Re-Shipper Scam - AXA Parcel LLC

I received a standard "employment" offer email to ship parcels bought on EBay to addresses in Russia. The company name is AXA Parcel LLC, 130 S Bemiston Ave #500, St. Louis, MO 63105 USA. The website is http://www.axaparcel.com and the contract company President is Ferrara John Paul. The signature looks like J. Ferrara

The address comes back to Tax Strategies LLC [url](http://yellow-pages.us.com/missouri/st+ ... s+llc.aspx)[/url]

The email signature:
Susan W. Stevenson
Fax (855) 438-1308
[email protected]
[email protected]

axaparcel.com
AXA Parcel LLC
130 S Bemiston Ave #500
St. Louis, MO 63105

Email Text:

Hello,

A growing company is searching for the right employee.

Position: Customer Service Manager
Full-time
Salary for first month: $2500
Maximum monthly salary: up to $3000

Primary responsibilities*:
1) Receiving packages containing products
2) Checking the contents and preparing reports
3) Re-packaging of packages, if required by customer
4) Sending packages with products to our customers

*You can find a more detailed description of responsibilities in the job
description attached to this e-mail.

No special skills are required to perform this work. What we value most
in our employees are honesty, hard work, and readiness to work.
To be able to work for us, you will need Internet access and a printer.

We have reviewed your resume and are ready to hire you for this
position. We are thus sending you an employee contract.
Please review the contract carefully, sign it, and send us a signed copy
by fax, or scan it and e-mail it to us.

Please remember to include a phone number in the contract where we can
reach you.
Upon receiving a signed contract from you, our manager will contact you
by phone. You will receive all the instructions you need from our
manager so that you can start working.
The first month of your employment will be a trial period. During this
time, we will evaluate whether or not you are a good fit for our company.

Remuneration
You can choose from either of the following payment methods: checks by
mail or payment via PayPal.
Starting with the second month of your employment, payments will be made
every two weeks.
We do not conduct any additional interviews; a decision to hire is based
on the resume and phone conversations with the candidate.

We wish you success in your endeavors.

If anyone can support me in this as being a scam, please post additional information here.

Sincerely,
Markermaid

Hey

I received this same email. I am currently working with them but am starting to see issues that point to scam. So far I have received 6 packages. I have sent out 4 packages. I received paid postage labels via email, but two of the 4 packages have come back although USPS is still saying that the package is on its way to customs... Its a bit of a mess right now. I have been searching for someone to talk to but every number goes directly to voice mail. I was contacted once to make sure that I would be available to except the packages, but I have not heard anything besides the emails telling me when the next package will come and receiving the shipping labels. As it stands right now I have not had to pay anyone anything and I plan to keep it that way.

It is a scam, and participating puts you at risk for ARREST.
Any merchandise delivered to you will be purchased with STOLEN credit cards or banking info. Shipping labels will also be fraudulent, often printed using a legitimate customer's STOLEN account info. The criminals need you to receive and reship the merchandise, because the seller will likely flag and investigate (or simply refuse) the purchase if the recipient country doesn't match the card/account owner's country. So they need an address in the same country, which is where the mule comes in.

When the real credit card and/or shipping account owner discovers unauthorized transactions on their account, they will report it. If the company decides to investigate the transactions, the trail will lead straight to you. Receiving and forwarding stolen merchandise is a FELONY. You CAN be arrested and charged. And if you think it is difficult to get a job now, try doing it with a felony hanging over your head!

There is no such thing as a legitimate "reship-from-home" job offer. Legitimate companies do not send hundreds (or thousands) of dollars of merchandise to random job applicants off the internet. They would soon find themselves out of business, due to the amount of merchandise that would disappear. The criminals, on the other hand, may be unhappy when a percentage of their merchandise disappears, but they didn't actually spend their own money on it anyway. They need the mules in order to get their merchandise, so to them the inevitable losses are part of the cost of doing business.

