Eastbiz corporation fake checks scam – Craig Hatcher fraud

This morning was quite hectic. I was in the middle of business meeting when one my employees informed me that something is going on with our checking account. We got a phone call from a stranger who claimed receiving a check for $3,300 from our company (Eastbiz Corporation). There was no record of such check issued in our bookkeeping or in cancelled checks.

That is when my heart beat started rising. The bank account from which the check  was written is not even used for writing checks. We keep quite a big balance there and this is why we don’t use it for writing checks anymore. We have a different account for writing checks.

Someone posted ads with job offers on Craigslist, Carrier Builder and on different community boards (someone was even distributing flyers at some college promising  easy way to make quick bucks). It was highly organized over big area. As far as we know it looks like people in Texas, Georgia, South and North Carolina were targeted.

We saw a name Craig Hatcher (craigthehatch@live.co.uk) as the name which fraudsters used to answer to job applicants.

Here is the example of the actual email:

Hello .

Thanks for applying for the post, I quite I appreciate it? I received and read your e-mail and it’s reasonable and acceptable. So I will give this a go”

I am Craig Hatcher, I am the CEO of JIL Construction company, we provide full-service General Contracting, Construction Management, Design/Build, and Underground Utility Construction . We also have an on-site metal fabrication shop..

I’m sure you’ll understand I tend to have a very busy schedule at this point, as I am presently in the United Kingdom, I will be back in the states in Three Weeks.

Please note that this position is not office based for now because of my frequent travels and tight schedules,

it’s a part-time, work from home basis and the flexibility means that there will be busier weeks than others, so it’s a little difficult judging the exact number of hours you’ll be doing per week. If you can manage your time properly, this job may even give you some extra while you do something else on the side. As I have said, I’d want us to get a head start with things  as soon as possible. I do have a pile up of work and a number of unattended chores which you can immediately assist me with, I hope we can meet up with the workload eventually. Permit me to use the coming week to test your efficiency and diligence towards all this, also to work out your time schedule and fit it to mine. I really need to find the perfect person for this job, I’m confident you can take up the challenge and on the long run we should have a relatively sound working relationship between us.  It may be a little difficult working out the time difference between us initially, with time however, we should get used to it.

I’m online most of the time as I am hard of hearing so I prefer to we contact each other through E-mails, but if there is need for me to call, I will make use of the online means of making phone calls.  I am glad you are willing to work with me and i promise to be a good boss. I am also glad on the commitment in working. I have been checking my files and what i would want you to do for me this week is to run some errands out to some of the orphanage home, I do that every month . The funds will be in form of Checks and it will be sent over to you from one of my clients and i have some list to email you once you received the funds,You will make some arrangements by buying some stuff for the kids in the nearest store around you so you can mail them out. I will get you more information on that,I will like you to get back to me with your Contact Details such as:

Full Name:
Contact Address, NOT P.O BOX:
City:
State:
Zip-Code:
Phone Number:
Occupation:
Sex:

Once I have received your contact information, I will get back to you with the task for this week,Understand you will also be paid as well as its important for me to make the necessary steps before i get back from my business trip back to the states. Hope I am clear with that.

Get back as soon as possible..

Craig Hatcher

When people responded with their contact info they started getting fake checks. The checks were written in my company name (Eastbiz Corporation) with the real account number. The checks look actually different then our real checks. Someone had them printed and mailed them to probably hundreds of people.

The checks were mailed from address in Georgia. Here is the actual scan of the envelope:

It shows little bit of hand writing. I didn’t want to include the whole address of the victim. Maybe a real fraudster or  another victim actually mailed out all these checks. It is hard to say.

This is how the actual false check look like.

I cut off the name of person (victim) receiving the check. And I also cut off our account number. But you can see the check looks quite real. It has our company information, correct account number and correct routing number.

Most of the people got a check for $3,300 or $3,200.

Here is the kick. The people were asked to cash it and send $500 by Western Union to some other person. We already have three names were the $500 were supposed to be sent (addresses in south east U.S.A.). They were told that $500 is for victims of Haiti earthquake!! So that is how the scam works. You make easy three grand and you are asked to send couple of hundreds to victims of Haiti earthquake! While money goes to scammer!

We called FBI and they are coming to our office.

It looks like hundreds of checks were written. We were getting phone calls whole day!

If you have any information which can help to solve this crime please email me at info@eastbiz.com. This is really sad what is happening and how many people can be victims of fraud like that.