James BryceEXCLUSIVE By James Bryce
A BRITISH expat is warning others to be wary of a job advert offering ‘up to 1,000 euros a week’ to cash cheques for a food company based in England.
Jeannette Pinnock, 58, from Estepona, became suspicious after answering an advert in a rival newspaper, asking for more details about the position.
She received a response claiming the company was having trouble processing cheques from Spanish customers.
It was looking to ‘employ people to cash the cheques for them’.
Pinnock’s contact – who gave his name as ‘Robin Wilson’ and supplied a London address – instructed her to transfer the funds at Western Union after cashing the cheques.
She was to take 200 euros from each as her commission.
“Their English wasn’t very good in the emails and they refused to give any more details about the company,” Pinnock told the Olive Press.
“They sent me four cheques in the name of Jose Ramirez, each worth 500 euros, but the bank refused to cash them.
“The manager told me the person named on the cheque needed to be there in person to present a passport.
“I certainly won’t be accepting any more cheques from them. It is all very dodgy.”
Well done for not getting involved. I played along with one of these some years ago, and the Olive Press wrote it up as a warning to others. Even if the bank did accept the cheque it would bounce, and you would lose. The worst are cheques from the USA which can apparently take months before they are cleared, and bounced.
I have no sympathy for anyone caught by these scams. There’s a saying that if it sounds to good to be true then it probably isn’t.
Oh, come on. A clearly dodgy advert with a yahoo email address – not even a proper company email.