Mercury Industries

No cold calling, no selling to family and friends, no door to door sales! Just sales support for our growing company.”

That’s the pitch used in an email purportedly from Mercury Industries.

The pitch should actually read: “No cold calling, no selling to family and friends, no door to door sales! Just an illegal money transfer scheme which could land you in hot water”.

Mercury Industries claims to be a leading US Internet supplier of digital equipment. The company claims it was established in 2000.

The Mercury email claims you need no experience and can work from home, earning a commission of 8% on each item sold on the Internet. Mercury even offers paid training. All you need is a home computer and Internet access.

Ask yourself: if Mercury is so successful why do they need to recruit employees by sending out unsolicited emails and why is there no listing on the Internet for this company?

The email contains a link to a professional looking website. But it is all smoke and mirrors.

This website is a template used by other scammers in the past. In fact, the Mercury email and website looks very similar to other money transfer schemes, Swiss Invest and Columbus-Partners.

Do not respond to this email. Mercury will ask you to accept money into a bank account. What they do not tell you is that the money has been gained illegally. Often it has been stolen from other people’s bank accounts via the Internet. Scammers use Trojan and key logging viruses to capture customer online banking details. Once you receive the money, you take your cut and pass the rest to a pre-arranged overseas destination.

There are laws against money laundering. There is a real possibility that you will be prosecuted. It is not worth the risk of prosecution and a criminal record.

www.banksafeonline.org.uk/spotting_scams.html is the website for the United Kingdom’s banking industry and provides an up-to-date list of other money mule scams.