This scam takes advantage of the many people desperate to find a job working from home.

You search online and find what appears to be an ideal opportunity.

It involves accepting parcels from an overseas company then putting a new delivery label on and sending the parcel off to its intended destination. Sounds straightforward.

There is a convoluted story about why this is necessary rather than the company shipping the items to the desired destination themselves.  The story makes no real sense but you are so keen to get a job working at home that you accept the premise.

The scammer promises to pay per item or maybe a flat monthly salary.

You are then happy to accept the incoming items, attach pre-paid postage labels and send them off to a new destination – likely to be in a different country.

For some victims, things progress smoothly receiving and sending out packages. For others things go wrong straightaway. The problems can start with the first delivery you receive. Seems a normal small package and you add the delivery label you’ve been sent and drop the package off at the Post Office.

But then it is returned you to because the delivery label was a fake.

You email the scammer and are told it was a mistake and she sends you another label to use. Maybe that works or is another fake and so on until one does work.

Sometimes the package receiving and sending goes on for a month then you expect to be paid but of course that doesn’t happen – the scammer has disappeared.

The worrying part is that the packages may well be illegal and the Police may get around to investigating your part in this re-shipping scam which is of course illegal.

The package may contain anything from drugs to weapons.

You then have to prove you were duped or face being prosecuted for a criminal offence.

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