After receiving long delayed payments for my work after a weight of nearly 6 months, because I continue to struggle to find new consulting work, I ended up taking on new work from the same company in March. Unfortunately, some of their problems have not gone away and for work that I started in March 2015 and completed in August 2015, I have still not been paid a penny. In summary, for work done this year, I have been paid only 20% of my invoices and that impacted my family finances adversely. I have been tapping into our savings by selling our stocks. Thankfully, all the savings I have done over the years have been helping us from filing for bankruptcy but the thought that if my client were to file for bankruptcy and that I might lose all that money causes me a lot of anxiety and stress.
It was during such a time that I got a text message asking to contact a firm that was looking for representatives in USA and Canada. As someone with a background in international business, I thought that would be something interesting to look into and I sent an email to a genuine company based in Hong Kong (yes, like any smart consultant, I dug up a lot of information on the executive and the company). The executive told me that they do not have an office in the Americas and have trouble collecting unpaid invoices from customers who refuse to pay. I was told that if I could follow-up with these customers and convince them to pay, I could keep a 15% commission.
Even though it sounded too good to be true, I signed on. Then I got an email with the name and phone number of a person in Canada who owed nearly a quarter million dollars to the firm in Hong Kong. I even received a copy of a scanned invoice. The contact person in Canada also had a company email address and when I researched the company I found it to be a multi-billion dollar corporation.
When I spoke to the person I was surprised to hear bad English in an African accent but from my frequent trips to Canada I know that it is full of immigrants from everywhere and many of these folks speak better French than English. So I thought that he could be such a high level office in a giant corporation because of French and English was his second language.
I was surprised that this man who had not paid the Chinese for over 18 months agreed to pay relatively easily. I told my wife and she thought that maybe it was just the timing or that the company is afraid that now that there is a rep in USA, it will be easier to sue them (I did mention to him in my first call that if the invoice was not paid soon enough I might have to talk to an attorney). Well, in a matter of two weeks, I got a letter mailed out of Ontario with a check for approximately $150,000. The man insisted that I deposit the check in my bank and as soon as the check clears, let him know.
So while it was Saturday and I was just chilling with my family, I checked my online bank account and noticed that my account showed available funds. Within moments of telling him that funds were available, I got an email from Hong Kong that I should immediately wire $50,000 to an account in the United States because they owed that money to a supplier. I told them that banks were not open all day in the weekends and I was with my family. I promised to do that first thing Tuesday morning because of a long weekend in America.
Over the weekend, though, I started to think that something was not right. How could anyone trust me with so much money even though we have never met? Wouldn't such relationships require meetings and agreements? Maybe this was some kind of a trap or there was illegal activity on part of the Chinese or Canadian firm. On Tuesday morning, I got another note from my contact in Hong Kong saying that there was no need to make a payment to the American customer since they took care of it. Instead, I was instructed to wire the money to a firm in China, after deducting my 15% commission. I was also instructed to do it the first thing in the morning and do so by express wire. By this time, I knew something was not right.
This is when my wife and I started to research online and started to suspect that this maybe a Nigerian scam. We immediately called and then visited our bank telling them that we think we are victims of a fraud and the cashier's check we deposited is most likely fraudulent. I decided not to tell anything to the contact in Hong Kong or Canada, but the Canadian contact called to question me why I had not wired the money to the contact in Hong Kong. I told him that he had nothing to do with our agreement with the firm in Hong Kong and all he needs to do is focus on paying the balance. After a few more calls, that I did not answer, both emails and phone calls stopped. Eventually, we got the bounced check but luckily did not suffer any financial damage other than paying fees for bounced checks and going through the hassle of closing bank accounts (I was naive enough to send a copy of a void check to the Canadian contact).
So how was the fraud executed?
I am assuming that the Nigerians are either based in Canada or have accomplices there because the letter was mailed from there. They use some kind of technology so that they can use emails that come from a company domain name, rather than gmail.com or yahoo.com (that is what fooled me but a red flag is that there are no websites on these domains and actual companies have websites on these domain names). It must be pointed out that it is not uncommon for companies to use more than one domain name and a separate domain name just for emails. What was happening though was that I was speaking to the same person(s) and there were no contacts in Hong Kong and Canada. It was the same guy who was reading both emails (by the way, there were zero hits for his name and he made up the name by using an English first name and German last name). I did wonder though why his English was so bad but in this age of globalization anything is possible. The contact in Canada has a Canadian phone number but there are many services now that enable folks anywhere in the world to get a US or Canadian phone number.
I also learned that these crooks exploit a loophole in which a bank makes funds available on a check within a day of depositing it. However, it make take up to 2 weeks before another bank returns the check as fraudulent. In the meantime, the money is yours to use anyway you want. It can even be wired. That is why the Nigerians insisted that I wire the money right away and looks like they dropped the ball when they got the timing wrong on the funds being available on a Saturday during a long weekend. I would be crying if they had got me during the week and I would have wired the money without thinking. Not surprisingly, as soon as time passes they back off knowing that by this time your bank will tell you that the check was fraudulent.
Lessons
Well, regardless of how desperate you are, if something is too good to be true, take a breather. Cyber-crime is growing rapidly and it is hard to keep up with all the dirty tricks used by criminals, particularly those based in Nigeria, Russia, and other places. I learned that some Nigerian scammers even put full fledged websites and 800 numbers for companies that do not even exist.
