Australian Financial Group Pty. Ltd. ??? Advise Please!

[Charlie]

I have just recieved the following email and doing some research. Have you heard of this one? The web site looks good but don't they always??? LOL!

Message is as follows.........




Australian Financial Group Pty Ltd.
141 Oak Road,
Kirrawee, NSW 2232, Australia.


Hello Charles,
my name is Ostin Brown and I am Australian Financial Group Staff manager.
We have found and reviewed your resume at workthing.com and decided to
offer this job to you.

Here is the information about Escrow Agent position:

Job Basis
As the basis of our service is to provide escrow deals on the Internet we
need escrow agents all over the world. Attracting clients from different
corners of the world we should have our agents everywhere so that to be
able to provide instant escrow solutions (in-state bank transfers take no
more than a few hours). We engage new technologies to deal with the
e-document exchange, which make the process reliable and safe. Our service
only deals with the paperwork, leaving the financial part (accepting funds
on your personal bank accounts from the buyers, and routing them to the
sellers according to our instructions afterwards) for you. We can't
shoulder the financial responsibility because in today's world of
extremely fast solutions it is time that is of extreme importance to our
clients. Having an escrow agent in every country we can quickly transfer
funds inside the country without wasting time on the international bank
transfers, and continue our rapid growth rather than overwhelming our own
bank account with inbound and outbound transactions leading to severe hold
times and probably service interruption.

Career and Benefits
Your main task will be accepting money transactions on your personal bank
accounts and routing them to the next link of the escrow process,
according to our instructions. You will benefit from the commissions,
which are 5-7% of every transaction and depend on the quantity of
completed transactions and the speed of your work + you will be paid basic
salary 1500 GBP per month. For your convenience there will be no
paychecks, your commission will remain in your account, which is activated
after your registration, after every successfully completed transaction.
The cost of money transfer is not included in your commission, meaning you
will deduct it from the amount to be sent, not from your commission. And
you receive 5-7% of the amount of the transaction. Normally the amounts
that we process vary from 2,000GBP to 10,000GBP, but can go higher on
special occasions.

If you are ready to proceed, please provide us with your AVAILABLE phone
number and send it back to Staff Manager at
staffmanager@aufinancialgroup.com

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need more information.

--
Sincerely yours,
Ostin Brown,
Australian Financial Group Pty. Ltd.
staffmanager@aufinancialgroup.com,
Visit us at http://aufinancialgroup.com/

END.......

Any thoughts would be very much appreciated. Many thanks. Charlie.

[lightfair]

Sounds like a typical "money mule" scam to me.

The site doesn't load, but the whois data for the domain is pretty typical: registrant hidden, registration just a week ago and only for a single year....

Code: Select all

[whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com]
Registration Service Provided By: NICS.NAME
Contact: +7.8469724045
Website: http://nics.name

Domain Name: AUFINANCIALGROUP.COM

Registrant:
    PrivacyProtect.org
    Domain Admin        (contact@privacyprotect.org)
    P.O. Box 97
    Note - All Postal Mails Rejected, visit Privacyprotect.org
    Moergestel
    null,5066 ZH
    NL
    Tel. +45.36946676

Creation Date: 21-Aug-2008 
Expiration Date: 21-Aug-2009

Domain servers in listed order:
    ns2.aufinancialgroup.com
    ns1.aufinancialgroup.com


Administrative Contact:
    PrivacyProtect.org
    Domain Admin        (contact@privacyprotect.org)
    P.O. Box 97
    Note - All Postal Mails Rejected, visit Privacyprotect.org
    Moergestel
    null,5066 ZH
    NL
    Tel. +45.36946676

Technical Contact:
    PrivacyProtect.org
    Domain Admin        (contact@privacyprotect.org)
    P.O. Box 97
    Note - All Postal Mails Rejected, visit Privacyprotect.org
    Moergestel
    null,5066 ZH
    NL
    Tel. +45.36946676

Billing Contact:
    PrivacyProtect.org
    Domain Admin        (contact@privacyprotect.org)
    P.O. Box 97
    Note - All Postal Mails Rejected, visit Privacyprotect.org
    Moergestel
    null,5066 ZH
    NL
    Tel. +45.36946676

Status:ACTIVE


Don't bother with it; I get similar offers several times daily.

See also

http://www.bobbear.co.uk/paramountfinance.html

Several sentences from your example are cited verbatim, like this one:

"Your main task will be accepting money transactions on your personal bank
accounts and routing them to the next link of the escrow process,
according to our instructions."

[Charlie]

Ah, right! Cool, thank you for that. As always, if it sounds too good to be true!!!!!

I appreciate your help. Thank you! Charlie.

[hilda]

I have just recieved the same offer. The work appears safe at the moment because I would control the processing account and release no data about it to anyone else. I am not knee jerk averse to every opportunity and realise the comission may not be phenomenal. I will probably take it up and just see whether I do in fact get the basic £1500 pm plus commisssion. If they start feeding me 'small print' opt outs, asking for dubious data about the account or leading me elsewhere (rope a dope style) then I'm out.

