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Surprisingly Fancy Scam - "Globallink/REV Translation"
Thread poster: Trudy Stull
Trudy Stull
Trudy Stull  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 08:24
Spanish to English
Jun 30, 2020

Came across a crazy, elaborate scam this past week.

I got a text with a link to apply for a job with a company that I was almost certain I'd applied to before (Globallink, which does appear to be a legitimate company). This link took me to a very legitimate-looking application form online, and I received an email afterward asking about my availability for July and with information about the job-- transcription/translation of subtitles for documentary episodes, with a whole list of t
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Came across a crazy, elaborate scam this past week.

I got a text with a link to apply for a job with a company that I was almost certain I'd applied to before (Globallink, which does appear to be a legitimate company). This link took me to a very legitimate-looking application form online, and I received an email afterward asking about my availability for July and with information about the job-- transcription/translation of subtitles for documentary episodes, with a whole list of the usual "job responsibilities" that really looked pretty genuine, and not unlike things I've received from legitimate job offers.

According to this email, they'd be paying me up front for my first assignment so that I could pay for the software for the job. So far, this still didn't seem all that shady. No one had asked me for bank details or any info that I haven't given to other companies on application forms.

Today, I got a check in the mail for $2,150. From a Foodservice Equipment and Design company. Then I got an email back from the same "HR person" I've been in contact with that a check for $2,150 had been mailed and that I needed to deposit it so that I can buy a particular laptop that will supposedly have all the software uploaded. It gets even shadier though-- this check, according to UPS tracking, shipped from Florida, but the return address indicates it's from Irvine, CA. Moreover, this foodservice company is in Illinois. Just so many red flags all at once, right?

So, I thought the best course of action was to call the foodservice company. Their logo and address on the check matches the one on the website, but guess what? When I talked to the lady at this company, the first thing she asked me when I explained about the check was "I didn't talk to you earlier, did I?"

So, of course, I've done nothing with the check and it sounds like I'm not the only person who's received one of these checks and thought to myself "what in the world...". And sure enough, this foodservice company has confirmed that other checks have gone out that should not have and that I should not, of course, cash it.

Luckily, apart from getting my hopes up about having work and wasting a little bit of my time, no harm done on my end. I'm sure the food service company is not at all happy about this. I can only assume that this scammer's plan was to have me deposit this fraudulent check, charge me for this laptop that would never get sent, and then I'd be left with the fallout once the food service company figured out that fake checks were going out from their account.

I won't mention any names just to be safe, but this person is pretending to be with Globallink and/or Rev translation services. They have a pretty official-looking email signature with a graphic (though on closer inspection, the information therein appears to be manufactured, but otherwise looks very real). This is the application page I was linked to before eventually receiving the first email: https://form.jotform.com/201258743114146 .

I usually spot scams pretty easily from the start, but this one was pretty convincing right up until I got the check and they were then asking me to purchase a whole computer rather than just the software, so I thought it best to share my experience here in case anyone else is contacted by this cleverer-than-average scammer.
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Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:24
Danish to English
+ ...
Which URL Jun 30, 2020

This is a variant of the fake-cheque prepayment scam.

Which address was the email sent from? Something like [email protected], I presume.

Could you tell us at which URL you found the form?

I would look up in WHOIS which company hosts it and report it to get it taken down.


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Trudy Stull
Trudy Stull  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 08:24
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER
Answers Jun 30, 2020

Thomas T. Frost wrote:

This is a variant of the fake-cheque prepayment scam.

Which address was the email sent from? Something like [email protected], I presume.

Could you tell us at which URL you found the form?

I would look up in WHOIS which company hosts it and report it to get it taken down.


It was definitely the fake check prepayment scam, yes. I'm sure of it.

The email was actually from [email protected] (and I feel like I've received legitimate emails from this domain before, but can't say for sure). Had it been a gmail address, I probably would have been more concerned from the start.

The URL was sent to me via text message (I have also received legitimate job offers via text).

JotForm (I believe) hosts that application page that the URL links to.


 
Katarzyna Slowikova
Katarzyna Slowikova  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 14:24
English to Czech
+ ...
zsfzdf Jun 30, 2020

Trudy Stull wrote:

The email was actually from [email protected] (and I feel like I've received legitimate emails from this domain before, but can't say for sure).


