does anyone know anything about those cash representative jobs?

Question

Someone living in another country, Canada, or Europe typically, wants to hire US Citizens, via e-mail, to collect and cash checks written for thier goods or services by people here in the USA. The writer claims it cost more money for them to cash USchecks abroad than it does for them to hire a US citizen to do so for them. If they deposit the checks, they have to wait from 30-9- days For this service the employee would get a percentage of each check cashed. Whats the real deal?

Answer 1

The checks are counterfeit. See the story referenced below in full from the AARP website
http://www.aarp.org/bulletin/consumer/wireless_bank_heist.html

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.

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, http://www.ic3.gov/ 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."