Employment offer scanning documents Scam?

I recieved the email below for a "mail agent" position in which i process, scan documents and forward to an address, i would then get payed depending on the amount of documents i processed.

Sounded simple enough they didnt ask for any money nor indicated that i would have to pay any except the postage would have to be pre paid by me when i sent the letters out. I would be reimbursed by check or Paypal my choice. They did require i send them a copy of my DL for address verification for the mail they would be sending me. so i reluctantly sent that to them, then a week goes by and i get a couple of emails that the position is on hold?? of course my scam ears woke up" but... im not out any money, however they do have my DL # pic and address so... just curious if i should be concerned??

"Mail Agent"
As a necessary condition for successful work as a mail agent you will need to have a scanner. We do not accept fax copies as their quality is not sufficient. You still can do the work as long as you have a quick access to a scanner in a library for example but it may become inconvenient with the growing amount of mail you would be processing. My best suggestion is that you'd better purchase a scanner to save you time and effort in the future. It may be a standard home-use colour scanner, not an expensive one really.

No problem with the bill being in the name of your landlord, you still can provide it as proof of address.

As for the workflow, I sent you a description and scenario in the last email. As a matter of fact, our model is very very simple, straightforward and error-proof. I am sure you will have no problems with it. The procedure is: I notify you of upcoming mail delivery, you receive it to your address, scan the envelope and contents, and email me the files. I instruct you how to proceed: you will either keep the mail and form a big parcel for Finance Avenue or redirect the received mail after scanning, depending on type of mail and urgency. This is it:)

Looking forward to your feedback. Best regards,
Meike

Welcome here Leerylarry.

From what you are discribing, it sounds like a fake check scam. If they would send you cheks, it's likely they are of a much higher amount then what you're entitled to get. Then the scammer will ask you to send the balance back via western union or money gram. You cash the check and send the balance to the scammer who will have spend the money already when you get a message from the bank that the check was false and bounced.
If it was a legitimate job, they would have asked you for a bank account and payd your wages into your account.
Could you post the first email you've got from the scammer? If possible with full headers. If you don't know how to get these headers you can ask one of the support team members or one of the mods.
And don't worry about the scammer having your address. He's to busy scamming people to harass you if you don't co-operate with him. And if you do get suspicious mail at your address you're free to ask advice here on what to do with it.

Welcome, LeeryLarry.

Another possible angle for this scam is that the scammer is attempting to recruit you as a mule; he'll have you re-shipping fraudulent checks/money orders on to other victims. Doing this would actually make you an unwitting accomplice to the crime. As David said, the initial email and header from the scammer may give more information.

His offer is illogical. Why can't he scan his own documents ?

If he's too broke to be able to afford a scanner then it's unlikely you will be able to trust him to pay you anything. Copy shops aren't rare and I can photo anything I need and copy it to my pc. You have something he wants, but he's not giveing you the whole story - yet.

He is making an offer that anyone could do because the real task will turn out to be something different to what he's telling you up front. What he wants is your agreement, and for you to believe you'll get money for doing something so simple anyone could do it.

The 'kicker' will be that what he will want you to do is most likely illegal and a fraud. If he sends you a cheque or financial instrument it will be counterfeit, and most likely intended to cause you and/or anyone you send it to, to lose money. If you handle counterfeit financial instruments it gets dealt with by the more serious arms of law enforcement.

I can't tell you specifically what the scammer's intention is yet, and he wants you to 'buy in' to the concept first. Then he'll spell out exactly what he wants you to do. It'll either be for you to cash counterfeit cheques for him, which will bounce and lose you money, or to post out counterfeit chques to other victims. Either way, aside from losing money, law enforcement will be alerted to what's happening by the banks involved.

thank you guys for your quick replies", i appreciate it. I also just wanted to reiterate im not certain if they are scammers since i havent been asked for any money yet, but i am a little suspicious? they did ask for my bank info for payment to me but i refused to provide any of my bank info to them, they agreed to use paypal if i prefered.
by header i think you mean email address? or original email? below is one of the earliest emails i got from "finance-avenue.net" i tried doing some research on them but havent found anything out of the norm. so.. when I came across this scamwarners site i thought maybe i should post what i got from them to see if my suspicions are valid or not. again i appreciate your quick feedback and thank all of you for the warm greetings"

#To complete your profile I need your picture ID and a copy of utility bill with the address.# Once I receive those, your mailing address will be added in our database. Following that, the first mail delivery should arrive within a few business days. We put our agents on trial term for the first mail deliveries. As soon as you are clear through this stage, you will be confirmed to continue as a mail forwarding agent and the mail traffic will be increased.