[lightfair]

I have just recieved the same offer. The work appears safe at the moment because I would control the processing account and release no data about it to anyone else. I am not knee jerk averse to every opportunity and realise the comission may not be phenomenal. I will probably take it up and just see whether I do in fact get the basic £1500 pm plus commisssion. If they start feeding me 'small print' opt outs, asking for dubious data about the account or leading me elsewhere (rope a dope style) then I'm out.

Excuse me, but

ARE YOU SURE YOU'VE UNDERSTOOD WHAT WE HAVE WRITTEN?

You are about to take part in a criminal enterprise, punishable with jail terms up to several years. This isn't about "data" or "controlling the processing account" or something like this. It's about "money laundering". It's about you going to jail in the end. And trust me - even if you will not go to jail you will pay a pretty penny for a long time afterwards.

Your are asked to work as a so-called "money mule":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_mule
http://www.banksafeonline.org.uk/moneym ... ained.html

Now, as opposed to "drug mules", there is one crucial difference: money mules will always get caught. It's inherent to the whole system: You are the person supplying the bank account in which the money from the various fraudulent activities ends up. This of course is a traceable thing. That means that everyone having lost money to a fake escrow scheme or having fallen victim to a phishing scheme or whatever will in the end sue you. Even if you feel you are as much a victim as them it won't help you (perhaps some of the criminal charges will be dropped but civil charges will apply nonetheless).

You will have to re-pay any single penny that went through your account. Plus lawyer's expenses.

Yes, I am not being nice here. You're posting this in a thread were various signs and explanations have been shown. Either you haven't read them (not good) or you don't understand them (worse) or you don't care (worst). Why on earth do you even let us know about this if you think it's legit?

[hilda]

It is true I have not read all the replies, I am new to this website. Maybe there is some evidence of money laundering in the messages in which case I suggest you present it to the police. A foreign financial company requires UK agents to process some transactions concerning UK clients in the UK on its behalf. This is perfectly normal and legitimate. I have done similar work before and found it all perfectly amicable, legitimate and lucrative. Drugs and fraud are not the only industries in the world.
Incidentally I found the website unconvincing. It has an air of 'Front Page' amateurishness about it but that is typical of small and medium sized companies.
I did not realise this website was a fetish club, sorry for spoiling your fun.

[simon]

Hi Hilda,
It seems that you're not knowing what your are doing! The money you forward comes from phished ('stolen') bank accounts. Please note that by doing so you offend the law and the bank will book back the money sooner or later . You should visit http://www.bobbear.co.uk where information about how those scams work are collected.

[Vader]

I am amazed about just how thick you are, Hilda...
Believe me, as a veteran Internet scam fighter I have seen a lot of brainless action, but you really take the cake.
This is not about you insulting the owners of this site over the design of this website, it's about you insulting people trying to give you good, real and true advice about you being about to fall for a scam operation run by the professional eastern european cyber crime mafia. The people here are trying to protect YOUR ASS, because you will be dragged before a court and prosecuted while the Ivans are laughing about another stupid western moron they led down the garden path, I can guarantee you that. It's a 1000% fact. They won't get caught. You will. Mark my words, because you'll remember them when you sit in an 8 foot cell.

The people on this site have been dealing with this sort of scam for YEARS. Your arrogance is thoroughly out of place here. You are just one more person thinking they are smarter than everyone else. Just one more person who's going to learn the hard way. Promise.

[hilda]

Again, why have you not dragged them before a court? As it stands you are merely libelling this company.

It is in fact this website which is criminally illegal; it is your own postings about this company which are criminal

[lightfair]

Again, why have you not dragged them before a court? As it stands you are merely libelling this company.

There is no "company" to be dragged before a court. There is only a web site operated by some criminals from Eastern Europe pretending to be a company. Is this somehow getting through to you? Who can we libel something that doesn't exist?
In case you haven't noticed: Anyone can create a website pretending to be some "company" - be it a bank, some other "financial institution", or some "escrow and transports company". We kill - with the cooperation of a large number of hosters - such sites on a daily basis. And we educate people so they don't fall for those scams. Of course: Educating people also requires a certain amount of cooperation; there isn't much we can do if somebody doesn't want to learn.

Did you do a bit of homework? Did you check if there is actually a "Australian Financial Group Pty. Lt" registered with the Australian authorities? Did the data match the data on the web site?
Do you really consider handling financial transactions for somebody you don't know?

Do you realize that those web sites come and go and most of them don't last for long? How come the web site referred to by the initial poster is already dead? What's the site the scammers use at this time?

It is in fact this website which is criminally illegal; it is your own postings about this company which are criminal

Well, if you think so, why don't YOU go to the authorities?

Once again: We are here to help. If you choose to reject our help because you're thinking we want to spoil your "great opportunity" - fine. It may hurt me a bit; but it will hurt you much, much worse in the end.