Upwork-Part-time service assistant - Scam

[ScamInformation]

Hello everyone,
I've been working as a freelancer from last 6 years, though I always believe my guts before talking any work other than platforms but this time its pretty hard for me to sort it out, I got an interview invitation on upwork.com and I accepted it and after that employer took my email add (which is normal for fast communication), he has also sent me contract agreement and everything but the problem is the name and add he used is not in any directory (search engines or phonebooks). I tried looking up his IP from email header but new google policies hides the IP of the sender, here's the email and its body

Delivered-To: xyz
Received: by 10.52.35.106 with SMTP id g10csp426017vdj;
Sat, 4 Jul 2015 06:20:29 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 10.202.64.195 with SMTP id n186mr37495051oia.53.1436016028742;
Sat, 04 Jul 2015 06:20:28 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Received: from mail-ob0-x235.google.com (mail-ob0-x235.google.com. [2607:f8b0:4003:c01::235])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id p9si9071958oel.50.2015.07.04.06.20.28
for <>
(version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128);
Sat, 04 Jul 2015 06:20:28 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of [email protected] designates 2607:f8b0:4003:c01::235 as permitted sender) client-ip=2607:f8b0:4003:c01::235;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
spf=pass (google.com: domain of [email protected] designates 2607:f8b0:4003:c01::235 as permitted sender) [email protected];
dkim=pass [email protected];
dmarc=pass (p=NONE dis=NONE) header.from=gmail.com
Received: by mail-ob0-x235.google.com with SMTP id nt2so1385368obb.0
for <[email protected]>; Sat, 04 Jul 2015 06:20:28 -0700 (PDT)
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
d=gmail.com; s=20120113;
h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type;
bh=P7q542KdhBxkn+IoT43VnViqAP25j5xL3cMF+WGy+gc=;
b=ysrL9futLXI+ELKVYi3mfWr42AFjYlcmVaoZmfJ76+1MsuW60oAq3gfEkU/tA6i/qd
wPFxN/hPYa6i6kA0HKfFPpFxnzFnkpFeDWnfKJmjmXYJsxvXUQsaZycoQHyqVExXC/Mq
mRlc0H+p5YctEJuyNQf6KN5UsRvs+ZrTt/QSPVsSK9+J3eqgF6ph1MpdVNBqIRVah10k
8zzeO6VHEZj3p6b1yMpbYXn2/xPoJ2udNAsQ5QQdkV8SyFsmpgz4YftLo/tjlzp74N1I
9ub7czT0jv3TkCEjRF8pWV2+Gf7c0nNd7WRa93WlZhxYk4YfNyL7H0ZCn8suZH4q8XvP
8xtg==
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Received: by 10.60.16.133 with SMTP id g5mr38917509oed.66.1436016028306;
Sat, 04 Jul 2015 06:20:28 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.202.80.216 with HTTP; Sat, 4 Jul 2015 06:20:28 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2015 14:20:28 +0100
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Subject: xxxx regarding job position...
From: Andrew Maher <[email protected]>
To:
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=089e0122a222425179051a0c891d

--089e0122a222425179051a0c891d
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Dear ,


My name is xxx and I just talked to you on Upworks.


I discovered the difference in the prices in UK, Austria and some European
and East European countries and decided to make money on it. Some goods are
much more expensive there in comparison with the UK and European online
stores. I have a lot of private stores and customers interested in
receiving goods from UK and Austria and I fulfill their orders regularly.
But the main problem is that most of UK and especially Austrian stores ship
nationally. I have a growing demand in Austrian goods but I am located in
the UK and need a person to coordinate business there. We are talking about
electronics, clothes, baby clothes, toys, music instruments, etc. That is
why, I am looking for a person who will help me processing orders and help
opening a growing business in future. I, personally, can't handle all order
and need assistants. Besides, I have a seriously ill relative in Poland and
will be forced to go there regularly. Your main job will be receiving and
processing packages from most known Austrian online stores. I PAY FOR GOODS
AND SHIPPING IN ADVANCE (PREPARE A SHIPPING LABEL FOR YOU) AND I COVER ALL
OTHER EXPENSES. You do not have to pay fees, hidden charges, I'll only need
your full name and address in order to prepare the contract for you and to
know where to send the packages.

You will receive a monthly payment in the amount of 1100 EUR + bonuses
(1-2 hours a day Monday - Friday and sometimes Saturday). Besides, you'll
need to combine some orders to save on shipping and communicate with the
couriers.



