Employment - FREE!   Riverview Children's Foundation   Riverview Children's Foundation promotes and supports projects that reduce suffering, and provides options for forgotten children in crisis, globally. The Vision is that we see children in crisis (not restricted to but including prostitution, abandonment, trafficking, and imprisonment) rescued, protected and empowered, to live out their lives richly and, where possible, contribute fully back into their own communities and cultures. We are currently partnering with projects in Cambodia, Thailand and Ukraine and our goal in the future is to have a global impact by supporting projects in Africa and other South East Asian countries. To read more about Riverview Children's Foundation click here   Thank you for your support.   Samuel Anders Jansson-Bush Chairman & Founder Seek-Employment		After you have created your Free account, logged in and placed a job vacancy on Seek-Employment you can: -   Find qualified staff such as Executives, Managers, Professionals, Trades people ---   Create job postings online that are instantly available to thousands of applicants, and receive unlimited resume responses.   Create a Company Profile page to showcase your company to potential employees. Upload your logo, add/edit or view jobs, archive and renew old jobs.   See online who has applied for your jobs (also can be received via email), send private messages / receive private messages from potential employees, search/consult jobseeker's resumes, bookmark and email jobseekers resumes, review statistics of how many times your job has been viewed and job applications received.    Receive Resume Mail - daily/weekly resumes sent matching employer's job.    Create sub-accounts for larger companies that need more than one login for their company account ( Please apply here)   Display posted jobs on your own website with the cross network option ( Please apply here).   Take this great opportunity today and you can potentially reach tens of thousands of job seekers daily   Click here to create your FREE account Search on Seek-Employment for jobs and much more... Posting your resume is FREE and easy. Our online job database connects you with the most recent jobs that fit your requirements. Register or log in HERE.
Copyright Seek-Employment 2001 - 2007. All rights are reserved | Remove me from Seek-Employment mailing list |

 

Job Scam: MRC International Auto Broker Company

I've started to receive a stream of money mule job scam spams using this identity. It's been on my radar once before, but it seems to be more in earnest this time. For spam samples, see the entry at my "Suckers Wanted" blog. One of the interesting things about this scam is that they are requesting "the ability to accept BPay transfers".

There are no restrictions on this vacancy, except for these little requirements: You should be at least 21 year, Basic knowledge of MS Office and e-mail, Ability to answer phone calls during a daytime, Ability to check your e-mail at least 2-3 times per day, A credit card in any Australian or New Zealand bank with ability to accept BPay transfers (you can apply for a new account especially for receiving funds from us). If you already have a permanent job this will not prevent you from being employed with us. So if you can check e-mail and communicate with us by phone (probably in dinner break) you can work from your office.

A quick search reveals that BPay is a bill payment system used by a large number of financial institutions in Australia, and the ability to make BPay payments is incoporated into Internet and phone banking services offered by those institutions. So far as I can tell, however, being able to receive BPay payments is much more difficult, involving a lot of paperwork at the very least. It's the sort of thing only a business would do if they really did have a billing infrastructure. I can only assume that this whole "BPay" angle is a smoke-and-mirrors distraction, and the money is actually sent via direct account-to-account transfer, as is the usual case.