The New Employment Fraud Games afoot

There is a new fraud game afoot, though it seems this is mostly an old money laundering scheme with a new twist. The twist is that instead of an offer to buy your for sale item with fraudulent funds deposited into your own bank acct and then wire transferred to some obscure party in a third location, the fraud comes as part of a very enticing job offer for something called a Financial Manager.

I Googled an entire paragraph from the contract that was sent to my son, and it came up with exact paragraph matches on several other companies reported to be likely frauds. Because there was not clear information that they are frauds, I am reporting this as a new fraud game.

It works roughly like this, in fact, here is the "Duties" paragraph from the contract, it matches many, many other contracts verbatim, and describes something that most would recognize as money laundering, but to a desperate young person unable to find work, this comes as quite a treat to read this after little or no interview with the company.

"DUTIES:
The Contractor undertakes the responsibility to receive payments from the Clients of the Company to his personal bank account, withdraw cash and to effect payments to the Company's partners by Western Union or MoneyGram money transfer system within one (1) day. He/she will report directly to the senior manager and to any other party designated by the senior manager in connection with the performance of the duties under this Agreement and shall fulfill any other duties reasonably requested by the Company and agreed to by the Contractor."

"TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT:
The Contractor is engaged by the Company on terms of thirty-days (30) probationary period. During the probationary period the Company undertakes to pay to the Contractor the base salary amounting to 2300 USD per month plus 8% commission from each payment processing operation. After the probationary period the Company agrees to revise and raise the base salary to 3000 USD."

"The Company has the right to cancel this Agreement at any time within the probationary period or refuse to extend it after that, should the Contractor refuses to fulfill his/her obligations under this Agreement or fulfills them not in good faith."

"The Contractor has the right to terminate the Agreement at any time on condition that he/she has processed all previous payments and has no new instructions."

The website for this company has the earmarks of a fraudulently created laundering internet site, they call themselves, The Hub Group, which is a legit company, at the site http://hubgroup.com/ which has been registered since 1996 at that site.

Registrant:
Hub Group, Inc.
3050 Highland Parkway
Suite 100
Downers Grove, IL 60515
US

Domain Name: HUBGROUP.COM

Record expires on 05-Jun-2010.
Record created on 06-Jun-1996.
Database last updated on 12-Jun-2009 15:24:39 EDT.

HTTP://hub-groupmain.cn is a look-alike

However, the web domain in all the emails has a slight twist that might not be picked up, but is a dead giveaway that it is likely a fraud web site.

http://hub-groupmain.cn is what was in all the emails sent to my son, the .cn being a Chinese domain, which has been made to look similar to the regular domain of the legit company, and upon brief perusal, looks like the same web page as the legit company.

A Whois check of that domain produces the following info.

Domain Name: hub-groupmain.cn
ROID: 20090506s10001s02390171-cn
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
Registrant Organization: Private Person
Registrant Name: Gillermo Valdez
Administrative Email:
Sponsoring Registrar: 广东时代互联科技有限公司
Name Server:ns1.bubble-preorder.info
Name Server:ns2.bubblepreorder.net
Registration Date: 2009-05-06 00:38
Expiration Date: 2010-05-06 00:38

So this domain has only been registered since 06 May of this year, 2009, and all the pages on the web site are pictures of articles lifted from other websites, and none of the text is selectable to google it, as all the pages are basically snapshots, rather than text as in most other websites.

The list of pages that have the same fraudulent job listed is growing and includes the following, so please be watchful for the following also:

"BBM Group Inc. scam. This is just the latest of the numerous highly generic Russian scam websites that has been set up to form a front for a money laundering fraud job advertisement. (The identical job was posted by the Calisto Trading Inc., Reynolds Investment, & Simple Investments fraudsters and others)."

