This scam is essentially a work-at-home scam, an employment scam and a reshipping scam all rolled into one. The operators of this scam convince you that they need people to help them wire money quickly throughout the world. This company is operating under the name Xian Energy and using the web site www.purexian.biz. They have also operated under the names CheckBank.biz and Filenio Finance and they place thousands of ads on popular job web sites including Monster, Careerbuilder, Careers.com, and Hotjobs/Yahoo!. Many of the ads have been taken down by these job boards (for now), thanks to Dick Hambrice, an intrepid man in Columbus, GA who was scammed by these criminals and is determined to shut them down.

The scam works because the scammers are able to convince people to deposit checks, ranging in amounts from a few thousand to as much as $100,000 into their personal or business bank accounts. The check typically arrives via FedEx. Unbeknownst to the victim, the checks are fraudulent-stolen,altered and forged to appear real. The scammers tell the victim to quickly wire transfer the amount of the check to the payee, minus a 5% commission. The payee is said to be a US citizen abroad or a foreign national with US bank accounts. The victim wires the 95% amount expecting to see a 5% commission when the check clears. Unfortunately the check never clears because it is fraudulent and the victim is left holding the bag because they have wired their own funds. In addition, once the scammers have the victim's bank account information from the wire transfer, they can also use those numbers to create a "demand draft" and withdraw funds without confirmation and eventually drain the account.

On their website, Xian Energy goes out of its way to tell victims that they are a valid business and provide documentations to back it up, all of which are of course fraudulent. These includes business licenses, California Secretary of State documents, and statements from Dun and Bradstreet and the Better Business Bureau. The crime ring may be operating in Russia since the wire transfers ultimately hit a bank in that country.

This crime ring could not operate without the help of some legitimate business to enable their scam. The conduit bank through which wire transfers are sent to Russia is Deutche Bank Trust Company Americas. Xian's web site is hosted by a company in the United Arab Emirates known as hostmatrix.com and their email service is from HKNet, a provider in Hong Kong. Both of these companies have refused repeated requets by Mr. Hambrice to shut down Xian's services, even after being confronted with copious documentation of their crimes

Received via email from ScamSafe - Reprinted with permission