Introduction on workflow and payment

We do not really provide any dedicated training courses but do quick education right during the process of mail forwarding like advising in what quality to scan the mail, what couriers to use for shipment, that kind of things. It is not at a hard process actually. I will include this information as soon as you have received your first mail.

You will need a scanner to email the contents of envelopes to Finance Avenue, i.e. to ensure the quickest access to the information. If the contents is urgent, you will be asked to ship the paperwork right after scanning, if not - you will be advised to keep it until further notice. It all depends on the mail type you would receive.

You will be paid by $300 paychecks as soon as corresponding amount of mail has been processed. If you want, we can make this settlement amount bigger and pay, say, by $500 transfers as an option.

Payment of shipping costs

The mailing costs will be covered by Finance Avenue. After you accumulate the batch of mail (regular envelopes, sometimes big envelopes), you will be given the address where to ship it and required to call your local courier about the fees. Based on their quote, we will send you the money and you will proceed with shipping. It may cost very differently - from $25 to over $100 depending on type of shipment, weight, etc.

So, the scenario for the starting up stage is:

1) You are required to provide your ID and Utility bill for verification. Once you are verified, your address will be activated in our mailing network. It may take a few business days.

2) You receive first mail delivery with instructions. This will include scanning and emailing the contents, and immediate shipping if necessary. Our trial period is 5 deliveries and may take up to 2 weeks in average.

3) If you do good during trial, we will increase the mail volume to normal level.

Please, let me know if you have any questions. Kindest regards,

Meike

What we need is the full or extended headers as we may be able to figure out the scammer's location. Email address, any website they pointed you too, and phone numbers used are helpful information. We can help you with the extended headers if you tell us how you check your email (e.g. yahoo, outlook etc.)

And this definitely says scam, by the way.

As GomerPyle already said, it's illogical. Why would a company pay to ship documents to a random individual, pay them to scan the documents, and then pay again to forward the documents somewhere else, when the local copy shop on the corner can do it at half the cost? Simpler still would be to pay a temporary worker to scan the docs--it would save one round of shipping and significant money.

I will agree with David that this is probably a fake check scam, but with the "company" name and the information provided, I suspect the goal is to set you up as a mule (most likely) or maybe to use you to copy real checks so that their mule can print and send them out.

A check mule is a middle man between a producer of fake checks and the victims who receive them. If you are acting as a mule, the "company" will likely ask you to scan a bunch of checks, then forward them to other addresses. In this scenario, the scanning step is just added to make it convincing--the real intention of the scammer is to have you forward those fake checks to victims who have been asked to cash the check and forward cash to someone else. (This is what is commonly known as an overpayment scam). When the victims eventually realize they have been scammed, the checks will trace back to you, and you could even wind up facing criminal charges.

Keep well away from this offer is my advice on this.

I have looked into other 'offers' like this and it's very risky. It would be very dangerous to give them any of your financial details.

I'll give it some more detailed investigation but on looking at their website, their proposition is totally illogical. They appear to be offering clients some cheap method to transfer money for small payments between individuals using the bank accounts of people like you, which is pointless as Paypal, Western Union and MoneyGram already cover that market and you'll find that they make use of their services themselves when they want money transferred.

They have to be vague and not spell out fully what they want or do otherwise you'd immeditealy spot that it doesn't make sense.

From the website

On the other hand your US-based party doesn't have to figure out how to send money to China or India. It may be very costly, especially if the amount is small. Instead, it sends the payment using common US options within our network, like a domestic bank transfer.

I spent all my working life in a UK bank, most of it in international finance, and I can confirm that this is meaningless drivel. What's a 'common option' ? It must be a 'domestic bank transfer' but that dosn't get money to China or India, and why use personal bank accounts ? Above all why misrepresent it as having anything to do with scanning documents ?