ProtonMail is a free email service, so yes, there're surely plenty of "legitimate emails" sent from it every day.
It prides itself on privacy which probably is the reason why it's so popular among scammers.
Nothing fancy in this scam imho... the idea of a client paying you upfront for you to be able to buy a software (which SW, have you even asked??!) to do the very task is fully absurd. And it's as old as other scams.


IrinaN
Liviu-Lee Roth
 
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:24
Danish to English
+ ...
Protonmail Jun 30, 2020

Trudy Stull wrote:

The email was actually from [email protected] (and I feel like I've received legitimate emails from this domain before, but can't say for sure). Had it been a gmail address, I probably would have been more concerned from the start.

The URL was sent to me via text message (I have also received legitimate job offers via text).

JotForm (I believe) hosts that application page that the URL links to.


Protonmail is another public email service, so it isn't any better than an email from Gmail or Yahoo. You can report abuse to [email protected] .

What exactly was the URL?

[Edited at 2020-06-30 18:03 GMT]

[Edited at 2020-06-30 18:04 GMT]


 
Trudy Stull
Trudy Stull  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 08:24
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER
URL Jun 30, 2020

Thomas T. Frost wrote:

Trudy Stull wrote:

The email was actually from [email protected] (and I feel like I've received legitimate emails from this domain before, but can't say for sure). Had it been a gmail address, I probably would have been more concerned from the start.

The URL was sent to me via text message (I have also received legitimate job offers via text).

JotForm (I believe) hosts that application page that the URL links to.


Protonmail is another public email service, so it isn't any better than an email from Gmail or Yahoo. You can report abuse to [email protected] .

What exactly was the URL?

[Edited at 2020-06-30 18:03 GMT]

[Edited at 2020-06-30 18:04 GMT]


The URL is at the end of my original post.


 
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:24
Danish to English
+ ...
Jotform Jun 30, 2020

Trudy Stull wrote:

The URL is at the end of my original post.


Right, so it is. I thought it was a screenshot, but it's the actual form.

I suggest you report it to them as fraud at https://www.jotform.com/contact/ . Other users also report scams to them at their Answers pages.


Trudy Stull
 
Trudy Stull
Trudy Stull  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 08:24
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER
Fancier than I've seen, anyway! Jun 30, 2020

Katarzyna Slowikova wrote:

Trudy Stull wrote:

The email was actually from [email protected] (and I feel like I've received legitimate emails from this domain before, but can't say for sure).


ProtonMail is a free email service, so yes, there're surely plenty of "legitimate emails" sent from it every day.
It prides itself on privacy which probably is the reason why it's so popular among scammers.
Nothing fancy in this scam imho... the idea of a client paying you upfront for you to be able to buy a software (which SW, have you even asked??!) to do the very task is fully absurd. And it's as old as other scams.


The scam itself is pretty run of the mill, yeah, but the way the scammer went about it and the amount of normal-looking information they gave me in the correspondence (up until the end) is what I consider elaborate or "fancy". =P

In any case, I still thought it was worth posting here to warn others. And I'm not sure how helpful it is to get on this forum and criticize the people who encounter these scams and post on here to report them to the community. I personally have never before encountered one that looked this legitimate up until things got really weird toward the end. So apologies if you personally don't find this very helpful, but other people who are newer to this sort of work might. =)


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Legit REV e-mail addresses Jun 30, 2020

end with @rev.com

[Edited at 2020-06-30 18:57 GMT]


Trudy Stull
 
IrinaN
IrinaN
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A laptop from Foodservice Equipment company? Jun 30, 2020

Does it come with cooking surface and automatic espresso machine?

I'm interested.


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Thomas T. Frost
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Portugal
Local time: 13:24
Danish to English
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Legit companies, public forms Jun 30, 2020

It's always helpful to report scams, even if they are just variations of known scams.

And by the way, the fact that scammers use email and form services available to the general public instead of a company domain is always a clear warning sign.

And careful not to get this topic taken down by discussing legitimate names outsourcers, as the forum rules don't allow that.


