Is Richard Smith and Company a scam?

I would like to know if this is a scam please?

Richard Smith and Company Limited
Mewburn Road, Banbury,
Oxfordshire
OX16 9PA
Registered in England: 04593966.

The Address is for The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre which rents out space to businesses. Could you possibly post the full email with headers and any phone/fax numbers you have please.

edit: just got the same info as jay, West Thames busses Ltd.

Screams scam, to me.

Do you have any other information about this one? Any email headers, the email it was contained in or any info on how you came about it? Any idea what this company does?

Quite often, scammers will use a legitimate company as a front even though they have no connection with it whatsoever. Therefore, the company ends up being as much as a victim as anyone else.

Google doesn't seem to bring up anything about this company though. That would tend to make me suspicious.

According to the Companies House http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/ WebCHeck the company registration number 04593966 is for

WEST THAMES BUSES LIMITED
25 GLOVER ROAD
PINNER
MIDDLESEX HA5 1LQ
Company No. 04593966

And according to the Royal Mail http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/ this is the names and addresses matching post code OX16 9PA

Abbey Utilities Ltd, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
Banbury & District Chamber Of Commerce, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
C S I C, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
Click-on Logistics Ltd, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
Extreme Data, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
Fibre Optics Solutions Ltd, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
I Vision, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
Image Diagnostic, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
Lighthouse Graphic Design, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
North Oxfordshire Business Venture Ltd, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
Oxmedia Net, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
Professional Edge Resources, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
Push Guides, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
Red Paint Ltd, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
Sopha Medical Vision, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA
Webdrive Networks Ltd, The Colin Sanders Innovation Centre, Mewburn Road, BANBURY, OX16 9PA

Header: Employment/Contract Offer!!!

Richard Smith and Company Limited
Mewburn Road, Banbury,
Oxfordshire
OX16 9PA
Registered in England: 04593966.

Hello,

Here is a great opportunity for you to work from home or your
present
place of work and get paid weekly with little or no stress.Its a
job
with no emphasize on qualification,Sex,Age,Marital Status or
Location
within the UNITED STATES & CANADA .We are glad to offer you this
job
position in our company as a representative in the and United
States
of America & Canada.

Richard Smith and Company Limited is a trading partners based in
the United
Kingdom,we need someone to work for the company as a
Representative/Book keeping/Customer Services in the U.S.A and CANADA,
pending when the company will be able to secure an office in your
region.

The customer receives and Verify the products.After this has
been done the
customer has to pay for the products.About 90 percent of our
customers prefer to pay through Certified Cheques,based on the
amount involved. We have decided to open this new job position for
solving this problems.

THE TASKS ARE:
1. Recieve payment from Customers
2. Monitoring Products and Informations from Customers.
3. You are entitled to 10% on every Payment processed.
4. All issued payments to you after deduction of your precentage
is to be
forwarded to the company.

For example you’ve got $30,000.You take your income :$1500.
Send to us:
$2700.First month you will have 4-9 transactions on nothing less
than $30000-$50000.
The average monthly income is about $5000. No form of
investments from you. Payment from you or upfront payment.

This job may only take 1-3 hours per day. We understand it is
unusual and an
incredible job position. This job takes only 1-7 hours per
week.You’ll have a lot of free time doing another job, You don't
need to have an Office,But this job is very challanging and you
should understand it and be Trustworthy.

We are looking only for the worker who will satisfies our
requirements and
will be an earnest assistant.

We are glad to offer this job position to you. If you feel you
are a serious and
earnest worker and if you want to work for Richard Smith and
Company Limited ,a letter of employment will be sent to you, and
you will have to fill it out and send it back via email,and you
will receive necessary informations in less than 1-48 hours.

Take note: Honesty is our watchword here.
Email us for fast response and Employment Letter.Please include
your phone numbers and contact address.

Best Regards,
Richard Smith.
Email: [email protected]

Richard Smith and Company Limited
Mewburn Road, Banbury,
Oxfordshire
OX16 9PA
Registered in England: 04593966.

Scam!!!

