The Art of the Nigerian Scam, Part 3: Still More Nigerian Fun!

Forget James Brown. I'm convinced those darned Nigerian scammers are the real hardest working men in show business. For the latest installment in my continuing series on the art of the Nigerian scam, I present an angle I hadn't seen before:

From: DeannaDiLabbioAmmon Ammon
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Special Job Offers
Sent: Thursday, June 8, 2006 9:10 PM
Dear Sir/Madam,

Would u like to work online from home/temporarily and get paid weekly? We are glad to offer you for a job position at our company, KIN HING HONG TEXTILES LTD we need someone to work for the company as arepresentative/book keeper in the USA, Canada and major European countries .

This is in view of our not having an office presently in the USA, Canada and major European countries. You don't need to have an Office and this certainly wont disturb any form of work you have going at the moment.

From the Site, you will find out the Company produces the following varieties of clothing materials: - batiks, assorted fabrics for interior decor, silk and traditional costumes which we have clients we supply weekly in the states. Our integrated yarn and fabric manufacturing operations use state-of-the-art textile equipment from the worlds leading suppliers. Order processing, production monitoring
and process flow are seamlessly integrated through a company-wide computer network.
* The average monthly income is about 4000.00 usd.
* No form of investments from you.
* This job takes only 1-3 hours per day
Our Company manufactures and sells textile and fabrics, we have seller all over the world to distribute our products.
You know, that it's not easy to start a business in a new market. There are hundreds of competitors, close direct contacts between suppliers and customers and other difficulties, which impede our sales promotion. We have decided to deliver the products in upfront, it's very risky but it should push up sales on 25 percent. Thus we need to get payments for our products as soon as possible because customers
can just "forget" to pay.

Unfortunately we are unable to open bank accounts in the USA, Canada and major European countries without first registering the company name. Presently with the amount of Orders we have, we cannot put on hold, For fear of loosing the customers out rightly. Secondly we cannot cash these payments from the USA, Canada and major European countries soon enough as international Cheques take about 14 working days for cash to be made available. We lose about 75,000 USD of net income each month because we have money transfer delays.

YOUR TASK
===============
Your task is to coordinate payments from customers and help us with the payment process. You are not involved in any sales. Our sales manager sells products.
Once he makes a sale we deliver the product to a customer (usually through FEDEX).
The customer receives and checks the products. After this has been done the customer has to pay for the products. About 90 percent of our customers prefer to pay through Certified Cheques and Money orders based on the amount involved. We have decided to open this new job position for solving this problem.

Your tasks are:
===================
1. Receive payment from Customers
2. Cash Payments at your Bank
3. Deduct 10% which will be your percentage/pay on Payment processed
4. Forward balance after deduction of percentage/pay to any of the offices you will be contacted to send payment to.

Payment is to forward either by Money Gram or Western Union Money Transfer. Local Money transfers take barely hours, so it will give us a possibility to get customer's payment almost immediately.

For example you've got 3000.00USD
You take your income: 300.00 USD
Send to us: 2700.00 USD

First month you will have 15-20 transactions on 3000.00-4000.00 USD So you may calculate your income.

For example 18 transactions on 3500.00 USD gives you up to 4410.00 USD
Plus your basis monthly salary is 1000.00 USD
Total: 5410.00 USD per month

After establishing close co-operation you'll be able to operate with larger orders and you'll be able to earn more.

Our payments will be issued out in your name and you get them cashed in your bank deduct your weekly salary and forward the balance to the company via western union money transfer or money gram money transfer.

We understand it is an unusual and incredible job position. This job takes only 3-7 hours per week.

You'll have a lot of free time doing another job; you'll get good income and regular job.

But this job is very challenging and you should understand it. We are looking only for the worker who satisfies our requirements and will be an earnest assistant.

We are glad to offer this job position to you. If you feel that you are a serious and earnest worker and if you want to work for KIN HING HONG TEXTILES LTD, a letter of employment would be sent to and you would fill it out and send back via email and you will receive necessary information in 1-48 hours.

KIN HING HONG TEXTILES LTD
207-129 Yu Chau Street,
Shamshuipo, Kowloon,
Hong Kong.
Tel/Fax: 852-301-40145

Who'd have thought that a big Hong Kong textile company would need to spam the internet looking for someone to deposit checks for them rather than just having their lawyers arrange to register the name and set up a bank account.

According to this site:

The scammers are not Chinese (or even Asian) but Nigerian. They mail their "representatives" fake checks from "customers" to deposit in their personal or business accounts. Often these are written on blank check forms stolen from legitimate businesses. Provided the business whose check is abused has sufficient funds in its account, the check will initially clear (it will usually only bounce when the business receives the deposited check that it never wrote). When the check clears the "representatives" wire the amount to a bank account in another country, such as Japan, Taiwan, China, the Netherlands or the UK. By the time the fake check bounces (which can take a month), the money is already out of the country and the representative is left to pick up the losses, often tens of thousands of dollars.

I can't believe enough people actually fall for this sort of thing to make it worthwhile to run the scams. But I suppose Mr. Barnum understood people a lot better than I ever will (with the caveat that Mr. Barnum probably never really uttered the quote that is famously attributed to him).

For the previous installment in this series, click here. For the next installment, click here.