"It's a bit slicker than most but at the end of the day its function is to con you into believing that they are a legitimate company when the evidence clearly demonstrates that they are crooks. It's an identical scam to Epayment Solutions, Emarket Solutions Inc., Legal Operations Inc., Secure Operations Inc., Oranta Group Inc., Ketler Group Inc., Profit Financing Inc., Logic Group Inc., Maxi Group Inc., Fair Group, Fartex Group, MGPA Group Inc., Sky Group Inc., Idea Group Inc., Air Group Inc., Ideal Group Inc., Capital Group Inc., Fox Group Inc., Ebusiness Group Inc., Onicks Group Inc., Multi Group Inc., Single Group, DDK Group Inc., EFS Capital Group Inc., Eagle Group Inc. FCB Group Inc., TDK Group Inc., and the Ecos Group Inc. fraudsters among others."

"This fraud website has been produced in several languages. The website carries a clear money mule solicitation, their multiple domains were only registered very recently and all their contact and location details are bogus."
(This information was gleaned from http://www.bobbear.co.uk/bbm-group-inc.html)

Here's That Time Our Math Teacher Told Us About...

When math could very well save our lives. Funny, I never thought it could happen like this. Being able to "Do The Math" could in some cases, be the very thing that helps us either recognize the inherent limitations in something, or conversely, its enormous potential; and yet so many people who went to school, fail to do exactly that, when it comes to deciding their next moves.

Case in point: eFusjon is quite possibly the start of a new boom, the likes of which we have only dreamed about in the past, with a Healthy Energy Drink that aptly and amply competes against every drink in its class, and a marketing plan that takes all the best features of every successful multi-level marketing plan in the past, and molds them into a streamlined version of the best of them, and injects them with enough "mojo" to make it, by the numbers, the best way to move a product quickly into the mainstream that I have ever seen, and I have seen lots of them.

Whew, and that said, it somewhat pains me to say that an older generation of potential marketers has been so stymied by all the programs of the past decades that didn't quite work, that so many question the numbers as just another pie-in-the-sky program that will only be good for a few people. True it is that the sooner you get into something like this the better it will be, but that is exactly the point here, it is very early in the game, and I still meet with doubtful resistance. What is UP with that?!? This is like having found a gold mine in the forest behind the neighborhood and my neighbors are telling me, "but I don't have a shovel." Well lets go buy one, you won't have to dig long before the shovel is paid for!

I am seeing that for the most part, it will be a younger generation that has not gotten it in their heads yet that working in an office will be the best or only way to spend their daily existence, that might actually consider doing this, but it still hurts that there are so many people hurting from this recession that could use the money that this will redirect from the $$ Billions $$ that are being swallowed down in the Energy Drink industry without a second thought, mostly in drinks that are just flat not healthy for the body, and here comes one that finally is.

Mark my words, this one is the one that will make a difference in the lives of so many people that I talk to, and I want to leave a milestone marker, literally 2 weeks into my time in this new opportunity, with 4 people in, I got my personal three and placed one new person under my first lady, and will help each of the people that works with me, to build their businesses, and I am predicting now, that I will never have to go back to a job again. Oh, and I guess I should mention, my last job ended Mar 31st, and I have not been able to find any work in my Tech Writing field, so I began looking for other ways to develop streams of income, in the absence of the standard ways, and I will ever be grateful to Wendy Cowles who showed me the numbers on this one. Check it out, you will be amazed as I was, and possibly will decide that the math works on this one.

https://www.myefusjon.com/infohwyman

Do the Math!

The New Economy is a Global One

To say that things will never be the same could very well be the understatement of the new millenium as we forge ahead in this new global economy. The internet has forever changed the way we all connect, and as a result, we can never again simply rely on our local economies for comfort or relief. But that is also a good thing, and I, for one, am excited for this prospect.

It used to be a given that if one wanted to set up a small business for their community, they had to at least have a service that was somewhat perennial in demand, and that the competition was minimal enough such that they could command a fairly steady income from their local pool of customers.

