Warn your employees, friends and family about a cunning money laundering scam that is currently back on the rise. This lure was used during spring break in 2014 and apparently successful because it's back.
It's an email claiming to be from Red Bull and offers the victim to place Red Bull ads on their car for 600 bucks a week. It all sounds innocent enough, wrap your car with advertising and make money driving around town. There is a nasty catch though.
The scam email explains the benefits of the "business offer" and promises easy money that basically will pay for the whole car, gas money included. However, if you sign up for it, this deal backfires and the victim is investigated for money laundering fraud.
How This Scam Of The Week Works
The first payment that arrives is much larger than originally agreed upon. The criminals apologize for the "error" and would the victim please quickly deduct their own fee and wire the rest of the money back to them.
However it's either a forged or stolen check the victim received in the first place, or it's a fraudulent wire transfer from an account that was criminally taken over. In both cases the victim is left holding the bag
when the cops come knocking on their door. All initial evidence of the fraud will point to them. Here is an example of the scam email:
What To Do About It
I strongly recommend you send the following to your employees, friends and family. Feel free to copy/paste/edit:
"A new job scam is doing the rounds, preying on people that want to make $600 a week with Red Bull advertising on their car. It sounds like a great deal, but this scam is run by criminals that will try to use their victims for money laundering. If you get an email claiming to be from Red Bull and offers you an attractive advertising deal, use that delete key. In general, be very careful with any Internet "work from home" schemes, many of these are fraudulent. Do not give out any personal information to these criminals and warn your family members."
For KnowBe4 customers, we have a new phishing template in the Online Services campaign called "Advertising for Red Bull Energy Drink". Send it to your employees and inoculate them against bogus second job offers before they get into some real trouble. https://training.knowbe4.com/login
Hat Tip to Hoax Slayer
