You Should Watch Out for Scams During the Coronavirus

I almost took $100,000 from a complete stranger

A few weeks ago, I was offered a job to be a consultant for an oil company that paid me six figures. I barely worked two weeks in the job before I found out the people involved were scammers. If someone offered you six figures for a job, would that catch your attention? It did for me even though I was very cautious during the whole process.

Background

I am very active on social media. Recently, I don’t spend as much time on social media since I’m writing. For some platforms, I created a social media account early on, so I have had some social media accounts for over 10 years. The longer you’re on a social media platform, the more friend requests you’ll get.

Since I have worked in various positions in my life, I get friends requests from someone in similar jobs, schools, or the city I live in. Once in a while, I’ll get friend requests from people in other countries.

The mysterious friend request

A few months ago, I received a friend request from John Perry in Dallas. I had a few friends in common with him so I accepted the friend request. I don’t recall what his job title was since has recently deactivated his account.

I accepted the request and didn’t think anything of it. Then around the middle of July, John sent me an email. I figured he grabbed my email from my LinkedIn account.

After I read his email, John asked if I was interested in consulting for an oil company. I didn’t think it would hurt to find out more about the job offer. I wanted to find out more plus I wasn’t handing over any money to a complete stranger. I updated my resume and cover letter and emailed the documents to John.

The next mysterious person

Within a day, I received another email. This one was from a representative os S-Oil which was in South Korea. The Senior Managing Director of S-Oil sent me a lengthy email.

The email covered the responsibilities I would have as a US representative for the company. I would be the US liaison for the company who had prospective investors. I’ll cover more details on this soon. In the email was a salary of $9,250 a month. I would also receive a dividend or percentage of 9% from the funds that the investor purchased. On top of that, I would get a 7% commission on the transaction from the investors.

S-Oil was building an environmentally friendly apartment close to Washington, DC. The company was looking for investors to help fund this.

What was unique about this offer, the investors had to be qualified investors. To be a qualified investor, the person had to have an income of $100,000 a year, a net worth of $500,000 (excluding their personal residence), and no outstanding debt over $100,000.

The information about the investors caused me a little bit of worry. Was I out of my league to accept this job offer?

Google became my friend

After I received the emails and three PowerPoint slides on the investment, I had to search for some of the terms and acronyms that I wasn’t familiar with. I researched S-Oil, the products they offered, and the apartment they were building.

Finding the acronyms online wasn’t hard. Finding information about S-Oil building a facility near Washington, DC was hard. I did find several new eco-friendly structures were in the building process that matched what S-Oil was doing.

Some questions were still on my mind

At this point, I was still skeptical. I had a few questions and wrote them down. After I read through the packet, I was worried that I needed a brokers license to handle this. For stocks, a brokers license is required. Plus this was a foreign investment. Since this was an oil company, I didn’t know if the requirements were different.

I gave John a call. He didn’t answer but in a few minutes, he sent me a text saying he was very busy. John said he could call me in the evening or I could send him a text.

I texted John if I could handle this assignment since I didn’t have a brokers license. He said I could which lowered my concerns.

The phone call from Korea

In a follow-up text to John, he asked me how things were going. At this point, I had sent in my acceptance letter to the S-Oil company. I told John I hadn’t heard anything back from the company. He said he would get right on it and that I should expect to hear from the company within the day.

After I had texted John in the morning, I received a call from South Korea later that day. I answered the phone and it was the director of S-Oil who I was emailing. He explained a few things and also asked if I had sent in the acceptance letter. I told him I did.

After talking to him on the phone, I thought for sure this company had to be real if someone was calling me from Korea. How many scammers have people texting you from Dallas and then calling you from Korea?

A third mysterious email

After I had agreed to work for S-Oil, I received a friend request from Jace Martin. He was also in the oil industry. On his profile, he previously worked at S-Oil in 2012 but moved on to another oil company. I figured I could reach out to him if I had any questions.

Within a few days, Jace sent me an email asking if I could work on a project. I told him I was busy since I was still getting up to speed on S-Oil in general and I had two prospects I was working on.

My first two prospects

The S-Oil operations officer, Yeong Yil Cho, sent me an email. He asked me if I read everything and sent in the signed power of attorney to act on their behalf. The power of attorney came from a Korean lawyer.

Following this, Mr. Cho sent me two names to contact. I was given their phone number and email addresses.

