Is this a scam? Please advise

I received the following inquiry on my Martindale Hubbell website:

Below is a legal inquiry submitted by a consumer using your Martindale-Hubbell® Law Firm Web Site at Site
To:
From: Patrick Lee ([email protected] )

Contact Information
First Name: Patrick
Last Name: Lee
Address: Polymer
City: singapore
State/Province: CA
Postal Code
Phone: 656863821
Email Address: [email protected]
Description of Inquiry: Dear Attorney, Polymer Technologies Pte Ltd require your legal service in collections. Let me know if you can help. Thanks Patrick Lee Tel/Fax: 656863821 http://www.polymertec.com [email protected]
I thought this was strange because his e-mail address is a rocketmail address not a company address. It appears that the Polymer Technologies Pte. LTD is a real Singapore company. I e-mailed Patrick Lee asking him to contact me, and he e-mailed me back as follows:

Dear Attorney,

About our Company:
Polymer Technologies Pte Ltd® manufactures a comprehensive line of Polyurea Spray Machine, FRP Corrugated Sheet, materials and Polyslit products for Companies and individuals. Polymer Technologies Pte Ltd® products offer excellent performance. Because they're durable, they can be an economical choice for most companies and individual and no complaint regarding our products. Here are some of our products:
•BMC line •Casting Machine for Solid Surface
•Chopped strand mat line •Chopper System
•Continuous Blender for cultured marble; solid surface •Continuous Casting Machine
•Epoxy System Dispenser •Filament Winding Machine
•Polyurethane Injection Machine •Pultrusion Machine


Delinquent Accounts:
My English is very poor so i can not call you now, I use English translator to send these emails
We have been experiencing difficulting in payment from Customers in California hence we decided to employ the service of a reputable Law Firm like yours to represent our organisation and fight for us in collection of these accounts from Customer or file a lawsuit if need be.
The Total amount been owned is $1,445.000.00 and these accounts has been running for about 9 months now and some cases over a year. At this moment, it will not be proper for me to provide you with the list of delinquent accounts or send you copies of the contract/invoices until we establish an Attorney-Client engagement or relationship. If this is done, we are willing to maintain a retainer fee of $30,000.00 or on contingency basis. I will want you to send me your retainer fee agrement so that I can sign and return back to you.
We expect that you will provide legal consultation, collection of delinquent accounts, required representation and bring to actions in Court against the delinquent customers.
Accept my sincerest appreciation for your willingness to render your service. I await your response with your retainer fee agreement.
I can reached by email if you have any question.
Your Faithfully,
Patrick Lee

This seems like a scam, but what are your thoughts?

Quotes added for clarity

Welcome to Scamwarners pmandassociates.

We have a thread devoted to "delinquent accounts scams" here

http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1578

Hi pmandassociates, Welcome to Scamwarners.

Definite scam, please follow the link as posted above for more advice on this kind of scam

I received the below from [email protected]. Before I found this site, however, I sent through details of the trust account into which payment of a retainer fee could be made along with a retainer agreement. Most importantly, does anyone know if these people can do anything dodgy if they have details of the trust account? The other thing that I don't understand how the scam works when I won't provide any services until a retainer fee has been deposited into trust. If they do actually pay the retainer, and if no "collected" monies are forwarded to them until they have definitely cleared, then they would just risk losing the retainer.

About our Company:
Polymer Technologies Pte Ltd® manufactures a comprehensive line of Polyurea Spray Machine, FRP Corrugated Sheet, materials and Polyslit products for Companies and individuals. Polymer Technologies Pte Ltd® products offer excellent performance. Because they're durable, they can be an economical choice for most companies and individual and no complaint regarding our products. Here are some of our products:
•BMC line •Casting Machine for Solid Surface
•Chopped strand mat line •Chopper System
•Continuous Blender for cultured marble; solid surface •Continuous Casting Machine
•Epoxy System Dispenser •Filament Winding Machine
•Polyurethane Injection Machine •Pultrusion Machine

Delinquent Accounts:
We have been experiencing difficulting in payment from Customers in Sydney, Australia hence we decided to employ the service of a reputable Law Firm like yours to represent our organisation and fight for us in collection of these accounts from Customer or file a lawsuit if need be.

