I received an email from Robert Johnson saying he was the Human Resources Manager with WebStar and that they had found my resume on Monster.com. He was offering me a position of 'PayPal Gateway Administrator'. He was linked up to Web-Star-online.net, which is a legitimate company, so everything seemed okay at first. He offered an on-line training course. He told me that a transfer manager would show me the details and conduct a few test transactions for this on-line training. He told me I needed to create a business PayPal account, and that once I had completed that, to contact the transfer manager. He gave me the e-mail address for the 'transfer manager', Martin Burton.
I next received an e-mail from Martin Burton, who told me he was with a Web Star company. He told me the steps I needed to take within PayPal in order to start the training. This made me nervous, and I have several e-mails back and forth between myself and PayPal, trying to make sure this was a secure thing to do. They assured me all the way, that I could provide what was being asked without any risk. The items were: Upgrade to business account using their business information, complete "Reccomended Steps For Merchants" (confirm SSN, address, bank account, credit card), and then send a screen shot of the page within PayPal that shows all steps have been completed. I should mention that Martin Burton, while it seems he has an English name, has grammar skills which may suggest that he speaks, or at least writes, English as a second language.
I went ahead and did what they asked, but continued to have some doubts. I kept trying to find the scam, or maybe someone else who knew about this. I found it. I also decided I would play with them a bit... And send them an e-mail telling them I was almost done with the first phase. The response was that I need not worry, because the job was still available for me. This of course made me wonder why a company who had never met me, never trained me or tested my skills, would 'hold' this job for me. There were many things along the way that made me suspect. I ended up closing this PayPal account, just to be totally secure. I will open a new account with a new e-mail address. From what I am reading, some people did not find this out until some test transactions had occurred.
I have the Word document they sent me with their 'business information' and they are ripping off the real Web Star company logo, business address, and they do not know how to properly structure an address line (USA, 10014, NY, New York 3 Sheridan Square) is how the address appears on the form. Also, they do not use a 'space' in between the words 'Web' and 'Star', which is not how the real company does it. They got the logo right, which is easy, but the entire thing seems to be an obvious rip-off.
The site that is used, 1st Concept Internet, is another big clue. There is no way that the actual company, Web-Star-Online.net would actually do any sort of web business with a company that has such an amateurish website; misspellings, terrible layout, doctored photos of their business location, etc. Even 'Robert Johnson' and 'Martin Burton' should learn how to spell, before they try to lie to the public and rip off people. On another note, when you go to concept.net, and see the photo of their "office", you will notice that the sign looks like Photoshop plastered on an image of an office building. When I went to Google maps and typed in the business address, it is clearly in the GA suberbs, complete with swimming pools and long driveways. Does not quite match the company building photo.
This scam will be hard to stop, but I hope someone has success. I hope the real company being ripped off can find out who is stealing their business info and using it in fraudulent ways.
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