Before I sent the information on S-Oil to the prospect, I asked them if I could send the information on the investment. I wanted to make sure they were interested before I sent the information to two people I never met.

I don’t want to use their real name and I’ll call Mary. Mary emailed me back and said she wanted to find out more about the S-Oil investment. I sent her the information.

I never heard back from the other person. I even called him a few times but he never answered the phone.

Mary responded back a few days later and said she was interested to find out more. So I emailed her the three S-Oil information packets. I figured it would take her some time to decipher the information just as I had.

Within a few days, she responded back and was interested to invest $100,000. She said to let the company know she was ready to proceed. Mary had done deals like this in the past. Mary’s lawyer had reviewed S-Oil’s investment package.

I informed Mr. Cho that Mary was ready to invest. At this point, I was thinking this job seems pretty easy for $100,000 a year.

Mr. Smith enters the picture

Another one of my LinkedIn contacts, sent me a message, and was offered a job at S-Oil. Mr. Smith, not his real name to protect his privacy, saw that I was working for S-Oil. We talked on the phone the next day. I explained that I had just started but would keep him informed on how things were going.

A few days later as I was working with Mary on the contract, Mr. Smith sent me an email that S-Oil was a scam. My heart sunk but I was glad that I never took anyone’s money for these scammers. Mr. Smith said he called S-Oil in Korea and they said there were people impersonating them. They didn’t recognize any of the S-Oil representatives who contacted us.

Ms. Johnson sends me a LinkedIn message

Another person contacted me about S-Oil, Ms Johnson. Ms. Johnson is not her real name to protect her privacy. She sent me a LinkedIn message that she was contacted by an S-Oil representative about a job offer. Since I already knew this was a scam, I let her know.

Searching for the scammers

After talking to Mr. Smith, I looked online to find Mr. Perry. His LinkedIn account was gone. I still had his text messages but I didn’t think that would do any good. He could have used a burner phone or used a Google Voice number to hide his real number.

Then I looked for Mr. Martin. At the time, his Linkedin account was still active. I had responded back to his previous email but he never responded back. I just looked today and couldn’t find a LinkedIn account for Mr. Martin.

Tips to avoid getting scammed

Part of me kept thinking this wasn’t real. The process was too fast to get approved. I didn’t get interviewed and they just accepted my resume and cover letter.

I had previous job offers before and there wasn’t an interview. Since the company was in Korea, I thought they didn’t have time to go through the formal process.

Since there will likely be other scammers trying to get money from you or someone else you know, I wanted to share this story. Fortunately, no one got hurt financially.

These are some of the past Ponzi schemes that occurred around the time of the last financial crisis.

Bernie Madoff was convicted in 2009 for his $64 billion Ponzi scheme.

Wex Trust Investment was shut down by the Securities Exchange Commission in 2008 for offering high returns to investors who lost $100 million.

Joseph Forte swindled $50 million from 80 investors in a 14 year period before getting arrested in 2009.

In 2009, Nicholas Cosmo of Agape was convicted of stealing $380 million in a Ponzi scheme. Bank of America had established a branch in Cosmo’s office. Courts state the bank knowingly assisted in Cosmo’s crimes.

There are many more Ponzi schemes that happened during the last crash. Many of these crimes don’t happen overnight. These crimes take years to build up while taking people’s hard-earned money.

Tips to consider

These are some tips to ask yourself if someone offers you a deal that is too hard to believe.

Do your best to work with reliable businesses. If someone contacts you, do all the research you can to make sure the company is legitimate.

Don’t give anyone money if they say they can double your money overnight. There are scams out there that make these offers. With the economy where it is now and with unemployment, scammers will come out of the woodworks trying to take your money offerring you a great deal.

If possible, use a lawyer to verify if a document is legitimate. Even then, the lawyer could still not know as I mentioned the client earlier had her lawyer review the documents.

Search for the business online. Find out if the company is real and legitimate.

If someone approaches you about a job offer or an investment, ask for names and contact information for people they have worked with, in the past.

Scams will continue to happen so it’s good to be aware as best as you can. It’s also good to talk to one or two people you know to see if a business proposal actually makes sense. They may see something that you don’t see.

Has someone scammed you before?

Tom Handy is a top Writing, Finance, Investment, and Bitcoin writer on Medium, and the father of two kids. He retired from the Army and sits on several non-profit boards. You can find him on Twitter @tomhandy1.