Scammers target online job-seekers for international theft operation


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SALT LAKE CITY — A popular scam promising job-seekers good money for very little work is keeping U.S. postal inspectors on their toes.

A South Jordan man, who didn't want to be identified and who we'll call "Joe," was contacted through email by a company claiming to be MTC Logistics. MTC Logistics is a legitimate company, but it turns out the representative who contacted Joe likely does not work for MTC Logistics.

The representative said she saw Joe's resume on careerbuilder.com. She had a job offer for him that was hard to refuse.

"All I've got to do is drive a package to the post office," Joe said.

Here's how it worked. Joe would get a package from an electronics company. He then printed up a prepaid shipping label addressed to a couple of men in New York and drove the package to the post office. According to an email Joe received, the men in New York repackage the item "perfectly" and then forward it to an address in Russia.

Joe was promised he would be paid $40 for every package he took to the post office. He received many packages over the course of several weeks. Inside, he always found electronics such as camera flashes, Intel processors and a Go Pro cameras.

Joe contacted KSL Investigators after he received the first couple packages.

"There's a lot of questions about where my involvement fits," he said.

Joe was not quite sure if what he was doing was legal, so KSL took his concerns to U.S. Postal Inspector Stephen Danson.

"There's no such thing as easy money," Danson said. "No one is going to pay you to ship a product somewhere else when they can do it themselves."

Danson said the job Joe was offered is definitely a scam, and mail fraud crooks often use other people to commit their crimes. In essence, Joe is a mule used to muddy up the paper trail.

But mules are only part of the scheme. The names on the labels of the packages sent to Joe were not always his name, but the names of random people in Utah, unknowingly tagged as part of the operation.

"She says the names on the packages are names of MTC Logistics managers," Joe said.


There's no such thing as easy money. No one is going to pay you to ship a product somewhere else when they can do it themselves.

–Stephen Danson, U.S. Postal Inspector


KSL Investigators tracked down one of the names on the packages, James Quist. He said he's not an order manager for MTC Logistics, but a regular guy who got his identity stolen. His credit card number was used online to purchase electronics shipped to Utah, New York and eventually Russia.

"I guess if it works, they just keep jumping from one card to another," Quist said.

"By the time the credit card company figures out that this is a stolen credit card that was used to purchase merchandise, the stuff is long gone," Danson said. "It's out of the country."

Unfortunately, Joe didn't realize he innocently became the middle man to a criminal operation.

He admits there were definitely red flags, but like many before him, he didn't want to pass up the fraction of a chance that it was a legitimate job for easy money.

"I'm supposed to get paid for it, but who knows? Probably not," Joe said.

Joe was supposed to be paid at the beginning of the month, but no check ever came. The company even cut off all communication with Joe after getting everything it needed.

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Mike Headrick

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