When you begin to ask about the opportunity they will even provide you a lengthy FAQ about their company, what kind of transport, shipping or cargo they facilitate, etc. They provide plenty of phone and email contact to give you false security. When you warm up to the “job”, the training materials on company letterhead will begin to arrive to your inbox every weekday — and they won’t contain the obvious typos and grammar errors typical to foreign scams. The so-called company website will not necessarily flag complaints, either. You Google them but don’t necessarily find any clues.

In the initial recruitment effort, you may receive a reasonable salary offer for the job and perhaps an offer to pay you at the end of the training program. You will hear from one or two people in human resources who will claim to be responding to a job you applied to at some point. They take advantage of the fact that anybody can go online and find a resume, particularly if you’ve posted one recently indicating that you’re actively seeking a job. The whole scheme also benefits greatly from the reality that even legitimate employers often post confidential job postings on career websites. If you are in the thick of a job search you won’t feel like it is necessarily an unsolicited email but actually a reply to a job or to your resume posted on a career site. When you begin to show interest in learning more, there will be a phone screening (psychological assessment). No effort will be spared to make the scam appear above board!

The new twist here is that there is no overt request for you to engage in billing schemes, package forwarding or wire transfers — nor any request for your SSN, birth date or other personally identifiable information. Instead, you will study what appears to be legitimate import and export regulatory material with weekly open-book tests. Only after this has gone on several weeks do you get the chance to do a special project that turns out to be the fraud of taking a credit card payment, turning around and buying electronics or computers and then mailing those packages by USPS outside the country.

This tactic combines mail fraud, credit card fraud, identity fraud, money laundering and a work at home employment scheme all wrapped up into one using, as a hook, comprehensive job training material from the logistics, supply chain or transportation industries. The difference with this fraud is that it will take a lot of your time before what they really want from you will be apparent. Long before that, these phishers and scam artists may ask you to sign a contract for the training period. It is possible that, if nothing more, they will acquire the ability to duplicate your signature for other frauds, in which case anyone who is suckered into taking online classes that turn out to go nowhere on behalf of some freight, cargo, shipping, transportation or project manager type position should immediately report to the credit card company or bank. (Ask that a “fraud alert” be placed on all your bank accounts and your SSN.)

If this type of solicitation arrives in your email or you are a victim, you need to make a report at the IC3.gov website — that is the one the FBI will refer you to if you call. If, on the other hand, you have fallen for the entire thing, going so far as to ship computers or electronics to help equip another “office” outside of the US, than make sure you file a police report and a dispute with your credit card issuer (citing Regulation E if they balk). Make sure you make a regular check of your credit report to ensure that your signature hasn’t been electronically duplicated on some fraudulent loan document later on. Who knows how many different spin-offs this fraud has even for those who do not completely go through with the program. If you are a victim, contact your state attorney general or congressional representative.

Some of this fraud could be stopped if legitimate employers were forced to identify themselves on job boards or to be vetted by an independent organization set up for this purpose so that job seekers can verify who is on the legit list of job recruiters and employers vs. the fake job solicitors who have no business calling or emailing you upon finding your resume online. That’s where this gets started. You are in the market and you post your resume on a career site but instead of an employer looking at it, you get a “recruiter” with a bogus job. Now they are smart enough to even keep all the red flags out of the first emails and divert you with the so-called training period. It’s still a scam but much more elaborate and sophisticated than some of the others that people report. The saddest part is that it will waste a lot of time before the real truth of what they want you to do comes out. They will ask to make a payment to your credit card with the instruction that you buy them stuff for their new office somewhere in Europe. Don’t fall for it!

I was ondering if anyone has beem contacted by em from IT Logistics. This is a Canadian Co. that basically packages and ships by UPS, etc.

My suspicion is that they may be, or someone using thier website, is involved in a re-packaging scheme.

My wife was recently contacted by them and I am doing due diligence.

Thanks R

Sort of Email-Phishing?