Fiesty, what Ed and myself meant when we asked you to post the header was this:

When you get an email there are some options that you can click on. One of those says "Display Full Header". It varies according to email provider exactly where it is on the page, but if you find it and click on it, it will bring up a load of gobbeldygook that looks something like this:

Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Received: from webmail-mx.catholic.org ([10.0.0.25])
by webmail-data.catholic.org (Cyrus v2.3.7) with LMTPA;
Wed, 25 Jul 2007 03:22:08 -0700
X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 2.3
Received: from webmail-mx.catholic.org (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
by webmail-mx.catholic.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5D09F5BD5C
for <@catholic.org>; Wed, 25 Jul 2007 03:22:06 -0700 (PDT)
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.1 (2007-05-02) on
webmail-mx.catholic.org
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.7 required=4.0 tests=HTML_MESSAGE,URG_BIZ
autolearn=no version=3.2.1
Received: from web27204.mail.ukl.yahoo.com (web27204.mail.ukl.yahoo.com [217.146.182.94])
by webmail-mx.catholic.org (Postfix) with SMTP
for <@catholic.org>; Wed, 25 Jul 2007 03:22:05 -0700 (PDT)

From that we can sometimes tell where the email was sent by running it through a web page like this: http://headertool.apelord.com/
Obviously, if the company is claiming to be in the UK but the header shows it as originating in Nigeria or elsewhere, alarm bells should start ringing.

Check scam
see http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=9
'Payments' sent to you for deposit
Deposit/cash and your bank says clear
You send their part by Westrn Union or MoneyGram or bank wire
Check reaches issuing bank and bounces back to your bank
Your bank charges you the full amount &/or files fraudulent check charge

Result: Scammer has the money and you end up with money loss, and maybe bad credit - negative bank balance, and possibly a criminal charge.

Here is the full header info
**********************
205.152.59.68]
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Authentication-Results: mta188.mail.re3.yahoo.com from=bellsouth.net; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
Received: from 205.152.59.68 (EHLO imf20aec.mail.bellsouth.net) (205.152.59.68) by mta188.mail.re3.yahoo.com with SMTP; Sat, 28 Jul 2007 15:23:52 -0700
Received: from ibm62aec.bellsouth.net ([192.168.16.253]) by imf20aec.mail.bellsouth.net with ESMTP id <20070728222350.TIOL8519.imf20aec.mail.bellsouth.net@ibm62aec.bellsouth.net>; Sat, 28 Jul 2007 18:23:50 -0400
Received: from mail.bellsouth.net ([192.168.16.253]) by ibm62aec.bellsouth.net with SMTP id <20070728222350.MQPP10546.ibm62aec.bellsouth.net@mail.bellsouth.net>; Sat, 28 Jul 2007 18:23:50 -0400
X-Mailer: Openwave WebEngine, version 2.8.16.1 (webedge20-101-1106-101-20040924)
X-Originating-IP: [203.22.204.164]
From: "Richard Smith and Company Limited" <[email protected]> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Reply-to: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Employment/Contract Offer!!!
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2007 18:23:50 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-Id: <20070728222350.MQPP10546.ibm62aec.bellsouth.net@mail.bellsouth.net>
Content-Length: 2695

The IP: 192.168.16.253 gives a satellite provider off the West African coast. Scam

If you run it through the Header Analysis I posted it shows that the email originated in the US.
But, as I said, we can only "sometimes" check where it originated from. Some email providers use satellites which don't give us the info we need and some strip the IP information altogether.
So although we've got US for this one, we can tell it's a scam as, if the sender of this email really works for a UK company, he is very unlikely to use a US email provider.
That said, he's probably in West Africa somewhere.

Another good way to tell if it's a scam is if you get an email with the return address using a regular email provider like yahoo, gmail, myway or whatever. Most companies register their own .com domains their emails would read something like "UKcompany.com" or "UKcompany.co.uk". The same would go for any other company elsewhere - a French company would be ".com" or .fr". You can find a list here: http://www.europeregistry.com/domains/d ... search.htm
It's not always the case (there are a few rare exceptions) but as a general rule it's not a bad one to take note of.

Thank you for the quick research. I thought it might be scam but wanted to make sure my mind was working -- finally.

Well spotted, Fiesty!

Any "job" that involves receiving payments or shipments at home and sending on money or merchandise is automatically a scam. Some of these fake companies even have real looking websites and company letterheads, but all you need to see is that they are asking you to receive or "process" payments or shipments to know that it is 100% email fraud.

I am learning that this is real time business to these crooks. It would appear that the check which drew a red flag originally is about to be shipped to me. I plan to scan it and then turn it over to the police as was advised...or would it be better to take it to the bank? I can't remember because both seem viable solutions. The check will be coming from a customer in Canada. Will that make a difference?

Yes it does make a difference if it actually does come from Canada.
There is the possibility that the sender in Canada is either another victim being used as a "check mule" or that the scammer has someone illegally printing and sending checks for him there.
My advice is to handle the check as little as possible - I wouldn't even scan it. Take it straight to your local police station with the envelope. You might even want to take copies of all of your email correspondence with the scammer to show to the police. There's no comeback on you if you do this and it might help them to investigate the scam.

Personally, I wouldn't even open it, until you have the police (or bank officer) as a witness.