can someone help me figure out whether or not this job is a scam? HELP ASAP?

100% scam.

There is no job. Scammers have anonymous paid-fro-in-cash cell phones for calling and texting and they also know how to chat via yahoo IM.

There is only a scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money and maybe your freedom.

The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the "assistant" and will demand you accept packages purchased with stolen credit cards, hi-jacked paypal accounts and spoofed bank transfers, at YOUR home address. Then you are suppose to use a stolen UPS/FedEx billing account number to send the electronics, clothing and jewelry overseas. When the websites, credit card/paypal/bank account owners and UPS/FedEx discover the fraud, you get the real life job of paying back ALL of them. Then the local law enforcement comes knocking asking why are you fencing stolen merchandise for someone you never met, don't know their real life name and have no idea in what country they really live.

Another email will be from the scammer and will demand you cash a large fake check sent on a stolen UPS/FedEx billing account number and send most of the money via Western Union or moneygram back to the scammer posing as the "supply company" while you "keep" a portion of the cash. When your bank realizes the check is fake and it bounces, you get the real life job of paying back the bank for the bounced check fees and all the bank's money you sent to an overseas criminal.

Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever.

Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of being the perfect buyer, great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.

Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.

Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even partial sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.

6 "Rules to follow" to avoid most fake jobs:

1) Job asks you to use your personal bank/paypal account and/or open a new one.

2) Job asks you to print/mail/cash a check or money order.

3) Job asks you to use Western Union or moneygram in any capacity.

4) Job asks you to accept packages and re-ship them on to anyone.

5) Job asks you to pay visas, travel fees via Western Union or moneygram.

6) Job asks you to sign up for a credit reporting or identity verification site.

Avoiding all jobs that mention any of the above listed 'red flags' and you will miss nearly all fake jobs. Only scammers ask you to do any of the above. No. Exceptions. Ever. For any reason.

If you google "fake re-shipping job", "fraud money mule scam", or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near victims of this type of scam.

You would think that for a scammer they would at least be intelligent about it. I do agree with the other poster and to me, this is as generic as it gets. It has so many grammatical errors and it's not even worded properly, totally unprofessional (definitely a red flag). Since this is a very generic email, it means that this email is sent in masses to multiple people sometimes even spamming the same recipient with the same email.

If a serious and PROFESSIONAL photographer needed an assistant for hire, they would not get potential employees via email but by ad or website ad even then, they wouldn't ask for information such as the ones you have stated especially gender and age because of certain laws that protect against discrimination (I'm not a law expert but that's a no brainer).

They would also want to INTERVIEW you and prove their credibility. If anything is suspicious or odd in nature or sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

SCAM - this is an identity theft scam for so many reasons

1 - NO real employer asks you to text them or gives you a Yahoo IM. Real jobs have company email domains AND landline phone numbers to talk to you

2 - It's 100% illegal to ask your gender or age

3 - It would be illegal for you to receive his funds. Anybody would have the funds sent directly to their bank, not some stranger

4 - NOBODY would ever hire an administrative assitant they had not met IN PERSON at their place of business for any reason

DO NOT respond to him anymore and report this to the FBIs IC3 division http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx

This is a money laundering and reshipping scam that will land you in prison for fencing stolen merchandise and laundering criminal money through your personal bank account

Yes its a scam

I have three identical letters from three other "employers" exact same wording

and even have the same mis-spellings or curiosities, such as being untrackable on the internet

Did you call the number? Looks like a scam to me.

ITS A SCAM!! no serious photographer emails a person to work for them. seriously is a scam. my friend almost got scammed by a man who even when to her house. good thing my mother and I were there and kicked him out.

ITS A SCAM.

as others have said, scam! you sense how the email sounds very generic in nature and is like a template that can be mass emailed to anybody? if you're curious, copy the full email headers and paste it in any online email header analyzer like this site: http://www.iptrackeronline.com/email-header-analys... to see where it was sourced from.

Obvious scam!

This is the standard cheque cashing scam.

Stop replying to him!

I've received letters similar to this. It sounds phony to me.

SCAM............trust me.