MLC / Kayla-Lee Matthews / [email protected]

Hi guys, first post here, but I received a pretty dodgy looking email today. I am currently in the market for a job, but I have not applied for any sites to give my email address to potential employers to contact me.

The email that I received was from a "Kayla-Lee Matthews" ([email protected]), and according to my email service, it was addressed to "[email protected]".

Here is the full email:
Hi,

Today our Company has a new vacancy of administrative assistants [sales support].
Our Company, MLC, is an affiliate of main global goods distributor so the offered position will implicate sales customer support for arrangements held in Australia.

For the partial vacancy you will get up to 840 AUD per week plus bonuses. For full-time post - 1300 AUD weekly plus bonuses. Working schedule is flexible.

Your duties will be:
- providing all the necessary service to our sales department;
- purchasing orders and expensing reports handling;
- keeping the data of all the arrangements and payments are being made;
- directly corporate with clients in USA, Eastern Europe and Asia.
Any expenses are fully covered by our Company. We DO NOT charge our employees.

Requirements: PC with access to the Internet; basic Excel skills the software must be pre-installed; negotiation experience.

It should be said that there is a probation period, during this period you will be trained and guided. All the operations are held online, however additional support will be provided to you over the phone. Trial period is paid.

To apply for this vacancy or have more details about, please answer to us ONLY at this email: [email protected] . Your CV will be a great plus.

Best regards,
MLC Team.


I am aware that in Australia, we do have a company called MLC, but they are an asset and wealth management company, not at a "global goods distributor".

I have no plans to reply to this email, but I would just like to warn people to run a bit of a check on emails from potential employers before getting serious.

This is a money mule scam. Both mlc-auction.com and mlc-career.com have been reported for fraud. I've alerted the site killer who's reporting mlc-auction; he should be adding the email you received to his report.

I got the exact same email yesterday from an @outlook.com email address. I almost replied but thought I would check out MLC first. Found this article and registered Thanks guys

I received the emails from MLC via [email protected]. it has been reported to the Australian authorities, and is now subject to internal investigation by the Commonwealth bank and the ANZ bank. They steal money from one account, send it to another, and then request that you withdraw and transfer overseas (
Russia) via western union and or money gram. I was reported to the Australian government site Scamwatch.gov.au on 26 September 2014, but disappointing to see that it has not been posted as a current warning yet.......they are a little slow to react. Also be careful of phone calls from Nicole, Sarah and James who pro port to represent MLC, and can be persistent and aggressive. I note that as of today the http:\\mcl-goods.com web site is down.

I got the email and wrote a set of questions back. I got a reply today and thought it may be genuine so I googled too. This is the problem when I have my resume already on some sites and looking for work. Anyway I have written back to them again.
But.....A) why are you sure this is a scam? Was anyone actually scammed? B) What is the point of all this cut and paste of their replies? If it is of any use, I could do it too.
Thanks

[AlanJones]

It is a scam because no legitimate business would ask you to recieve money in your personal bank account and then send it elsewhere - that is money laundering and the penalties for being caught are severe (it will be you being investigated, not the scammer) and people quite possibly are being scammed if they haven't thought that it sounds too good to be true and gone ahead without checking it out.

As for the cut and paste, their responses are often scripted and people may search for the questions that they ask.

I would recommend that you just delete all the emails and don't bother esponding to them and do not tell them you know iti s a scam or found them listed here.

Welcome Linda,

The unfortunate reality is that hacking and phishing for bank account and credit card information are huge problems, and thousands of bank accounts and credit cards are compromised every single day. The criminals are constantly looking to recruit mules to turn that information into cash and merchandise for themselves, and the easiest way to recruit more mules is with fake job offers.

We see this scam every single day, often several times a day. We have dealt with hundreds of their fake websites, and thousands of their offers. When you deal with them as often as we do, you get to the point where you can spot a mule operation in the first email.

As Alan said, any job that involves receiving and forwarding money is not legitimate. Legitimate companies NEVER route money or packages through random individuals. In the first place they don't need to, and second, the risk is far too high that the individuals will simply keep the money and/or items. Unfortunately, the person who performs the "job" has committed a serious crime, and can be arrested (and it does happen.) And the idiots who think they can "scam the scammers" by keeping the money are also setting themselves up for some nice jail time, because the money they are keeping does not belong to the scammers, it is stolen.

These criminals often use the same recruiting process--same interviews, same initial letters, changing things only slightly, if at all, from one fake company to the next. That's why posting those things can help--because next month, when they are operating under a new name, a potential victim who thinks to google the letters themselves can find the history and not waste any further time.

I knew it's a scam because I've seen the MLC website already, and there's another thread about KDL, which is another name used by the same gang, with enough info to tell it's a scam. The websites look identical except for the three letters. Some gangs use a dozen or more templates — we recognize them all. We also look for other identifying marks of a gang.

OMG!!! I HAVE RECIEVED PAYMENT FROM THESE PEOPLE AND HAVE HAD CONVERSATIONS WITH THEM OVER THE PHONE??? IV SPOKEN TO TWO DIFFERENT WOMEN AND HAVE DONE RUN THROUGHS WITH THEM???

Contact the fraud department of your bank ASAP. Do NOT withdraw any money.
Explain to the bank what has happened, and be prepared to show them the emails regarding this job.

Also, be unreachable to the scammers. Do not answer their phone calls (but do, of course, answer the bank's phone calls). The scammers will send you letters threatening to sic the FBI on you for stealing their money; ignore them. Criminals are not going to sue you for stealing someone else's money!

To reiterate: talk with your bank, bring printouts of the emails with complete headers, and do not withdraw any money for any reason until the fraudulent money is returned to where it came from.