Monday, April 30, 2007 8:49 AM
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McAfee Avert Labs Blog -Job Offers That Might Get You in a LOT of Trouble
Job Offers That Might Get You in a LOT of Trouble
Friday April 27, 2007 at 8:48 am CST
Posted by Nick Kelly
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There has recently been an increase in the amount of money-mule recruitment e-mails offering jobs for “payment processors,” “foreign representatives,” “overseas agents,” “fund managers,” or similarly named jobs. These spam e-mails are generally very vague and offer full- or part-time “employment,” accepting payments and then passing them on to your “employer” (fraudster).
The e-mails attempt to recruit members of the public to become money launderers, acting as middle-men and accepting payments for spammed goods and other dubious financial transactions, banking the money or converting it to foreign currencies, and then passing it on to the fraudster. In exchange for receiving a percentage of the funds being transferred, typically 5 percent to 10 percent, the “employee” becomes the fall guy for the fraudster and is at risk of charges of money laundering and other criminal charges.
Spam gangs can send spam relatively anonymously using botnets and compromised PCs, but their money trail is one way that they could be traced and caught. By employing middle-men to accept payments and move the money on puts more of the risk and likelihood of getting caught onto these “employees”–while the spammers become more difficult to trace.
In some cases the fraudsters have put a lot of effort into creating authentic-looking Web sites for non-existent companies. Some include a detailed overview of the fictional company, a full job description, and terms of employment–such as the one below. This example uses the name of a legitimate company to try to trick potential “employees” into believing that the company and the job are legitimate:
Some of the recruitment mails are purposefully very vague and worded in a similar way to legitimate jobs, but all involve receiving payments and forwarding the money. A common theme for this type of spam is that the spammers require an “honest and trustworthy” person to do their money laundering! No wonder they’re finding it hard to recruit honest criminals.
Source: Computer Security Research - McAfee Avert Labs Blog
Filed under: Security and Anti-Virus, Spam\Phishing