I responded to a monster.com ad that offered a part-time job as a payment processing/debt collection representative. Although suspicious i decided to follow along with their directions. The scheme goes as follows. Pertus WorldWide Ltd is a international debt collection company (yeah right) that has some of its U.S. Creditors who prefer to cover their bills by local check. Since Pertus is in Italy, checks take up to 2 months to clear. Pertus is seeking a rep. (sucker) that can process local checks and pay a commission and have the money working for them sooner.
A check arrives via fed ex in your name from some ford dealer in florida. It looks legit. I deposited into my checking account. After three days it clears (or so i thought) for $4325.00. I withdraw the money minus my fee per transaction ($600.00) for which i am responsible for taxes and do a cash western union cash tranfer to a location in Europe. All directions are done via e-mail.
After about four days another check arrives with basically the same directions. So i gingerly go deposit it via atm machine and guess what? All my banking accounts have been frozen. Check is a counterfeit i have egg on my face and i must replace $4325 and do some fast talking to get my assets back (about a week later).
Now what i didnt know about banking policy but the crooks definetly knew was that in reality it takes up to 10 days for a check to clear from out of state. So a window of foul play presented itself. The kicker was i signed a contract not to expose any negative info. That might be deemed harmful to their business.
I hope this helps anyone who might be taken like i was and if sounds to good to be true it probably is. The real crime is i am unemployed and now i am deeper in the hole.
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