Employment Scammer Ring

Hi Guys,

I am a newbie but for work reasons I have been looking into scams for quite some time. I have read through the posts on here and am very pleased that there are knowledgeable folk out there who are prepared to spread the word to protect people from scams of all countries and ethnic groups. I have been working for quite some time in tracking down a particular group of individuals, location wise, I am getting there but for now let me give you some background.

A particular group started many years ago under the guise of a Finance Group of sorts. The web site was copied, as was the content and the logo was for and american truck firm. They have gone under the guise of the following names, to name but a few:

ricks finance group
garner investments
gfi center
montana finance corp
cimarron finance corp
gta traiding
richmond financial center

These sites are no longer available to view on Google as they have been taken down, the cached versions are also no longer available.

Just lately however, they have kinda slipped off the radar, with no further identical sites being posted. They have now, as I have discovered, changed their tack somewhat and their web site so that they cannot be tracked. Unfortunately for them, they can.

Their web site has no been completely redesigned and are now operating the following.

Maier Trading Inc - http://www.maiertadinginc.com
Rice Finance Company- http://www.ricefinancecompany.com
Tran Capital Group - http://www.trancapitalgroup.com
Decker Investors Corporation - http://www.deckercorporation.com
WST Finance Company - http://www.wstcompany.com
Hargis Capital Group - http://www.hargisgroup.com
Trucker FX Corporation - http://www.truckerfx.com
RST Finance Group - http://www.rstfg.com
Wilson General Group Ltd - http://www.wilsongeneralgroup.com
DHM Business Company - http://www.dhmbusiness.com

If you take a look at the web sites, they are identical and all registered in May and June, around the same time when the last of the previous different sites disappeared. A point of note is that if anyone receives a call from any of these companies, the woman appears to have an American accent, also, the most recent telephone number they use is 02032397094. This number appears to be geographic, but it is down as "Cable and Wireless" as the provider, however, I assure you that this is a Skype of VoIP number.

If anyone out there receives an email like the following:

"In attached file you can find Training manual about training
process.
Your training will start on (Wednesday, 20, June, 2012)

Please confirm that you are ready to start the training
as soon as possible.

P.S. Our manager will call you."

I can assure you that it is this group who are targeting you.

I hope this helps someone and I will add to this thread as my investigation progresses. Any questions, feel free to PM me or add to the thread.

Cheers

Anonymous.

Searching for that phrase brings me to a yahoo question involving mule recruitment.

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110501205545AAUWtNg

Is this the scam you are referring to? Do you have emails from any of these domains?

Dotti,

I can confirm that Vermont Funding Solutions are part of the same group. It was one of their earlier websites. I do not have any emails, they are quite clever how they work. Throughout the whole "process" they only ever send 2 emails, the one posted in my original message being the second, after your apparent "appointment". After this, they do everything via telephone from their 0203 VoIP number, I know this as I have been in contact with victims of this particular group.

Here is there first email, which never deviates.

"Here is the detailed information about this vacancy.

If you are interested please fill out the "Application form" and send
the application by email.

P.S The application must be completed in full detail and must be signed
Our manager will call you within 1-2 working days."

The victim also receives two documents, highlighting the role within the "company" and also a details application form.

From what I can gather this particular group are one of only two who consistently have a constant flow of funds to be laundered, they always call and are always ready to transfer funds to a UK account. I am yet to find out where the funds come from, but I suspect that the use funds from a different fraud, potentially property rental to lure the victim to send the funds themselves to the next victim in the chain.

These people have been active for at least the last 3 years and have yet to be brought to justice.

If you have any further questions, I will be happy to answer them.

Just an addition, as this method seems to work for these scammers, it has been adopted by another group, currently using www.kingdomempire.com. Exactly the same 2 emails followed by a telephone call.

Large scale, organized mule recruiting operations are most often connected to hackers from the former Soviet Union.

These are typically used to move cash from credit cards and/or bank accounts of victims of phishing or virus activity. There is a constant flow because new phishing sites are constantly being launched, and viruses constantly circulating. The money has to be moved fast, before the victim realizes they are compromised.

Two victims I spoke to some time ago, after receiving and sending the money via Western Union, never had her account closed or debited. Only after not hearing from their "supervisors" again did they realise it was a scam. This suggests to me, that the funds came from another scammed victim, who was too embarassed about his/her naiveness to report it to the bank or the authorities.

I guess it is probably a mixed bag where the money comes from initially. I only made this post so that anyone googling those companies are aware of what they are getting into.

Phishing and viruses often attack business accounts as well as personal accounts.

Business accounts do not typically carry the same level of guaranteed protection as personal accounts. Typically, with business accounts, reversal of the transaction is unlikely. Some businesses carry insurance for these things, in which case insurance pays, while many small businesses simply take the loss, or are even bankrupted by it. Either way, though, the mule won't see anything, and the money will never be taken back.

An interesting article on the topic here points this out:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/30/ms_money_mule_victims/

The major problem with this argument is that the victims of phishing fraud are often small business owners. And, in the US at least, bosses are liable for losses on corporate accounts caused by cyber-fraud. Unlike consumers they don't get refunded by banks. So a virus infection on a PC used to do the corporate accounts can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars siphoned out of a business.

What it really comes down to is that this it a more dangerous group of criminals than your average 419 scammer.

Dotti I completely agree, hence my post to bring awareness to people on this particular group. Hope it helps someone.

I can confirm that I recieved an email similar to the above:


Please fill out the "Application form" carefully and send the form by email.
Our manager will call you within 1-2 working days.
P.S. The application must be completed in full detail.

The 2 documents mentioned by previous poster were also included, one detailing the position and the other an application form requiring your bank account details. I actually filled it all in but did not send it off as I wanted to find out more information on this company who are willing to pay so generously for just a few hours work.

Turns out that the company name and registration number in New York could not be found the register of companies. Also how can you have an investment training company with no telephone number, nobody in their right mind would set up a biz offering training and then not have a telephone number. You know the rule "if it's too good to be true, it probably is NOT TRUE"

OK so their going under the guise of:
GFC Investments Ltd, office: 100 Murray Street, New York, NY 10007, USA. Company is registered in USA with company registration number - 725772409.
web address: http://gfcinvest.com

I could find no information on this company anywhere on the web. But copied a whole paragraph of text from their website and eventually found this website. Seems as though alot of the text for this site was lifted from a legitamate financial training brokerage with real history and contact details.

The thing that really alerted me was checking the site's "who is" details and finding out that it was registered on June 15th 2012, but had articles dating back to February 2012 and the News articles most recent update, dates back to March 2012.

I'm not sure what they would have done with my details but sure I'm glad I was skeptical and checked it out more thoroughly. Clearly I will not be applying for this job. They got my details from one of the job websites.

Be careful and hope this post will help someone out there. (I don't usually post on sites but thought I must alert someone to this, as I nearly got caught myself)