And that's not even considering the bigger trouble you could get into when you are accepting and forwarding items for an unknown party. How can you be certain they are not connected to a terrorist group? The police on your doorstep is bad enough, but it's nothing compared to a personal visit from Homeland Security.

Legitimate reshipping companies DO exist; however, they have actual locations, and if they are big enough to have employees, those employees will actually report to work at their physical location.

Do NOT send any more packages.
Do Contact the Postal Inspection Service ASAP at the contact information they have listed here: https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/radDocs/consumer/ReshippingPub.pdf.
Do keep all emails related to this scam, as evidence that you were not a knowing party to the crime.

Edit to add: I have removed a fake testimonial posted by a supposed "employee" intended to make the job look legitimate.

I have also checked out the AXA parcel website:
Note the text I have highlighted in red. They state that they use a warehouse address, not individual home addresses. They also state that they handle customs requirements--something that you, as a mule, would not be able to do.
So, either scammers are piggybacking off a legitimate company that according to their website is NOT running a reship-from-home operation, or the website is a fake that was written to make it look legitimate. I can't say which is the case based on the basic review I just did.

The AXA Parcel company’s service provides customers from other countries with a delivery address in the United States—namely, the address of our storage facility in the northeastern United States. Using this address, customers can receive goods in the United States, group purchases together, and then organize their international deliveries. In this way, our services provide international customers with full access to the American retail market and reduce the cost of international delivery.

The role of the AXA Parcel company is to accept the goods ordered by the customer, hold them in the storage facility, repackage them according to the clients' requirements, and resolve any potential customs requirements that might arise. The AXA Parcel company and its partners have been in the international delivery business for decades and can guarantee that your goods will be handled reliably and with care. Strong partnerships and a commitment to exceptional services are how the AXA Parcel company has come to offer extremely effective customer service, establishing a link between businesses in the United States and customers abroad.

Delivery of goods from our warehouse to your address is provided with the help of well-established postal companies like the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and the Postal Company «Meest». Other carriers, such as FedEx, DHL and UPS, are clearly losing in terms of price or other parameters although, if needed, we are willing to use any other postal, transport or courier companies that you like.

Your purchase can be sent either immediately or later, along with other goods. In other words, it can be stored until other parcels reach us, at which time we can send you one large parcel. We prepare the parcel, pay for shipping and tell you when it was sent along with all the details of your package.

Our dear clients,
My name is Cynthia Bowen, and I'm a lawyer for AXA Parcel LLC. I would like to ask you to remain calm and not believe these provocations. The information posted on this website is not true. It's all the doing of our competitors. Please have some common sense and don't believe everything that is posted on that page. I have already contacted the administrators of this website and explained the situation to them. I hope that, in the near future, all negative reviews of our company will be deleted. We only offer legitimate services. Our services are of very high quality; that's probably why our competitors are using such dishonest schemes to compete with us. Surely, it's much easier to post negative reviews about our company than to improve their level of customer service. Hopefully, those behind it will be held responsible.

https://www.sos.mo.gov/BusinessEntity/soskb/csearch.asp

Search Type: Exact Match Search Criteria: AXA Parcel LLC
Search Date: 4/5/2013 Search Time: 15:57
No Records were found for the search criteria 'AXA Parcel LLC' on 4/5/2013 3:57:25 PM

http://www.dos.ny.gov/corps/bus_entity_search.html

No business entities were found for AXA Parcel LLC.

Any suggestions ?

A company registration number would do the trick and resolve all confusion without any margin for error or doubt.

AXAParcel.com at http://axaparcel.com

The AXA Parcel project is a successor and a natural and powerful extension of the well-known service DaVinci. Our system and close-knit team target the entire Russian-speaking Internet audience and intend to make international purchases fast, hassle-free, and simple for our many hundreds of clients.
AXA Parcel LLC was registered in early 2008 in New York, USA. After considering comments and suggestions from a previous project, the AXA Parcel web site and system were launched in August 2008. The company headquarters is in St. Louis, Missouri, and we have representatives in Russia, Ukraine, England, Germany, and China.

