Monster.com Email Phishing Check Scam

 

This was taken from an email I sent out to my members: 

 

I actually did not plan on sending out any emails today, but something happened to me not that long ago that was very disturbing. I was on Monster.com a few weeks ago looking for a good web developer for a website I'm working on that will be very big!(I'll tell you more about that in the next newsletter). As I was looking through some of the resumes, I saw a few good contacts, so I emailed them letting them know to give me a call. As I logged out of my account, I went over to Yahoo to check myemail as I seem to do every five minutes. In my inbox was a email that came from Monster.com. I opened the email. Long story short, it was another company stating that they liked my experience and that they were looking for people to serve as account holders, cashing their checks and sending them totheir over seas company. Because I review a lot of different money making schemes, I felt the obligation to follow through. In the end they sent me an actual check from CitiBank with my name on it. I was absolutely amazed. In four days I had a check in my hand for $4,213.18.

 

The company, which was based somewhere in eastern Europe, saidthat I could keep $400 for depositing the money in my account and wire them the balance. At this point I knew I had to follow through with this, so my plan was to deposit the money in my account, let it sit, and see what would happen. 5 days went by, and the check actually cleared! I was shocked! At this point I knew I had to notify the bank about what was going on. A few days later the bank sent the check back letting me know that check was bogus even though it had already cleared a few days before. I found out after-wards that this was a carefully crafted phishing scam that took advantage of people looking for jobs, and got them in a whole heap of trouble. After these unsuspecting people wired the money to these companies overseas, a few days later the check would bounce and they either ended up in jail or in a state of financial crisis. The moral of this is that anyone could become a victim. So the best thing to do is use our common sense in these situations. Please make SURE you forward this page to everyone you know! This will save a lot of people from being scammed by this cleverly crafted phishing scam.