MoneyGram - TRAVELERS EXPRESS COMPANY, INC.

Hello guys,
Two weeks ago, I was search for a job around my area and I went to craigslist.org to search for it. I finally found one, that would be easy and make like $3,000/month. The job was described that they need someone who can trust to work for them. The job is to cash out their clients' check and take 20% out of each check from the client and send back to them. I contacted the job posters via email, and got responded by (Patrick Witkins Don't know if this his real name). He was asking my name and address so that the client could send the check to me. So three days later, i got an email from Patrick that said they Payment is coming to my home today and i should get it before 10:30am.
And i got the check, i emailed him back to tell him that. I got five checks, each is $950.20. The check is from CVS charmacy, moneygram.com.
Then he told me that to cash it today and use that money to buy money order from Western Union and send it back to:
Receiver Name:Saidi Oluseye
Address: Deria Dubai
Code: 971
Country: UNITED ARAB EMIRATE
(i will copy email how he instroduct me how to cash it).
As of now, I'm still keeping the checks. To me it is a scam, if i cash it out, and buy him western union, i will get trouble.
Anyone knows about this?
here's the email

 

What I suspect is that the cheques are fake. You will have them deposited into your bank account or whatever, buy and send the Western Union, and then a day or so later have the money removed from your bank account due to fraudulent funds.

Don't go through with this, nothing good can come of it.

 

yeah i just keep the cheques...and wait see what the guy will reply kekeke
will updates more

 

It is normally called the nigeria scam - the cheques are cancelled after you have cashed them but western union is an irreversible transaction so you lose all the money you have sent to them.

The other risk is that the cheques are genuine (to a degree) and you are actually money laundering which is obviously a criminal offense in itself.

Why do you think that someone would pay you simply to send a transfer rather than just sending the transfer themselves?

 

thanks Astaroth

 

nice explanation astaroth, i learned something from this thread

 

The other variant, and the original Nigeria scam, is that they will require you to pay them a fee upfront which is to cover legal costs or a processing fee or something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud has a list of most of them and their variants.

There is actually a very good "scam the scammer" blog I came across once where someone got the scammer to send them specially commissioned piece of art work, photos, movies etc and then a fake police investigation into the "person" the scammer had been sending things to. If the artical was true (and it did include photos of the sculpture and the video for download etc) then he managed to scam the scammer for almost 18 months - which is impressive given that the original email said that the guy was on his death bed and was looking for someone to donate $50,000,000 in trust but there was a $500 processing fee to pay to get it.

 

Thanks again Astaroth for the link provide above..

 

This is actually very common on CL. These checks will bounce after couple of days and if you have a bank like mine, they might charge you a fees for bounces checks.