1) I could not find anything about the “well known” DaVinci service
2) I did not find AXA Parcel LLC in a search of the New York Department of State’s Division of Corporations database
3) I did not find AXA Parcel LLC doing a business entity search of the Missouri Secretary of State’s website.
4) Launched in August 2008? The website was launched in October 2012, anonymously, for 5 years.
5) 130 South Bemiston Avenue #500, St Louis, Missouri 63105 appears to be multi-occupancy. Other occupants include:
a. Ahm Asset Management Llc, Tel: 314-863-0755
b. The Bradley Law Firm, Tel: 314-721-9111
c. Hughes Group, Tel: 314-721-3400
6) So I’m guessing that the area dialling code is 314, but AXA provide a non-geographic contact number, so it’s possibly free but it could be anywhere.
7) Basic point: if their Eastern European customers have access to the internet and the website, why would they buy through this website rather than going direct to the American sellers?
The suspicion has to be that this is a simple re-shipping fraud; that the goods to be shipped have been “purchased” with stolen credit cards and that anyone forwarding such goods is simply handling stolen goods and covering the trail for the bad guys.

Welcome Cynthia,

It appears that you are a bit confused about our site, and about the information posted in this topic. Nobody has posted anything suggesting that AXA parcel is a bad shipping company--in fact, we have not actually reached a conclusion as to whether it is real. It certainly isn't looking too good so far, though.

As for the email you sent, I would be happy to post the "explanation" you sent for readers, and in fact, I will quote part of your email here:

We have never hired people to receive any goods at their own addresses. All goods belonging to our clients are delivered to one of our warehouses, and our staff forwards them as requested by the customer.

With that statement, you have actually confirmed the information in this thread, rather than contradicted it. So, to make sure we are all on the same page:

Any offer for a job from AXA parcel that involves receiving and forwarding packages from home is a scam. This statement has now been confirmed by [email protected]

We have seen scammers piggyback off legitimate companies many times before, and we always try to make it very clear that the real company is not involved.

But, here's what concerns me in this case:
MULTIPLE users have received emails from the AXAPARCEL.com domain
And, we had a brand new member join to post a fake testimonial in which he stated that he IS in fact employed in this capacity for your company. I still have that fake testimonial saved, and I could certainly post it here, but it's not going to help your case any, I'm afraid.
This is a real problem, as it does NOT support the argument that the scammers are unconnected to your company. If your company is legitimate and is not sending these job offers out, it would suggest that you have a pretty major IT security problem if someone is managing to send these emails from your domain.


On another note:
I am sure that as the company's attorney, you will be happy to provide your credentials, including the state you are licensed in and your law firm's information. Since you emailed from an axaparcel.com address and not a law firm, I know you can understand that we can't just accept your statement that you are an attorney. After all, anyone can claim to be anything online.

And while you are at it, perhaps you could address the company registration issues raised by the two members above.

If we are able to verify that you are a legitimate company, and that the emails have not come from your company, we will be happy to update the topic to indicate that the scammers have piggybacked your company. We will not remove the topic either way, because it is in fact the type of warning we do here.
But right now, we can't even establish that you are legitimate, so I certainly am not in a position to say that the scammers sending out those emails are not connected to you.

Unfortunately, if your status as a lawyer and the company registration cannot be verified, I will have to assume that you are in fact not telling the truth, and I will have to replace your "registered member" rank with "scammer"

I'd also be interested to hear more about the UK office, especially in view of the following planning application

http://www.pam.ealing.gov.uk/PlanNet/documentstore%5CDC11117946-31-1_AF_A.PDF

.. and the office in Kenya ?

I would like to let you know that it is illegal to leave any Internet feedback that can potentially ruin the reputation of a person or company. In order to lawfully post public information on the Internet that can ruin someone’s reputation and lead to bad consequences, one must have proof of the information’s truthfulness.

