SEEK's name taken in vain

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 07 August 2008 09:11

Opinion and Analysis

The subject line read "SEEK Newsletter". It offered part-time employment and it could have passed for an email from the well known jobs web site of that name. But...

The message read: "One of the leading providers of world-class technologies Technoworld Ecltronics (sic) starts a global campaign to hire new staff in Australia. We are looking for honest, responsible, hardworking people to work with our company in your particular region - 1-3 hours a day mostly from home, 300-500 AUD weekly. We invite you to visit employer's web site to get detailed information about new vacancies.

The web site (www.technoworld-electronics.com) looks, on the surface at least, like a genuine site offering a range of electronic goods: there's a home, products, careers, press centre and 'contact us' sections complete with addresses, lots of pictures of TVs and headlines of press releases: but they are a façade: no prices, no details and no press releases behind the headlines.

The careers page says it all: "When the prospective client intends to buy our products or services he signs a contract and sends an international wire from his local bank. The central problem of our activity in Australia is the prolonged duration of funds transfers from our clients to us. As a result our client waits from one week to over month until his transfer reaches our account and our Managers give an order to ship products to a customer. Our newly employed agents will solve this problem by means of there (sic) geographical position close to the client.

"Our customer (located in your area) informs us about his wish to buy specified products or services. We supply our client with your contact details and he transfers funds directly to you (cheque sent to postal address specified by you or via bank transfer to your bank account). You inform us the moment the funds arrive. We immediately give an order to ship products to the customer. In most cases this will allow us to ship client's order on the same or next business day. You then transfer the client's funds to our bank account (or follow other transferring methods as will be stated in your instructions).
"
We pay you a 5-7% commission from the total amount of the funds transferred to you from our clients. You simply deduct the commission from the received amount. We cover all other bank fees and transfer costs."

Well, if nothing else, it's more convincing than the "help me get $10m out of Nigeria" scam.