Oct 22 2008
Almost scammed
After I received a letter from the Home Office stating that I can now seek employment in the UK I started looking for jobs and submitting my resumes. Then I saw an ad about bookkeeping for ALPHA GALLERY INTER@.
They claimed that they are into paintings, arts, crafts and the likes. Based in Belgium, they also claimed that many of their clients are not meeting their payment requirements and therefore they need representatives to receive payments for them.
Sounds an easy job, isn’t it? A couple of weeks later, I got an email from them that I was going to receive cheques amounting to $1500.00. True enough, I got them the following day. Three Traveler’s Cheque for $500 each. I was then instructed to encash them, get 10% for myself and send them the rest by Western Union or Money Gram.
It was unbelievable! How could someone send cheques by post just like that? I was more surprised to see that the person I was supposed to send the cash to was also based in England. Why couldn’t the person receive and encash the cheque himself?
Immediately I checked scam modis operandi and it turned out that I wasn’t the first and only one who had received the same cheques. Some have even lost their money because they deposited the cheque into their bank account and the cheque bounces.
Whew! I wanted to earn some cash and not lose them even before I could find them. Thankfully, I didn’t fall for it so easily.
