ECOS Group, Inc.: My New Prospective Employer!

I've been keeping it low key, but I'm conducting a job search. Here's a sample letter I received and my response to it. I love spam!!

Dear Ionfarmer,

My name is Jenny Brown, I’m a Chief Manager of the HR Department (ECOS Group Inc.). This letter confirms that your resume was carefully processed and you meet our requirements for Financial Manager vacancy.

Our company is based in the USA and well-known all over the world. We offer financial services like escrow for buyers and sellers (online auctions around the globe, offered both on closed commercial auctions (stock sales, business sales etc.) and on ebay.com, amazon.com, yahoo.com…).

Financial Agent is a part-time position with a flexible schedule. You have to work only 2-3 hours a day (Monday- Friday) staying at home! Communicate with clients via Internet and by the phone!

The Company covers all the fees related to this employment. Successful applicants are offered a trial period (1 month). During this time you will be trained, receive online support while working and being paid.

We’ll pay $2,300 per month + 8% commission from each successfully completed transaction. Total income is about $4,500 per month.

Are you interested? Please, contact us by e-mail: Jenny.ecos.job@gmail.com and feel free to ask all your questions !

* fill in the form below and attach to your message

++++++++++++++++++++++++FORM+++++++++++++++++++++++++
First name:_____________________________
Last name:_________________________
Country of residence:_______________________
Contact phone:_______________
Preferred call time:______________
++++++++++++++++++++++++FORM+++++++++++++++++++++++++

We found your resume at www.careerbuilder.com. This letter confirms that your resume has been duly processed and your skills completely meet our requirements for Financial Manager vacancy.

Yours truly,
Jenny Brown




Hi Jenny Brown!

Allah be praised, in an aromatically unique and anti-climatic fashion!!

I was excited to see that there was an opportunity at my doorstep to find new employment and obtain some security for myself and my family! I am working part time in my neighborhood cobbling shoes at night. It isn't a sophisticated operation like the on you work for, people in the neighborhood leave their shoes out on their doorstep at night and I come by in the wee hours and pick them up and cobble them. Then, if the people have left me a potato pie on their doorstep, I return their cobbled shoes. Like I said, not sophisticated like your world of high finance, but it keeps me and my family fed (although, I have to admit the wife hasn't been doing so well lately because of her potato allergies.) You could imagine my utter astonishment when I found that my qualifications were a match for the position of financial manager you have at your well-known company!!

Like I said, I'm anxious to start, and was wondering if I could put your company on my own one month trial period? Here's how it is going to work: I stay at home and talk to my friends and family on the internet and by phone and then you send me $4500.00, at the end of one month If I determine upon review that this work situation is acceptable, I give up cobbling shoes forever and work full time (10 hours per week!) at your company. for the amount stated above. I know that this sound unreasonable, but my wife doubts this veracity of what she calls your "bull shit company" (no offense). I tried to tell her that you made no mention of any commodities that were associated with bull shit or any part of the excrement industry, that you were in the financial sector, but she not listen. Hold on, I have to talk to my wife, she wants to know why I am not cobbling the shoes.

I talked to her about "us" and she doesn't even wanting me to work the new trial period we set up. She has several points she wanted me to raise but I'm afraid to, and then she said she would lock me in the closet. It's not her fault, Jenny, but I think the potato allergy makes her crazy!! She is standing behind me, watching me type. She looks mad. I will let her type now.

Hi Jenny, this is Ionfarmer's wife.

I think this letter is a study in truly a poor attempt at a confidence scam. Let's go through this letter systematically and find some major faults:

First, there is the e-mail address. A G-Mail account? Really?? You know, you could register a domain name that just might sound like a corporation that you are trying to represent and buy some server space. But, that would probably lead back to you in some fashion and anonymity is the key in this job offer, if nothing else. You probably lack the technical sophistication to set up an basic anonymous server, and that by itself doesn't make you a bad person, Jenny, but the fraudulent job offer kind of does doesn't it? I'm not calling you an asshole, but not having a web presence to support your claims is kind of an Achilles heel for this type of enterprise, now isn't it? (By the way, I am thinking that you are an asshole.)

Second, your letter states that Ionfarmer is qualified for a financial manager position but in the third paragraph you describe the job requirements for a financial agent. What the hell, we are only 1 paragraph into this e-mail interview and you've already decided that he's not good enough to be a financial manager? Screw you, Jenny. Screw you.

Third, you over-sell the lucrative potential of the position $4500 a month for 10 hours of work. From home? Maybe, you are right, maybe he's not good enough to earn this kind of money for 10 hours of work a month. And what about me Jenny, his wife? Have you though about how much strain having him home that much would put on our relationship? Why can you guys do what every other corporation does and keep the guys at the office for 40 hrs a week minimum and only get 10 hours worth of work from them? You should counter offer his trial offer by making him come into some office somewhere for 40-hours a week. Do it for my sake, because the potato pies are killing me.

Fourth, this company does not seem to be a "well-known" company based in the USA, as I am an avid female stock investor and am part of the Female Stock Investor Rodeo League. It's a wonderful organization, meeting once per month. At our gatherings we like to drink white zinfandel and bust bronco's and hog-tie things and discuss stock options, and commodities futures, but during this time I have not heard of this company nor it's services which seems unlikely as they have to economic reach to pay someone $4500 per month for 10 hours of work.

Fifth, the most humble of web searches links ECOS with a non-existent job opportunity at best and outright check cashing and money laundering scheme at worst.

Sixth, that has to be the weakest attempt at a web based form that I have ever encountered on par with this one that I would like you to return to me:

++++++++++++++++++++++++FORM+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Name____________________________
Billing Address_____________________
Credit Card Issuer___________________
Credit Card Number__________________
CSV Number_______________________
++++++++++++++++++++++++FORM+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Thanks! I'm going to need this form right away.

Seventh, there is no corporate website. See the first discrepancy on how to resolve this problem. OK, I'm done with this.

Hi Jenny, it's Ionfarmer again.

I don't know what you guys were talking about, but she must have been worked up because I could hear her banging the keys from clear in the other room! She told me to forget all about this job and move on, but I would really like to work from home and I think that spending more time around the house would bring my wife and I closer. As it is right now, I don't really see her much as I spend all night collecting the shoes and all day cobbling them, then I eat some pie and the whole thing starts over again.

Let me know what I have to do to get started with our new trial offer and we'll move on from there, but you can't let my wife know.

Don't Let Your Meatloaf,

Ionfarmer
Head of the Neighborhood Cobbler Association

Pondering whether to
cobble or eat potatoe pie.