Good things come to those who .... Incoming email from ADY Finance PTY

So my Brother got a job offer out the blue just when he needed it. The offer was for an Australian Finance company ADY Finance Group PTY - for a "funds transfer administrator" - looks perfect, just receive funds into a bank account then transfer them on to another and keep some commission..

Kindly they provided an address 87 Llewellyn St. Merewether, NSW, 2291.

The miracle of Google maps etc furnishes us with their location...

87 Llewellyn St. Merewether, NSW

Now You may need to look around the Shell garage for the actual office .... actually no you don't this is the correct address.

So we do a little digging and find ADY FInance Group PTY has a registered address (on www.financialplanners.com.au) of 38-40 Conway Road, Bankstown, NSW 2200.

This is a lot more meaningful as the image will show.

 

Possibly the Interview room ?

Now to be honest this image is about 20 feet away from the actual location but that's just a block of flats and clearly this is their main office as you can see the seating arrangements, the parking and of course the rest room facilities.

No self respecting Internet geek would sit there without following all this up with a quick "Whois" - this shows the registered address of 3492 Scheuvront Drive, Denver, CO, 80211 and the email address of info@adyfinance.com.
The address does not exist, there is a Scheuvront drive but in WM so not even close.

The registered name does not seem to exist either so the alarm bells start ringing.

Even better than all of the above, the registration date of the web site is 11th April 2011 @20:16 so the web site has been registered for 14 days !

Forgive me for saying but I did suggest that this might be a scam ?

On the plus side though the reception are on reception@adyfinance.com
If your filling up at Shell you might be able to email them and ask for pump 4 to be turned on?

My brother, not to be taken in by such things is currently selling everything except a pair of shorts and is flying to Australia as I type, he's going to offer to either have his interview in the Shell shop, on the plush sofa (just near the rubbish) or he's more than happy to fly to Denver, CO for an interview with a non existent entity.


All of this is based on the fact they cover his travel costs and a burger.

Update:- My brother plans to fly out, locate the sofa and update the blog with a picture of him at his new desk - he's trying to find out if the phone cable is long enough from the nearby flats to the sofa.
Hopefully the tramp piss and puke stains won't be too bad but I'm sure it's the place of dreams where financial wizards rock the world with their dealings.

This web site should help explain, just look and see Mr Kenneth Redmond has moved around a lot recently, perhaps good Group hiring managers move quickly in these roles?

http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/labor-law-matters/31932-payment-protection-agents-uk-laws-11.html

p.s here's the scam mail (almost identical to the one sent to my brother).....
These people are scamming anyone registered with Job sites such as Total Jobs so be on your guard.

Hello,
my name is Kenneth Redmond and I am ADY Finance Group hiring manager. Thank you for your reply and interest in our company. We would like to consider you for the position of Funds Transfer Administrator within Ady Finance Group Pty Ltd.

Key responsibilities
1. Route and input all payment instructions received by mail, fax or electronically in a timely and accurate manner.
2. Control workflow on a daily basis to ensure deadlines are adhered.
3. Monitor and control of required reports.
4. Basic knowledge of online payment systems.
5. Excellent communication skills.

Salary & Benefits
1. You will be paid a basic salary of 2500 USD per month.
2. You will benefit from the commissions, which are 5-7% of each transaction.
Normally the amounts that we process vary from 2,000 USD to 10,000 USD, but can go higher on special occasions.

Why we need Funds Transfer Administrators

When buying-selling operations via the Internet are concerned, the buyer and the seller don’t know each other and are placed in different corners of the world. Therefore, it is important both to the buyer and the seller for their transaction to be made safely. Payment security means receiving money concerning the transaction by a reliable, experienced, impartial person - our Funds Transfer Administrator. He will hold all the money until all the terms of the deal are satisfied and only then release them to the intended receiver. Please, visit our web-site for more information.

Having a Funds Transfer Administrator in every country we can quickly transfer funds inside a country without wasting time on the international bank transfers, and continue our rapid growth rather than overwhelming our own bank account with inbound and outbound transactions leading to severe hold times and possible service interruption. It is time that is of significant importance to our clients.