The Total amount been owned is AUS$1,445.000.00 and these accounts has been running for about 9 months now and some cases over a year. At this moment, it will not be proper for me to provide you with the list of delinquent accounts or send you copies of the contract/invoices until we establish an Attorney-Client engagement or relationship. If this is done, we are willing to maintain a retainer fee of AUS$30,000.00 or on contingency basis. I will want you to send me your retainer fee agrement so that I can sign and return back to you.
We expect that you will provide legal consultation, collection of delinquent accounts, required representation and bring to actions in Court against the delinquent customers.
Accept my sincerest appreciation for your willingness to render your service. I await your response with your retainer fee agreement.
I can reached by email if you have any question.
Your Faithfully,
Patrick Lee
POLYMER TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD.
44 Tech Park Crescent Singapore 638095
Tel/Fax: 6568638219
http://www.polymertec.com
nickc
Registered Member

Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2010 6:19 am

Please continue discussion on this subject in this thread http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewto ... 974#p23974 - Ralph

Hi Nick and Welcome to Scamwarners.

In this scam you will be asked to collect money owed by the various companies you are asked to collect unpaid money from.
You will contact these (fake) companies advising of legal action if the money is not paid.
the companies will almost immediately tell you they will pay the money they owe and will send you cheques to cover the debts
the cheques sent will be fake, usually drawn on the accounts of real companies so it may be months before the real company realises that their accounts have been compromised.
Generally, by the time you realise the cheque was fake, you will have forwarded funds to the original person who you are working for.

Having your real acount details in the hands of these people is certainly not ideal, while they may not do anything with your accounts, there is a reasonable chance that they will attempt to gain access to your account or perhaps even use your account to produce more cheques for their next victim.

It is advised that you contact your bank to discuss having your account details changed to prevent any misuse of your accounts.

As to the scammer and any of his aliases (in reality all of the people you have been introduced to as well as the original person who contacted you) please completely ignore them, do not reply to their emails regardless of what they have told you.

If you have received cheques or if you receive any cheques in the future, please take these (unopened if possible) complete with any envelope to your local police who may be able to alert the real account owners of the fraudulent use

I just received the exact same email also through the contact me form on me website.

Welcome! I'm glad you recognized that this is a scam quickly.

One thing I would like to note in addition to Ralph's explanation:

In most cases, a fake check will be involved. However, in some cases, the "debtor" may offer to transfer the money directly into the trust account. Instead of a fake check, the scammer will transfer the money into your account, but it will come from a phished or stolen bank account or credit card. Again, the same thing will happen--sometime down the road, the account owner, credit card company or bank will discover this was not an authorized transaction, it will be reversed. Again, if the money has already been withdrawn and forwarded to the scammer, you will be out a very large sum of money.

In both cases (fake check or unauthorized transfer), even if the fraud is discovered before you have paid the scammer, you will still most likely be out some money, because your bank will most likely hit you with one or more fees for the transactions and/or for depositing a fake check in the first place.

I've just received an email from the legitimate Polymer Technologies. They copied me into an email reply from their company to someone who made a query about an email from Patrick Lee [email protected]. As you can see, Polymer Technologies have verified that they are in no way connected to these emails nor requiring debt collection and any email mentioning their company in this context is a scam.

Here is the text of the message from Polymer Technologies.

Pls be informed that there is no such person in our company.
We have no debt to collect from USA or any other countries.
It is a scam. see "www.scamwarners.com"
A police report had been filed here many months back.

You may want to alert your law society or association or law enforcement agency there to save many others the time and prevent others from being scammed

Kind regards,
xxxxxx

Polymer Technologies Pte Ltd
44 Tech Park Crescent
Singapore 638095

Tel: +65 6863 8225
Fax:+65 6863 8219

Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.polymertec.com