Personal Assistant scam?

I received your message regarding the Summer Aid job. As a consultant with a focus in international business, the majority of my clients are out of state and out of the country. I need help with my errands because I am constantly out of town. As a matter of fact, I am currently on a business trip to Helsinki, Finland at this time. I will prepay you in advance to do my shopping, Bill payments and have the items sent to my PO box. I will pick the items up from the post office when I return from Finland on the 15th of August. How soon can you start?

I will email you the list and pictures of what to shop for so you can do the shopping at Sears,Walmart, Best buy and other stores. I'll pay you $150 for your service for 10 hours every week. I'm prepared to pay for mileage/travel expense.I will provide clear set of instructions for each task I need done and sufficient funds to cover all errands. I'd love to meet with you upon my return from Finland to discuss the possibility of making this job long term.

The hours are flexible so you can spread those 10 hours a week on your own time. I will provide you with sufficient funds and adequate instruction for every task. I will be sending money for my errands inclusive of payment for your service through my bank channel.The money will arrive inform of a money order. How should your name go on the money order? What address should I have it mailed to?


Please Advise AND let me know if you can do the Job.


Hope to hear from you soon.

You are right in thinking that it is a scam. The scammer wants you to turn fake (or fraudulently altered) money orders into merchandise (and possibly cash with the "bill payments" for him.)

These scammers often defy basic logic. Even if we didn't know this is an extremely common scam, it just doesn't make sense. First of all, sending a random stranger a money order when it would be easy for that stranger to cash it and walk away would be just plain stupid, and an international business consultant would be aware enough to realize that. Second, all of the stores he mentions have websites that typically have more merchandise than the stores themselves, and often they have free shipping. It would make absolutely no business sense to pay someone $150 per week, plus expenses, when they can just order the items themselves off the stores' websites. A person who is able to pull up photos and email lists of items he wants can just as easily order the items from the websites, and most likely have the items shipped for free. Even if he couldn't have them shipped to a PO box, it would be much cheaper and easier to open a box at any one of the many mailbox stores out there, or simply get a premium account with a major shipping company (for example, UPS has premium accounts for less than $100 that allow you to have items held, schedule delivery dates, etc.) and again, it would be much safer.