With the advent of the internet, the prospects for who are your local market and who might have need and use of your services are blown wide open and the possibilities are endless. Even competition is a different game, as the loyalty factor is wide open for grabs, and people will move around from vendor to vendor depending upon such factors as price, color choice of the website, ease of transacting business, referral by a friend, or a hundred other factors.

This means that imagination now plays an ever bigger role in the success of the small business owner, and yet it also evens the playing field, because try as they might, the conglomerates and big corporations now have no advantage and no threat factor to scare off or push out the little guys. The playing field is more level than it has been ever in the history of the world, and while fear still keeps many from joining the game, I have seen more young people than in my whole lifetime prior, diving into the small business game, now that the internet makes it something just about anybody can do.

I too have been forced into a corner with the IT job market drying up. I just ran into a friend the other day who is moving to Utah in a week because that is where he could find a job. I was faced with having to either start a much lower paying job by lowering my scope of what I am willing to do, or start selling my experience in my field over the internet. I have discovered by looking at eLance.com for example that many of the jobs have moved from W2 contract types to the free floating 1099 type, probably because in the long run, there is less idle time for companies to pay for, in between work assignments.

It is high time that we in America caught on to the fact that the world is changing, and that we cannot afford the time or energy that so many people devote to trying to hang on to out-dated jobs and industries and start finding out what this new world needs done and either learn to do it, or do what we do well in a different and better way that fills current needs. The Obama Administration will bring with it much change as is already so evident in so many ways, and so we must look around at the kinds of things that will change and try to see the new work that will rise from those changes. So many of us will simply train for a new job, and that is fine.

I am using this time of change to finally make the needed transition I have so long avoided to join the ranks of the self-employed and business owners. Robert Kiyosaki points out with his cashflow quadrants that until you are either a business owner or an investor, you will always work for your money, but once you master the B and I side of the equation, your money will be working for you. That is how I intend to spend the next 50 years of my life. Join me.

Watch out for Trickle Debt

I have been wary of the new trend that is all to easy to get sucked into, which is to take on a free trial period of something and then lose track of when to cancel, or even the number to cancel it. All too often we get ourselves bogged down if we allow too many of these free trials to get started, without paying attention or noting how or when to cancel them if we find as I all too often do, that I really have not used the service as I thought I would when I initially started it.

This by the way, is what they count on when they start you up this way. Most people do not end up using the services on a repetitive basis as planned originally, but the money coming out on a monthly basis is usually in these cases kept to an amount less than $20 a month, so that in most cases we do not even see it coming out each month, or it hurts so little we do nothing about it.

I recently began to take stock of the number of such transactions I have coming out on a monthly basis and found that I currently have four services that protect me from identity theft, three magazines coming each month that I hardly ever read, and five transactions on my bank statement that I had to call to find out what they were; all under $20 a month but which each month add up to a sizable amount. It's okay if I am using the services, but I and all of us, need to be more mindful of the games companies play to get us started on a slow but steady drain of money from our accounts in almost unnoticeable amounts.

These are times where we should simply be more aware of where our money is coming from and where it is going.

My Rules for Twitter Following

I have developed the following loose rule-set for who to Follow in Twitter:

If a follower is a business, or marketer, I will follow-back only if I am interested in their tweets, or product, hardly ever, if there are only self-serving tweets in the first 5 or 6 tweets. I care not at this point if they continue to follow me.

If a follower is an individual, I will follow back, as my way of saying thank you, if after reading their bio and tweets, I find they are sincerely interested in meeting and interacting with new people in a calm, adult and friendly manner. I send out periodic group thank you's now for new followers.

If a follower is someone I am very impressed with, either by bio, tweets, or type of friends and conversation, (never simply by number of followers) I will follow back and make a personal comment publicly, thanking them for the follow, and maybe how I hope to interact with them.

I have stopped worrying about who quits following me, or why, as I only want people following me who are interested in my comments, and me, to whatever extent they may benefit from me, even as a customer. I want to network not only with people who have a lot in common with me, but with people who reasonably challenge my thoughts or ideas, and who are still reasonably positive about life.

