I wanted to warn everyone of an elaborate scam we uncovered recently.
Widedelivery.com claims to be a shipping company that basically forwards mail/packages between international clients, does shipping with the US, receives mail for traveling professionals, etc. For numerous reasons, the site itself led us to believe it was a scam. I'm not going to mention the reasons, as the operators may just fix it, but if you look around closely you will see many problems. This scam is very elaborate and they go to the extreme to make things 'look' legit. Basically the entire site is a front for their vacancy page which offers to employ people to work from home, receiving shipments or mail and repackaging/forwarding it to another address using UPSP, UPS, or FedEx, DHL, etc. They are mixing legitimate business offerings with their scam to make it all look legitimate. If you reply, they send you an email explaining an overview of the job. They ask that you email back asking for an application. If you do this, they send you more details and a dozen or so questions you need to fill out and email back to 'apply'. The questions are supposedly used to launch a background investigation and credit check to make sure you will be an honest worker, etc. One of the items to fill out is your paypal account info... something not mentioned up until then. They also ask you everything from name to physical address, phone number, cell number, but not SS#. Then they ask you forward copies of your recent utility bill and ID for identification purposes. This should be enough info to make people run the other way, but apparently they are doing very well. They are preying on people who think since they are getting employed they can provide all their personal info to the employer and it is safe. This may be the case with physical location jobs, but NOT the internet or any virtual job. Many states show your SS# on your license, and that is the first thing people grab to show ID. Some states allow you to keep that part blank, but it is usually be request only. If they get your SS# along with all your other info, you are screwed. However, if they never get your SS#, you are still screwed if you fall for their work at home scam. IF you send them all the info they want, and they approve your 'application', your physical address will be used as a mail forwarding point. They will send you packages containing high value items, or mail (contaning money or counterfeit funds, among other things) and you will forward this off. They claim to want your paypal details to pay you your salary every 2 weeks. The real reason is they want to use your paypal account in conjuntion with ebay and other sales scams where they can use your details, address, and paypal info as the seller (of either stolen goods, or they won't ship out anything). People bid on something on ebay, pay you at your paypal account, and you forward the money to some bank account and they never ship a product out. These are just a couple scams connected to widedelivery. They are using this site as a place to gather info and using that info in numerous back-end scams. The bottom line is a person who falls for this scam will be in trouble with the law and be out a ton of money within 2 weeks. They have it set up so all liability falls on you. And if they get enough info, they will sell your identity information, abuse it, or use it to their profit. We have reason to believe this scam involves a large group of people, and some collaborators are located on the west coast of the USA, which recruit people using ICQ, spam, etc, but don't run the overall scam. It's a very complex scam to say the least, and one of the most professionally setup I've come across. It's like half a dozen scams packed into one.
Just remember: WIDE DELIVERY - Stay away!
If you get scammed, contact your local law enforcement, bank, paypal, and anyone else that will listen. And report it here.