Aug 02 2009
Red Sun Travel, Scam
I consider my self a newbie browsing the Internet. Since I lost my job 9 months ago, I started to look for any kind of opportunities, and one of them was to find some extra income through the Internet, and after looking for a time, and trying not to be scammed, this company found me getting my information from one of the online employment searchers websites. They were offering me a job as assistant manager position.
I performed my own research and I couldn’t find any complaints about the company, but still I wasn’t sure about the company authenticity. I found some tips to avoid scam, and everything was apparently fine, but no phone numbers or address in the emails, just people’s name and position.
After the hiring process, they deposited $800.00 in my pay-pal account and then asked to make a money transfer via Western Union to a guy in Bulgaria. In this moment I was so not sure, so I decided to call a friend of mine who has been working with pay-pal accounts for a long time, and she told me, “as long as you can see a deposit in your account, the money is there and you are ok”.
The 2nd and 3rd day was basically the same story: a deposit in my account, withdraw and money transfer. The 4th day I found like 7 emails saying with the “temporary hold pending investigation” and they were explaining to me a client reported an unauthorized access to his pay-pal account.
The scam and the damaged were done.
I called Pay-pal offices and they told me that I have to pay the money back, but the money was somewhere “in Europe” already, and they ask me to cooperate with them during the investigation.
Fortunately, I kept a copy of everything: emails, “hiring contract”, transfer tickets, etc everything was there, so when the police contact me inquiring about the transactions, I scanned everything and sent it to them. Apparently the investigation still going on, but I was so afraid of the scams, that I made a research to make sure the police officer was authentic, so I call his office, find his name in Wisconsin Police website and spoke to him.
With the time,I knew about the scammers and their “art”, through the Internet and later when I was in the line of Western Union window waiting and trying to find out anything about the transfer, I read on the back of one of the transfer receipts “PROTECT YOURSELF BE CAREFUL WHEN A STRANGER ASKS YOU TO SEND MONEY”. Now I know.
