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.

Investment Scam: Direct2EG

It's a relative rarity that I get spam promoting a pyramid investment scam like this. They used to be quite common. My surmise is that the activity has mostly been relegated to discussion forums dedicated to this kind of shonkiness. If the WHOIS data for " direct2eg.com" is to be believed, this scam is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- a claim that I find entirely credible. Malaysia isn't the centre of scum and villainy that Nigeria is, but it's high on the list of such places, particularly as regards pyramid investment scams.

In the interests of not promoting this rubbish, I've partially redacted the spammer's affiliate IDs.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: kissou abdoulaye <kiss_ablo54@hotmail.com>
Date: 29-Mar-2007 17:16
Subject: NEW PROGRAM.. BREAKING WORLDWIDE RECORD!
To:

hello

 

I stumbled upon a very interesting website recently. I've been spending some
time going through it and personally, I feel it's a very useful site...I even
learnt a couple of new things!

Just thought it might be useful for you too.

Membership fees is only a one time $20 out of pocket while you can earn passive and residual income  .The more you find prospect the more you achive your dream

 

In this program you earn money on every level. You'll start making money just after you activate your account!

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS FOLLOW 3 SIMPLE STEPS BELOW:
STEP #1
SPEND $20 in total from your e-gold account to 3 sponsors including $5 to the program administrator for the administration cost of the website. After your payment, you will be redirected to registration page.

MEMBER	PAY AMOUNT
limosine	$7
adrien	$5
jaguar	$3

STEP #2
SIGN UP to open an account by filling registration form with your username, email and e-gold account number.

STEP #3
PROMOTE your Direct2EG webpage using your referral link

 

HOW IT WORKS ..
After you spent $20 in total to 3 sponsors and sign up, you'll get a referral link to "Direct2EG" webpage which your name now becomes the top sponsor.

Promote your webpage. If a new member signs up from your referral link you'll get $7 before this new member can activate his/her account. You don't have to wait until your name reaches 3rd level position to be paid. You'll get the money even if you are still in the first level. You'll start making money just after you activate your account! This makes this program much better then other programs!

Your downlines will do the same thing as you do. Assume that every member gets 30 new member each and your your potential earning:

LEVEL	DEPOSIT PER MEMBER	TOTAL DOWNLINES	EARNING
1	$7	30	$210
2	$5	30 X 30	$4500
3	$3	30 X 30 X 30	$81000

 

 

www.direct2eg.com/?id=xxx

 

 

First create an account with e-gold.Please click here

 

http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=xxxx235

 

Click on "CREATE AN ACCOUNT" at the left of the menu section

Fill the form .

To fund your e-gold account please click here

 

http://www.me-gold.com/index.php?ref=xxxx235

 

 

Regards

KISSOU

---

MSN Messenger : appels gratuits de PC à PC partout dans le monde !

Info: Anatomy of an eBay scam

I ususally report on spam-based scams, so eBay scams aren't my usual cup of tea. My encounters have been primarily with the other side of eBay scamming: the hiring of mules to act as middle-men. For a more in-depth look at the eBay side of the fraud, I recommend the article "Anatomy of an eBay scam" at The Register. It's an abbreviated email exchange between the reporter (posing as an interested buyer) and the scammer.

In this particular scam, an eBay account with a good reputation is hijacked (by phishing the owner for credentials), and an item offered for sale under that identity with instructions to contact the seller via non-eBay channels. When contacted by a buyer, the seller then spoofs mail from eBay instructing the buyer to send payment to an "eBay agent" via Western Union. If the buyer falls for it and sends the money, the scam is complete and successful.

Note that a single fraudulent listing on eBay can be used to scam a large number of potential buyers, since there is no competitive bidding, and no goods are ever shipped. The scammer can just pretend that the goods are available to all who ask, and collect as many payments as possible. The payments could be made through a money mule: the article doesn't spill the beans on the identity of the Western Union recipient, so I can't make an informed guess about the process in this case.

News: Spammed Stocks Suspended

It's nice to have something to report other than the usual stream of job scams over at Suckers Wanted. Sophos is reporting that the US Securities and Exchange Commission has temporarily suspended trading on a swag of stocks that were being touted (and touted, and touted) in spam. This seems like a good thing, but I somehow suspect that the miscreants behind the spam will rapidly switch to a bunch of other stocks. I have doubts as to whether this action will yield long term benefits unless the SEC starts reacting quickly to new spams.