Please let me know if you are interested and I will send you the list of
information I need to start as well as the details on the process itself.


Kind Regards,

Angelo Maher

32 Halifax Street

London, SE26 6JA, UK


Can you guys please help me what to do, should I go for it or not.
Thanks in advance

Welcome to Scamwarners,

It is a reshipping scam. The scammer wants you to receive stolen merchandise purchased with stolen Credit Cards. Then repackage them and forward them back to him.

This is one of the worst scams to be involved in. The person receiving the stolen merchandise is the only one using real information and the person the Police will find.

[ScamInformation]

Thanks , I decided to go otherway but before that I need to get some more information from him and do something to save others

Welcome to Scamwarners,

It is a reshipping scam. The scammer wants you to receive stolen merchandise purchased with stolen Credit Cards. Then repackage them and forward them back to him.

This is one of the worst scams to be involved in. The person receiving the stolen merchandise is the only one using real information and the person the Police will find.

You can stop all communication with him.

Your post here will help others.

[ScamInformation]

I got the same email today after applying for the job on Elance. Had a bad feeling, so I googled his adress and found this post. Thanks for sharing!

[ScamInformation]

No worries, I stopped all the communication with him and I will suggest you to do same

[ScamInformation]

Hello guys. Seems like I seen this post to late. I am "hired" by this man for almost 2 weeks. I am worried because of my stupidity. Please help me on what should I do next?

the very first thing you need to do is stop receiving any packages. Send them back to the source instead of accepting delivery of them. Call or write to the delivery company(ies) and tell them you will not receive any more packages without prior written approval.

If you have any packages in your possession now, or need to go to authorities to report it, then it matters what country you are located in. We don't want to know exact locations, but which country are you located in?

It is a reshipping scam. The scammer wants you to receive stolen merchandise purchased with stolen Credit Cards. Then repackage them and forward them back to him.

This is one of the worst scams to be involved in. The person receiving the stolen merchandise is the only one using real information and the person the Police will find.

[ScamInformation]

I am in Germany located. I was at the police station and they said to me to come back Monday between 8:00 am and 3:00 pm because the experts on INTERNET fraud work between these hours. But isn't this an emergency? I don't understand...

While it is certainly important, if you follow Hillbilly's advice and make sure you do not accept or forward any more packages before Monday, it should be ok to wait.

Thanks for making my thoughts clear, Dotti

xxx, it is not an emergency as in "life or death" as far as the police are concerned. They would rather the experts help you out. Follow their advice and you will be in good hands.

I am not an expert on German, or EU protocols, but I did find a couple of links that seem authentic. You may want to check them out. ( at this point, just look at them).

http://ec.europa.eu/anti_fraud/olaf-and ... dex_en.htm

http://www.bka.de/nn_194554/EN/LinkColl ... __nnn=true

I'm reasonably sure there are others here on site that know a lot more than I do about EU/ DE information. If they decide to post here please listen to them.

[ScamInformation]

Thank you Hilly. I wrote an email at the Olaf presenting the facts. Thanks for all your help

[ScamInformation]

Please do not send any parcel for this criminal and report this incident to the police immediately!
You will be responsible for money laundering and get a huge fine if you send anything and you will have to pay for the damage yourself since you are the only one who can be traced with your address.
Please tell your neighbours not to accept any parcels for you if are are already in "it" in some way.

I reported "Angelo's" job description to upwork.com and they suspended his account and removed the job.

He won't respond anymore when he finds out that you denied a parcel.
I think you will only be in a chain of several agents and the forwarding address might not even be him but another agent again and so on.
Since he is using a GMail account you can not trace from where he send it.

There seems to be a similar case on upwork.com:
https://www.upwork.com/jobs/Project-Man ... 874950ebc5

thanks for the additional information and welcome to scamwarners, Tony! .

The problem with reporting the scammers is that it only takes them only minutes to create a new identity. It is easier to track a known identity, than it is to find a new one. So we always ask you do not report known identities to accounts. For the same reason, we ask you do not tell the scammer he is listed here. ( He just creates a new identity when the old one is found out).

please see this article for more reasons why we don't like scammers accounts reported ( except to post them here, that is). :
http://www.scamsurvivors.com/forum/view ... =20&t=3884

[ScamInformation]

If you are using gmail, spam his email after not getting any response from you he will stop communicating with you, and as others suggested if any parcel comes dont accept it, if you wont accept the parcel the post will send it back to the sender and in such scenario you wont be in any trouble.