I almost never follow people who show a tendency to engage in arguments with others or use rude or abusive language to get their points across, no matter how much I feel they might ultimately benefit by an exchange with me. I will not block them, however, unless they prove to be pushy as well as abusive.

I will outright block anybody who is obviously spamming, using adult or provocative images for their avatar or links to adult websites, or slanderous websites of any kind. Blocking should not be abused, and should be considered also a signal to Twitter to check this person out for possible abuse.

Twitter Opens Up a New World Online

While Twitter is likely to be around for a while, it takes some getting used to, mostly as its most visible features, Following, and Followers start to go from a few at the start, to a few hundred, and you find yourself unable to manually track what used to be fun and easy. The biggest and most profound change for me was as I approached my first 100 followers, and started to notice that my iPhone was getting inundated with SMS messages coming in, to the point where I had to shut off the phone's notification feature of vibration and tones, to let me know I was getting yet another SMS.

The first inconvenience was that I started missing family member text messages, because my phone was silently receiving them along with literally hundreds of messages a day. I started to think that the obvious solution was to turn off mobile notifications from all but the most important Followings, in terms of my interest in their comments.

I couldn't decide, and so I resorted to the plethora of tools available for my iPhone, and tested several before landing on one or two (*Twitterfon and Twittelator) that allowed me, without using Twitter's Mobile device feature, to not only log into my Twitter acct with my iPhone and read friends' comments, but then reply with a click.

I could, with one tool, track any "Tweets" that contained my username, infohwyman. This allowed me to be as responsive as I had always been to those who were either commenting directly to me, or replying to one of my earlier tweets, or even, as I discovered, saying something nice about me to another. It also allowed me to use my iPhone whenever I was ready to look at and catch up with the tweets that interested me and not be constantly bombarded with a steady stream of tweets, at times useless or pointless, and sometimes just not pertinent to me or my needs.

I have already heard of people getting exasperated and giving up on the whole deal, and I imagine to some extent it would be for some of the same frustrations I had felt, before I took action and found a way to allow this very useful and fun tool to continue to connect me to a world of thoughts and ideas, the likes of which have never come to me with such rapidity, nor usefulness as they do now.

There are so many positive uses that Twitter offers the adept and conscientious user, that I will save the ideas for a later post, but suffice to say now with utter conviction, Twitter has caught me in its net, and I am bound to it now, by the growing number of interesting people who have already made me feel very much at home, and many of which have already told me that I have made a measurable difference in their day with something I said. That is why I am here, and it is where I am heading.

* I am using a jailbroken iPhone, on TMobile's network, so apps available to me are actually not exactly the same as the Applestore apps, so I won't at this point make recommendations for iPhone apps to use, but Google and check around, there are already many reviews that led me to where I am happy now.

Is Monogamy Really A Selfish Form of Marriage? Answer to the Pavlinas Polyamory Argument

I have been married to my wife for nineteen years and we have felt lots of sexual tension, not to mention emotional extremes, but because we are both committed to the marriage and to each other, we have had no other choice than to work it out.

Frankly, I have always been a "live and let live" sort of guy, but to hear Steve and Erin Pavlina state that monogamy is actually a selfish form of marriage, because each partner acts as though they own the other is to denounce monogamy for its most failed manifestation, the marriage entered into for selfish needs or by two people who have no desire to stretch and grow. My wife and I meet each others needs, not because we are slaves to the other or owned by one another, but because we have, of our own free will, given ourselves to each other, and desire to make this life and forever together, a wonderful experience for the companionship of each other.

There are incompatibilities in any marriage, and the answer most assuredly is not for me to go find someone else who meets this or that need that my wife just won't. A lot of times, not doing so causes me to figure out what I want more, or whether or not this need is in fact a need. Most of the times, we should not go fulfill every deviant want that we can imagine is really a need.