Our company has a very good reputation in Europe, especially Eastern Europe. In Russia, for example, we even show our advertisements on TV.

We focus our services on Eastern Europe. As you might have guessed, all advertising, articles and feedback about our company are written mostly in Russian. Most of our clients are Russian-speaking.
If you look carefully when searching for feedback about our company, and if you use an online translator, you'll be able to find a lot of positive reviews about our company.

You asked why our website was registered recently. As you might have guessed, that's not the kind of information I have, but I clarified this issue with our IT manager, who told me the following. The domain name was registered five years ago for a period of four years. After that, a decision was made to use a different company for domain registration and website maintenance. This decision was made because the number of our customers grew significantly in these four years and the previous provider was unable to provide the appropriate services and web support required by our company.
According to our IT Manager, the new hosting company improved download speed for our website and made it more stable in general. You have probably noticed that our website has been registered for a period of 5 years, which speaks to the seriousness of our company's intentions. I also would like to note that the new hosting company that supports our website is one of the best companies in its field, and its services are used by many major companies.

I would like to ask you to remove the information or refute it on your website.
If necessary, I can email you our company's registration documents.
Thank you in advance.

Illegal is the wrong word to use, and I'm not legally trained.

Do you have a USA company registration ? Simple question.

7) Basic point: if their Eastern European customers have access to the internet and the website, why would they buy through this website rather than going direct to the American sellers?
The suspicion has to be that this is a simple re-shipping fraud; that the goods to be shipped have been “purchased” with stolen credit cards and that anyone forwarding such goods is simply handling stolen goods and covering the trail for the bad guys.

Why do we do it? Simple. Almost all online stores only send purchased goods to destinations within their country, and most auction sites don't want to send parcels to countries like Russia, Ukraine, B?lorussia, Estonia or Latvia, among others.

I would like to report that your actions not only cause ruin of the reputation of our company but will also scare new customers away. Our company spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising that reaches throughout the world, and as a lawyer of this company, I cannot allow you post on the Internet such materials that will harm the reputation of the company. At this point, I can only warn you that our company has the right to take you to court for such actions, as this is public slander.

Your complaint is made on behalf of a body whose existence you refuse to substantiate.

Under the circumstances you cannot prove that you have any right to speak on their behalf.

To make a complaint you must know how to make it, and give those to whom you address the complaint a reasonable opportunity to verify your credentials and those of the company you claim to represent.

If you cannot evidence their existence, you have no right to speak on their behalf. A US company registration is all that's necessary.

Dear customers,
My name is Cynthia C. Bowen. I am a lawyer for AXA Parcel LLC. I ask that you remain calm and unprovoked. Information that appears on this site is untrue. This is all the work of our competitors. Have some common sense, and do not believe everything that you read! I have already contacted the administrator of this site and have explained the situation. Hopefully, all the bad reviews about our company will be removed in the near future. We provide only legitimate services. Our services are of very high quality, and that is probably why our competitors are fighting with unfair methods. Our competitors find it much easier to leave bad reviews about our company rather than improve the level of customer satisfaction.

I also find this company: Tax Strategies Llc
Address: 130 S Bemiston Ave #500
St Louis, MO 63105

at the address listed for AXA Parcel LLC on their website.

This claim is made on the About Us page:

All our employees are trained to a high level and many of them have been in their positions for over 2 years. In 2008, we opened an office in Germany and began offering purchasing and delivery services from within Europe. In 2010, another branch was opened in China. Our employees and partners not only speak Russian, but are also fluent in English, German, and Chinese. With branches in three of the biggest markets, our Company can make purchases for clients in every corner of the globe.

Does not coincide with the job offer received by the Original Poster.

As you have refused every reasonable request Cynthia C. Bowen, I must now ask you directly - Is the company you claim to represent incorporated in the USA ? and if it is, what's the registration number ?

It should not be a difficult question to answer. If there's a problem, please explain.

You can solve the issue by one simple answer. You are the one making this a problem.