Atlas Investments Company An illegal purchasing and shipping scam Chicago Nationwide

This is essentially a warning to people about these types of scams that are highly illegal and could end you up in trouble even though you had no idea what was actually going on.

 Atlas Investments Company contacted me as the result of my resume being on and on-line job site. They claimed to be an international investments firm headquartered in London that provided capital for business start-ups, and that they operated in Europe and the US. They said they were expanding their US operations and provided European and US office addresses. They said they were interested in me as a project manager and that they would provide an on-line training program for a month with a salary of $2,500. After that, they would give me a FT job at an excellent salary. They provided a corporate web site where I had to go and complete an employment application. The application was fairly cursory, but as they already had my resume from the job site, I figured they didn’t need any further information.

 I agreed to give it a try and started doing the training assignments. I had a “training manager” assigned who sent and received my assignments and supposedly scored them. The assignments were all very genuine, although later I researched and found they were from open source professional information on-line.

 However, after only two weeks of training assignments, they said I was doing so well, they were going to accelerate the program and have me do the “practical exercise” ahead of schedule. This was supposed to be a project management position, but the practical exercise consisted of me doing market research and purchasing 12 MacBook Pro laptops for shipment to a project in Europe. The method they proposed was to provide me with bank account and routing numbers to put the cost of the computers on my personal credit card, then make the purchase.

 At this point I became suspicious and questioned why they needed to use my credit card to purchase rather than issuing a Purchase Order from their Chicago office. I also told them that in order the get the best price, they would need to set up a corporate account with Apple Business. At this point all communication with them was terminated at their end. They did not respond to emails and calls to the numbers they gave me would not go through.

 This is how they would use people to make money. These scams suck people in to make purchases in the US and ship them overseas. The purchases would be made by providing the "employee" with funds through a bank account, and then the employee makes the purchase. The scam is that the bank accounts are stolen through identity theft. The money being spent belongs to an identity theft victim, and the person becomes an intermediary in money laundering. Unsuspecting victims involved in this can actually be charged as participants in identity theft, money laundering and illegal export of stolen goods.

 If you are a job seeker who receives a phone call or email inviting you to apply for a job that sounds too good to be true, immediately contact the FBI and report it. Do not accept any money, do not make any purchases, and do not get involved. I am reporting this incident and turning all the materials from them over to the FBI.