The other lesson is to take things slowly and never do anything in a hurry especially if someone is pushing you.
And finally, ask around or go online. Only after I had gone so far that I picked up the phone and called the Canadian company. They told me that they did not have any employee by that name.
It was during such a time that I got a text message asking to contact a firm that was looking for representatives in USA and Canada. As someone with a background in international business, I thought that would be something interesting to look into and I sent an email to a genuine company based in Hong Kong (yes, like any smart consultant, I dug up a lot of information on the executive and the company). The executive told me that they do not have an office in the Americas and have trouble collecting unpaid invoices from customers who refuse to pay. I was told that if I could follow-up with these customers and convince them to pay, I could keep a 15% commission.
Even though it sounded too good to be true, I signed on. Then I got an email with the name and phone number of a person in Canada who owed nearly a quarter million dollars to the firm in Hong Kong. I even received a copy of a scanned invoice. The contact person in Canada also had a company email address and when I researched the company I found it to be a multi-billion dollar corporation.
When I spoke to the person I was surprised to hear bad English in an African accent but from my frequent trips to Canada I know that it is full of immigrants from everywhere and many of these folks speak better French than English. So I thought that he could be such a high level office in a giant corporation because of French and English was his second language.
I was surprised that this man who had not paid the Chinese for over 18 months agreed to pay relatively easily. I told my wife and she thought that maybe it was just the timing or that the company is afraid that now that there is a rep in USA, it will be easier to sue them (I did mention to him in my first call that if the invoice was not paid soon enough I might have to talk to an attorney). Well, in a matter of two weeks, I got a letter mailed out of Ontario with a check for approximately $150,000. The man insisted that I deposit the check in my bank and as soon as the check clears, let him know.
So while it was Saturday and I was just chilling with my family, I checked my online bank account and noticed that my account showed available funds. Within moments of telling him that funds were available, I got an email from Hong Kong that I should immediately wire $50,000 to an account in the United States because they owed that money to a supplier. I told them that banks were not open all day in the weekends and I was with my family. I promised to do that first thing Tuesday morning because of a long weekend in America.
Over the weekend, though, I started to think that something was not right. How could anyone trust me with so much money even though we have never met? Wouldn't such relationships require meetings and agreements? Maybe this was some kind of a trap or there was illegal activity on part of the Chinese or Canadian firm. On Tuesday morning, I got another note from my contact in Hong Kong saying that there was no need to make a payment to the American customer since they took care of it. Instead, I was instructed to wire the money to a firm in China, after deducting my 15% commission. I was also instructed to do it the first thing in the morning and do so by express wire. By this time, I knew something was not right.
This is when my wife and I started to research online and started to suspect that this maybe a Nigerian scam. We immediately called and then visited our bank telling them that we think we are victims of a fraud and the cashier's check we deposited is most likely fraudulent. I decided not to tell anything to the contact in Hong Kong or Canada, but the Canadian contact called to question me why I had not wired the money to the contact in Hong Kong. I told him that he had nothing to do with our agreement with the firm in Hong Kong and all he needs to do is focus on paying the balance. After a few more calls, that I did not answer, both emails and phone calls stopped. Eventually, we got the bounced check but luckily did not suffer any financial damage other than paying fees for bounced checks and going through the hassle of closing bank accounts (I was naive enough to send a copy of a void check to the Canadian contact).
So how was the fraud executed?
I am assuming that the Nigerians are either based in Canada or have accomplices there because the letter was mailed from there. They use some kind of technology so that they can use emails that come from a company domain name, rather than gmail.com or yahoo.com (that is what fooled me but a red flag is that there are no websites on these domains and actual companies have websites on these domain names). It must be pointed out that it is not uncommon for companies to use more than one domain name and a separate domain name just for emails. What was happening though was that I was speaking to the same person(s) and there were no contacts in Hong Kong and Canada. It was the same guy who was reading both emails (by the way, there were zero hits for his name and he made up the name by using an English first name and German last name). I did wonder though why his English was so bad but in this age of globalization anything is possible. The contact in Canada has a Canadian phone number but there are many services now that enable folks anywhere in the world to get a US or Canadian phone number.
I also learned that these crooks exploit a loophole in which a bank makes funds available on a check within a day of depositing it. However, it make take up to 2 weeks before another bank returns the check as fraudulent. In the meantime, the money is yours to use anyway you want. It can even be wired. That is why the Nigerians insisted that I wire the money right away and looks like they dropped the ball when they got the timing wrong on the funds being available on a Saturday during a long weekend. I would be crying if they had got me during the week and I would have wired the money without thinking. Not surprisingly, as soon as time passes they back off knowing that by this time your bank will tell you that the check was fraudulent.
Lessons
Well, regardless of how desperate you are, if something is too good to be true, take a breather. Cyber-crime is growing rapidly and it is hard to keep up with all the dirty tricks used by criminals, particularly those based in Nigeria, Russia, and other places. I learned that some Nigerian scammers even put full fledged websites and 800 numbers for companies that do not even exist.
The other lesson is to take things slowly and never do anything in a hurry especially if someone is pushing you.
And finally, ask around or go online. Only after I had gone so far that I picked up the phone and called the Canadian company. They told me that they did not have any employee by that name.