Fraud.

This post is about what I experienced last week while looking for a part-time job in the UK on the Internet.

I am a student, so I thought it would be great to be working here and then to save some money. I did a lot of research and screened all kind of job platforms in the UK.

Finally I found two jobs that sounded just great. One job was a cleaning job, where a guy wanted me to clean his new five-bedroom apartment before he is going to move in.

He offered me £300 for the total cleaning and decoration. It sounded great and since I don’t have too much time to work next to my studies I thought this is a great opportunity for me to save some money.

I applied for the job and received an answer not long after. He liked me and wanted me to have the job. The message sounded a bit confusing though.

Something is wrong

Since he is not in the UK right now, he wanted me to receive the payment via Western Union Money Transfer. Okay to me. But then he said he would transfer me the first rent of the apartment as well, which I had to transfer to the landlord.

Why couldn’t he make the transfer himself? It is not such a big deal these days to make an international bank transfer. I was confused.

The other job I applied to was a babysitter job. A Canadian mother wanted me to look after her 3-year-old son, while she is in the UK for two weeks, working at an antique auction.

She offered me £350 pounds for 2 hours of babysitting every evening during these 2 weeks. I was happy. Finally I had the opportunity to earn good money in a short period of time to boost my bank account.

What is going on?

I applied and shortly after I received a message, saying she would love me to look after her son. The message also said, I would receive the payment via Western Union Money Transfer since she doesn’t have an UK bank account.

Now I knew there must be something wrong. She wanted me to receive a higher amount of money, so I can transfer a certain amount to another bank account in the UK.

What? Why? Confusion.

I did a bit of research and I found out: This is fraud. These people want to use people like me to transfer money they didn’t pay tax for. Maybe they received this money in an illegal way and now they want are using me in order to launder this money.

I send both of them a message saying I cannot work for them since I have a lot of work to do for University.

I must say, I’m still a bit worried – they have my mobile number and they have my address. I don’t want to have the mafia standing in front of my door.

If you have observed a similar case, please let me know!