What is money laundering?

Money Laundering Scam?

• Being unfamiliar with money order scams and money laundering schemes I applied for and accepted what appeared at the time to be a legitimate job offer for a wherehouse position on Craigslist.It was from an individual claiming to own an art gallery in Manchester,UK who was always out of town and needed someone to ship goods for him.All communications with him were via e-mail.As it turns out, the first assignment he sent me was to deposit 2 money orders that I received via USPS in my bank account,wait for the funds to clear and wire most of it to the Phillipines to some art store he was doing business with.I was to keep a portion of the money for myself myself for the effort.The following day I deposited the money orders,withdrew the money and proceeded to wire it via Western Union to the address given to me.After wiring the money that evening,the light bulb finally came on in my head that something was fishy about this whole transaction,so I did some research on the internet(which I know now I should have done before wiring or accepting the money orders) a whole host of money order scams.Panicking,I called Western Union to cancel the wire and fortunately they were able to stop the wire.The nice lady at Western Union told me that this was undoubtedly a scam and the money orders were fake.She explained how I was lucky to have called when I did otherwise I would have lost the money for good if it was picked up.The problem I'm having now is that according to my bank the money orders were in fact honored,and the bank was paid so this was probably a money laundering scheme rather than fake money orders.I have already reported this incident,but have not received a reply yet.Should I return the money to the scammers,or wait for the authorities to instruct me?The scammers have my name and address,so I'm afraid of possible retaliation since I didn't send their money as instructed($1,510), although I haven't heard from them for a couple of weeks since the wiring incident.My gut feeling is to try to send the money back,but I'm not sure if I should wait for word from the authorities first.More than likely I have dirty money in my account.Also,I received the money orders from Florida,so this appears to be a crime ring of some kind involving people in Florida and the Philippines.Maybe this was a test run for future operations involving larger sums of money.Anyway,any advice is appreciated,thank you.

• Answer:

  100% scam. There is no job. The money orders are FAKE and eventually your bank will realize that. Walk into you bank and tell them that you are the victim of a "Cash the fake check" type scam. Then, do "nothing". Don't bother to tell the scammer off, as you know he has your real life information. All you have is one of his fake names, one of his free email addresses and one of his fake stories.y. The next email was from one of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the "secretary/assistant/accountant" and demanded you cash a large fake check sent on a stolen UPS/FedEx billing account number and send most of the "money" via Western Union or moneygram back to the scammer posing as the "supply company" while you "keep" a small portion. When your bank realizes the check is fake and it bounces, you get the real life job of paying back the bank for the bounced check fees and all the bank's money you sent to an overseas criminal. Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever. When you refuse to send him your cash he will send increasingly nasty and rude emails trying to convince you to go through with his scam. The scammer could also create another fake name and email address like "FBI@ gmail.com", "police_person @hotmail.com" or "investigator @yahoo.com" and send emails telling you the job is legit and you must cash the fake check and send your money to the scammer or you will face legal action. Just ignore, delete and block those email addresses. Although, reading a scammer's attempt at impersonating a law enforcement official can be extremely funny. Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram. Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash. Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer. 6 "Rules to follow" to avoid most fake jobs: 1) Job asks you to use your personal bank account and/or open a new one. 2) Job asks you to print/mail/cash a check or money order. 3) Job asks you to use Western Union or moneygram in any capacity. 4) Job asks you to accept packages and re-ship them on to anyone. 5) Job asks you to pay visas, travel fees via Western Union or moneygram. 6) Job asks you to sign up for a credit reporting or identity verification site. Avoiding all jobs that mention any of the above listed 'red flags' and you will miss nearly all fake jobs. Only scammers ask you to do any of the above. No. Exceptions. Ever. For any reason. If you google "fake check cashing job", "fraud Western Union scam", "check mule moneygram scam" or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near-victims of this type of scam.