Scam Alert: Wireless Bank Heist

They have high-powered names—Xian Energy, Delta Soft Labs, International Health Care, Future Tech, V-Tech Sendit Software—and they promise big rewards for little effort. But the only reward for their victims is a depleted bank account.

Identifying themselves as top firms based overseas, the "companies" recruit work-at-home representatives through e-mails and online job postings. They say that "due to the delays in clearing checks and money orders in Europe," they need "financial agents" to process payments for their U.S. orders.

It seemed the perfect job for Dick Hambrice, 67, a retired medical supplies salesman from Columbus, Ga. After responding to a posting on Monster.com, he was told that each week he’d receive checks for between $2,000 and $100,000 via FedEx. After depositing them in his own bank account, all he had to do was wire-transfer those funds to a foreign bank. When each check cleared, Hambrice would get a 5 percent commission.

"Since I live on Social Security, an additional $200 or $300 a week would really be helpful," says Hambrice. "Especially for something as simple as going to the bank."

Instead, he lost $4,500. The check Hambrice received and put into his account was counterfeit. So the money he transferred to a foreign account was in fact his own. "You’d think in these days, a bank would know immediately whether a check is good or not," Hambrice says. "Apparently, they don’t."

This type of check-cashing scheme generates hundreds of complaints each month to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, says FBI spokesman Paul Bresson, and is one of the most common Internet scams.

And one of the nastiest. The phony companies can further bleed recruits by using the account information provided on their wire transfers. Victims in certain cases could face federal counterfeiting and forgery charges for signing or processing bogus checks, says Bruce Hammerle of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

His advice: "Be very wary of 'work-at-home' offers, especially those with any foreign connection. Anytime you receive a check or money order and someone wants money wired back, figure it’s a scam."

The swindlers seem to change their corporate identities every few months. The e-mail that Delta Soft Labs sent to Diosdado Corrales, 57, of Toronto was identical to those sent to other job seekers by Atrium and Rilan Soft Labs—all professing to be Eastern Europe’s leading software developer, based in Russia. Initially, Corrales thought he was recruited because his résumé, posted on CareerBuilder.com’s website, indicates he’s fluent in Russian. "Now I feel used," he says, after losing $1,700 in two wire transfers.

Since being contacted by Scam Alert, CareerBuilder spokeswoman Jennifer Sullivan says postings for those firms have been removed. An alert for job seekers tells them: Never provide credit card or bank account information to recruiters, or perform any sort of monetary transaction. "You don’t give the combination if you don’t want the safe opened," Sullivan says.