Employment Boards

I have been offered a job through Yahoo messenger they go by the name of melissaandrew37 with Parker Healthcare Pty LTD. The gave me a task of purchasing a cashiers check for $10 making it out to Amber James then scan it and email a copy of the scanned cashiers check to them. I have the entire communication between this person and myself printed out so that I have the evidence. I went so far as to write to the contact address provided on their website and have yet to recieve a reply from them regarding these individuals. Really odd. Beware of any job that wants you to send money in my opinion.

[AlanJones]

Were you asked to physically mail them the cheque as well as emailing it or just to email it?

My guess would be that they are cheque counterfeiters and are getting examples of real cheques so that they know what their counterfeits should look like.

You are unlikely to get paid for your "work" and in future it would be advisable to avoid job offers that come via Yahoo messenger (or Skype etc) as that is not how legitimate companies employ people.

I agree with AJ, but a scammer must be very stupid to believe that he can produce a passable counterfeit from a scanned copy of a cashier's cheque. Even in my day the security features would make it obvious for any cashier to spot, so it would never even get in to the bank clearing system, and that was in the days when I used to manually sign them. He wouldn't even be able to cover the most basic security features - like the watermark, special paper, damp sensitive ink, magnetic encoding, embedded metal strips and inks - and I'm sure they've added extra features since I retired.

It's also unlikely that after an image has been through your scanner and a printing process abroad that it will reproduce the colours very closely and you can bet that there'll be features that would thwart any attempt to copy them by an ordinary home scammer.

The scammer is not only wasting your time, but his own too.

They may be counterfeiters, but it may be simpler than that. They may be trying to use you to obtain "evidence" that will be provided to another victim to show that they are real. Often a scammer will offer a copy of a check to prove to a victim that the (nonexistent) money is real. The scammer simply takes your scan, adds a few zeros, and voila! "Proof" that they really have hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars to offer.

Please do post the emails you received (without your own info of course.) It may help others to recognize scams to watch for.