Texaco Money Mule Scam

I’ve written about money mule scams before, here’s another one.

When a scammer has a large amount of money to move, such as stolen money they want transferred into their own bank, they don’t do it themselves. That would make them too easy to get caught.

What they sometimes do is ask other people to transfer the money. They tell these other people that it’s a legitimate job, and trick them into making these bank transactions.

They even go so far as to invent a company in order to recruit innocent people, or sometimes borrow the name of a legitimate company.

One such example is a job ad that claims to be from a US company called Texaco. The scammers sent a forged email with a link to a fake website, made to look like the read Texaco.

The scam email says:

Texaco/Chevron Downstream Europe
  1 Westferry Circus Canary Wharf
  London E14 4HA

Dear Job Candidate,

The TEXACO Online Employment System wish to inform you that your posted information onlinehas been carefully and confidentially reviewed by our Recruitment Team Professionals and we have considered under our current vacant opportunities within the Firm to employ you for work in our company.

TEXACO Online Employment System is affiliated to various job recruitment websites and your information was submitted to us by our online agent that submit job candidate resumes for consideration of employment depending on the vacancies we have in any branch of TEXACO Company Worldwide.

As regards to this, you have been automatically granted this employment to work in TEXACO Oil & Gas Field with a monthly salary of Eight Thousand
Five Hundred Pounds (£8,500).

Kindly acknowledge the content of this message by reconfirming your interest in working for us and indicating your area of job interest, ensuring that you
have quoted your vacancy title below or send your CV with a covering letter.

For further details relating to your employment, kindly send an email to
Texaco/Chevron Downstream Europe H/R Recruitment Service Department
texaco@post.com / http:// texaco.us.ms / http:// texaco.com/portal_default.asp/.

  Regards,
  Paul Matins
  HR Recruitment Manager

This email is a scam. The web site that they give ends with .us.ms – this is not the real Texaco’s domain name.

So the next time you see a job ad too good to be true, consider if it might be a money mule scam. Does the job ad promise to pay an unusually large rate? Is the work unusually easy? Is the job description vague? Is the web address correct? Did you receive the job ad in an unsolicited email? These are all questions you need to ask yourself.