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Thank you Thomas! Jun 30, 2020

Thomas T. Frost wrote:

It's always helpful to report scams, even if they are just variations of known scams.

And by the way, the fact that scammers use email and form services available to the general public instead of a company domain is always a clear warning sign.

And careful not to get this topic taken down by discussing legitimate names outsourcers, as the forum rules don't allow that.



I will delete my post!


 
Katarzyna Slowikova
Katarzyna Slowikova  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 14:24
English to Czech
+ ...
xzzzx Jun 30, 2020

Trudy Stull wrote:
The scam itself is pretty run of the mill, yeah, but the way the scammer went about it and the amount of normal-looking information they gave me in the correspondence (up until the end) is what I consider elaborate or "fancy". =P


It'd make sense to post the content of the messages, especially the earlier ones. They surely were generic and many people may be trying to google the chunks.


In any case, I still thought it was worth posting here to warn others. And I'm not sure how helpful it is to get on this forum and criticize the people who encounter these scams and post on here to report them to the community.


I don't see where I criticized you, my point was that 1. ProtonMail is a free email service and 2. no legitimate client will ever arrange for you to buy a specific SW (not to mention a computer!) in the way this scam pretends to.
Of course it's helpful you posted it since this scam doesn't seem to be as popular at the moment as others that get 99% of publicity here.

[Edited at 2020-06-30 19:20 GMT]


Liviu-Lee Roth
 
Trudy Stull
Trudy Stull  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 08:24
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER
Reply to Katarzyna's clarification Jun 30, 2020

Katarzyna Slowikova wrote:

Trudy Stull wrote:
The scam itself is pretty run of the mill, yeah, but the way the scammer went about it and the amount of normal-looking information they gave me in the correspondence (up until the end) is what I consider elaborate or "fancy". =P


It'd make sense to post the content of the messages, especially the earlier ones. They surely were generic and many people may be trying to google the chunks.


In any case, I still thought it was worth posting here to warn others. And I'm not sure how helpful it is to get on this forum and criticize the people who encounter these scams and post on here to report them to the community.


I don't see where I criticized you, my point was that 1. ProtonMail is a free email service and 2. no legitimate client will ever arrange for you to buy a specific SW (not to mention a computer!) in the way this scam pretends to.
Of course it's helpful you posted it since this scam doesn't seem to be as popular at the moment as others that get 99% of publicity here.

[Edited at 2020-06-30 19:20 GMT]


I apologize if I misinterpreted your comment as being critical. Even apart from this scam nonsense, I'm having kind of a stressful day, and I think that when it was pointed out that ProtonMail was a sketchy domain to look out for (something I didn't realize before today, as I wasn't really familiar with that service until this experience), it just felt a bit condescending. And I do agree that, in hindsight, if the company wanted me to use specific software, they simply would have given me a license to use their preferred SW (which I've experienced before, where a company simply gives me a temporary license/access to their software for the duration of the project) or simply asked if I had it or could purchase it myself, rather than sending me money to purchase it.

In all likelihood, I'm just feeling a bit sensitive and a little silly for having been strung along with this scam for a few days before realizing what was going on (as most of us do), and I was a little iffy about posting this in the first place because I worried people might react by saying "well, obviously this was a scam and you should have realized it." This was admittedly also a situation in which I could have done a little more due diligence, but I kinda let myself be taken in by the official-looking nature of the scammer's correspondence and the fairly normal-seeming application process at first. And I certainly realized something was wrong when I got the check, and then when it suddenly changed from "you need to buy this software" to specifically wanting me buy a particular computer with said software apparently uploaded. So I think that by having these sorts of things pointed out after I'd explained the process I went through just made me feel a little like I was being attacked, but I can see that this wasn't your intent.

And, as you mentioned, I did think it would be helpful to post about this scam after browsing some of the other posts here and finding nothing quite like it, at least as far as the specifics of the application form and the way the scammer was pretending to work for specific companies that I'd actually applied to in the past.

And since this post has gotten a bit lengthy, I'll go ahead and copy/paste the first email I received after filling out the "application" page in a separate post. =)


 
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Surprisingly Fancy Scam - "Globallink/REV Translation"







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