I still feel that the Pavlinas deserve whatever kind of marriage they want, and I must also say that when they describe polyamory as a way of building a stronger marriage because both partners are happiest in this form of marriage relationship, I have to say, in my humble opinion, that no happiness garnered from experiences outside of a loving devoted companionship, could ever be greater than that experienced by two people who have learned and loved together, and decided that each other's needs are more important than a moment or two of pleasure that they might find elsewhere.

My marriage to my wife will last beyond the life we are living now, because we have raised children together, struggled together, fought side by side against a common enemy, and fought with each other about what was important to each of us. To live a life where we go and satisfy every desire when we have it and always meet every need the moment our partner does not, is to live a highly undisciplined existence which in the end, does not build strength of character or a strong love bond between two people.

I personally cannot see how polyamory could be described as a proper way to build a strong bond of trust between two people, because even if we are to shed all our selfishness, and envy, which is and should be the goal even in monogamy, the entwining of two lives is not as the Pavlinas describe, a shaky foundation of pillars so close that the structure tumbles, but is the divine multiplication of the gifts each individual brings to the marriage that strengthens the two as they become one flesh, a scriptural principle worth noting and as it is exemplified in my own life, with my own wife, and yes she is mine, and I am hers. Not at all selfishly, and yet, in a way that causes me to love her as I love myself. But I have to love myself enough to appreciate her.

To me, polyamory is not and could not be described as less selfish than monogamy, when both are lived to their highest forms. Monogamy does not mean to me that I cannot have emotional bonds with other women, nor my wife with other men, but the danger in living a life based upon excusing myself from even trying to meet my partner's needs that are uncomfortable to me is that it becomes a lazy way of loving and soon enough, one or the other will find someone else who meets more needs, better; then what?!?

Another Poem from Random Words

to Dragonblogger, I could really get to like this, for one, it is a brain wrangler and a half, to take a finite set of words and make a poem work. I did the following with the 9 words you got today, though I took a bit more than 90 seconds. For some reason, mine still need some sort of rhyming meter to work for me, tell me what you think.

Wasteful Earth Hater

They try so hard to make me cave
to think the octopus is my brother
they sell it all with marketable fear
but the information makes me smother

This environment is not some precious prize
that I must preserve for another
I trust in me and my own demand
my faith is in me, so why bother

Then another says with a louder voice
when they bury you, like so much fodder
then the sprinkles of dirt that you never cared for
will become a landslide, from your mother


The nine words were:
@summerbreeze80 (octopus),
@azredneck (demand),
@grumpy79 (faith),
@IntegralChaotic (landslide),
@mebanded (marketable),
@infohwyman (environment),
@SJohnson85 (sprinkles),
@SurfCityJay (information),
@stevebelt (precious)

Trying my hand at composing poetry from random words

The poem I am creating today is created using random words sent to DragonBlogger, a Twitter friend, with which he created a poem also.

Thanks to the following people for submitting their words: @SurfCityJay (love), @grumpy79 (euphoria), @izealove (sycophant), @summerbreeze80 (desperation), @WebBetty (fastidious), @SonoranDragon (spizzerinctum), @infohwyman (triumph)

Here is mine poem with the 7 words.

Love to so many is a noun
something that just miraculously arrives,
the euphoria of the brush of one found,
from the desperation of our lonely lives

yet to others the secret is bared,
ne'er the sycophant gains all that's sweet
for in the moment of triumph, alls fair
none can gain such a prize with a cheat

for the heart of another's not booty
to be taken fastidious -ly
wi' spizzerinctum thou doest thy duty
it will come by and by, thou shall see

This is posted on my blog so I can send him a link to check this out on twitter.

His poem for today can be found at http://www.wandererthoughts.com/2009/01/random-twitter-poem-for-january-5th/

Thanks again for the inspiration, I have several blogs that have been utterly neglected during the holidays.

2009 will find me more dedicated to these and more.