Craigslist provides a wonderful free service where advertisers get their email address protected from spammers. Unfortunately, while this email redirect is live it is ripe for spammers.
A cursory reading of the website shows that English is NOT the preferred language of this company.
They want you to cash a check from some stranger, take a 10% cut of the money, and send the balance on.
Why? According to the website…
Our company covers an empty part of the current internet market by serving distant consumers and international workers, many of whom seek alternatives to traditional banking relationships in order to gain immediate access to their funds for financial and franchising operations.
Funny, this is EXACTLY the arrangement used by phony scams all the time… or would be money lauderers looking for dupes.
Let’s see, some big international corporation with enough cash to franchise, wheel and deal needs ME? And they thought I had big liquid assets because I posted a free ad on Craigslist?
Friends, something is NUTS about this.
Though the company claims to be 10 years old and incorporated in 1996, the website was created June 30th, 2006 a few days before the Spam emails started arriving.
Domain Name: GLOBAL-CONNECT-NETWORK.COM
Registrar: DIRECT INFORMATION PVT LTD D/B/A PUBLICDOMAINREGISTRY.COM
Whois Server: whois.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Referral URL: http://www.PublicDomainRegistry.com
Name Server: NS2.GLOBAL-CONNECT-NETWORK.COM
Name Server: NS1.GLOBAL-CONNECT-NETWORK.COM
Status: ACTIVE
EPP Status: ok
Updated Date: 30-Jun-2006
Creation Date: 30-Jun-2006
Expiration Date: 30-Jun-2007
Here is a copy of one of the multiple unsolicited emails received from Craigslist redirects.
I strongly advise you NOT to respond in any fashion.
Greetings from GCN Corporation!
You are receiving this message in response to your resume posted online at:
We are looking for people from all over the United States to join our new
and growing team – GCN Financial Services division.This is a part time job that requires only a few hours a day, and would be
a good source of additional income for you and your family!There are noo fees required to join.
You would be dealing with bank transactions, cashing and forwarding them.
You get paid for each transaction processed!
You receive up to 10% of each amount you cash or forward.
To get more information visit our website and fill the form to sign up.
Our team will contact you very shortly.
Visit us at: http://www.global-connect-network.com
Martha on July 13th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
I responded to this email. I receved it at work and began to look into it because i was suspicious. They sent me the 3links to print out the supposed applications of which i did. They also asked for at copie of my CDL. So far i have not done any thing thanks to your web sight. I could not believe what i was reading about this being a scam. Thank you! What do you think will happen now so far the 2 emails came into my spam folder. Can you please tell me if i need to worry about anything and what to expect? M
Connie on October 11th, 2006 at 7:15 am
Chuck,
Nice article. I just received my first spam email from this company today. I googled their name and it led me to your site.
First red flag for me was… “You are getting this message in response to your resume posted online
at http://www.craigslist.org”
I don’t have (and have never) a resume posted on Craigslist. I do however have an event running currently in their events section. Based on that I knew they harvested my email address. I did jump over to their site, however, to see which company was clever enough to spam through Craigslist.
I believe your advise for this site to be on the mark
Connie