Their Japanese address from the website

Finance Avenue Asia
2-3-3 Otemachi
Tokyo, Japan

It's actually the address of the Japanese Post Office

http://www.jobmonkey.com/teaching/asia/ ... japan.html

Using Mail Services in Japan

Air mail takes at least five days to reach Japan from North America. Surface freight (sea mail) takes about a month.
If you want to give your friends an address before you go, have mail sent to American Express, Tokyo's International Post Office, or Tokyo's Central Post Office. All of these places will hold mail for thirty days before returning it to the sender:

Tokyo

American Express, Tokyo
Yurakucho Denki Building, 1F
1-7-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 100, Japan
(03) 3214-3456

General Delivery
Central Post Office
2-7-2 Mainnouchi Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 100, Japan
(03) 3284-9527

International P.O.
2-3-3 Otemachi Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo, Japan
(03) 3241-4891

and the German address is

Deutsche Post DHL
Düsseldorf press office
Bonner Str. 29
40589 Düsseldorf
Germany

Europen banking regulations are quite strict, and this company appears to be trying to operate offering banking services such as money transfer and loans but it can't provide a registered office address or any of the legal information required by EU law.

Looking at the privacy policy page I note this

This Privacy Policy is governed by the laws of European Union, and you irrevocably submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of European Union.

If you want to be a Sherlock Holmes like me it's a humdinger to go there as, few people bother to think anyone will ever check on this. The one thing this guarantees is that you'll never get a physical address in Europe for these people, and if you do get one. I'll gladly report them on your behalf to the EU banking regulators as they have a lot of work to do to come close to satisfying EU banking regulations on their website alone.

1.2 This Privacy Policy was last updated May 9, 2009.

The dangers of copy and paste. The website shows.

Finance Avenue, Inc. © 2010 • Privacy Policy

It's customer login page is insecure. Do you want me to go on ?

The information on this site has led me on to find some other very strange looking websites which I'll also look at.

Thank you (Dotti and Gomerpyle) for your response and investigation into this matter. below is info i have on this company and contact and more responses i got from them, i used my Yahoo address in all correspondence to them, after reading all of your replies i definetly believe this is not a legit company and will not be responding back to them anymore. Im glad this site exists for people to have something to confirm their intuition before becoming a victim of these vultures.

Company: finance-avenue.net

Contact: [email protected]

Reference request:
As per your request, I should say that mail forwarding is a new pilot project of our company and we have just started to recruit agents like yourself. However, I would like to give you contact information of Mr. Steven Dyer, one of our business clients who has been in relationship with our company for a good period of time. He's kindly agreed to be our reference. You can either call him at (504) 684-4868 or email [email protected]

Reference:
"Steven Dyer" <[email protected]>
see, absolutely no problem for me to give you that reference:) My experience with FA includes many things, primarily payments management for my partner company in Beijin and also maintenance of my own company in LA, I did incorporation through them and received tax id. After a years relationship I can state that FA is a trusted firm and people in the company have been great. I dont not really understand in what capacity you are joining FA but I am sure you should not have any issues. Wishing you a good path with them. I am in china right now but you are welcome to give me a call when I fly back to Orleans in april, 504 684 4868, Best regards, Steve

Response after i requested some Company documents about the position.

introduction on workflow and payment

"We do not really provide any dedicated training courses but do quick education right during the process of mail forwarding like advising in what quality to scan the mail, what couriers to use for shipment, that kind of things. It is not at a hard process actually. I will include this information as soon as you have received your first mail".

You will need a scanner to email the contents of envelopes to Finance Avenue, i.e. to ensure the quickest access to the information. If the contents is urgent, you will be asked to ship the paperwork right after scanning, if not - you will be advised to keep it until further notice. It all depends on the mail type you would receive.

You will be paid by $300 paychecks as soon as corresponding amount of mail has been processed. If you want, we can make this settlement amount bigger and pay, say, by $500 transfers as an option.

I'm intrigued to discover what's going on and will offer myself as a recruit, but don't worry, I think it's more likely I'll become an astronaut than earn a cent from this business.

The strange thing is that the mails you have received don't match what's described on the website, which may be because people have been put off by what's there and so they're just sticking to telling you the most harmless story they can think of to keep you hooked. The problem is that their story just doesn't make sense.

I love their offer to pay you more if you want it. Not many employers like that nowadays.

I'll post whatever I find out.