The main task of the Funds Transfer Administrator will be receiving money transactions to any bank account he would like to use for the purposes of this job; and then forwarding these transactions to the next party of the process according to our instructions. Funds Transfer Administrator will be processing approximately 1-2 transactions per week.

If you are ready to proceed, please reply to this e-mail and I will contact you shortly.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need more information.

--
Yours Sincerely,
Kenneth Redmond,
ADY Finance Group. 

Let me regail you with a story

Normally when things start with those words I'm reminded of things such as the opening titles of Robin Hood films or similar so load up some snappy middle ages music sit back and let's begin.

Our tale starts with the innocent purchase of a new phone for our daughter.
T-Mobile had an offer for the Palm Mini at £19.99 which for an Android phone was perfect, we also wanted a PAYG phone as she does not use a phone much but also needed some internet access so when she's out and about she can use Messenger etc. This came with 6 months Internet free so was perfect.

So we parted with our pennies, the phone was despatched promptly and arrived the next day (so far so good).
In fact despite being part of her Birthday treats we let her have it a few weeks early so she could use it.
The box simply had a receipt in and a "Welcome to T-Mobile" A5 sheet in.

The receipt itemized the phone and the 6 month free internet.

We also purchased £10 air time with the phone which it said was pre-loaded.

Fire the phone up, set wireless up and Gmail etc and we're all sorted.
A few days later my wife goes to register the phone so we can top up on line etc. Now the fun begins.

1) It appears your not allowed to register more than one phone per person.
2) You can't register a phone to anyone under 16 *our daughter is 10.
3) Pay attention to points 1 and 2.

So my wife has to select that our daughter is 16 or above to register the phone, there is simply no other way to register it - T-mobile take note, this is really shit, I would have preferred to have our Daughters phone registered to her but obviously with parents/guardians as the overall owner for legal reasons.

We then check the balance and .... her phone (which started with £10 credit) now has only £4 left on it.
Something is clearly wrong so we check the on line balance, apparently it's being charged £1 a day for calling "1000" which by logic must be the internet?

So we call up T-Mobile from the phone (it says "call free on 150"), you get a recorded voice that you will be charged 20p per minute, we also get cut off while trying to navigate the endless menus.
After a few more tries we call from our landline, we then realize there is no option to speak to a human, the web site has no obvious option to send them an email or similar so it appears your stuck in a loop of either ending the call or pressing buttons until a prompt tells you something.

In the end we realize if we select the "I would like to leave T-Mobile" option then we actually get through to a concerned human who will obviously want us to stay.

My wife explains our situation and we are told this department cannot help and they will transfer us, "click" the line goes dead.
We call again and do the same, this time we get a human "hoorraaaaahhh", or perhaps not ! This lady then insists she speak to our daughter, we advise her she is 10 and she cannot speak to her, she insists and says she will not help unless she speaks to her.

We advise her that she cannot speak to our daughter as she is a minor and it is a breach of European law to speak to her, she still insists and says without speaking to our daughter she will not help.

I'm pretty disgusted at this stage, there is my 10 year old daughter now expected to have a chat with someone about something she does not fully understand so I tell my daughter to say "I authorize my father to speak on my behalf" - this is still not good enough, T-Mobile want my daughter to put a password on her account, we give them one but this is not acceptable, they insist on speaking to her and refuse to help.
I take the phone and explain clearly that they cannot speak to my daughter as this breaches LAW but T-Mobile still refuse, we ask our daughter to simply state the same password as we have given them - T-Mobile are now satisfied !

I am then told the reason we are charged £1 a day is because we have to activate the Internet by texting something like "AL" or "6 month free web" to a number, nowhere in the box or sheet of paper that came with it are these instructions !
All it had to say on the receipt was "NOTE - you must activate your internet before use etc etc etc" and all of this would have been avoided.

So I turn the phone off and on, send texts here and there and finally after 18 minutes (and £6 phone charge) get her free internet sorted.

T-Mobile refunded the £6 and £5 "gesture" for my phone costs but they have to accept that all of this effort and time wasted could easily have been avoided.

1) Let people register phones for their children i.e I am Parent, this phone belongs to xxxx.
2) Realize that they cannot speak to minors, this is a breach of law in every known country I can think of - what's next ? Banks calling and speaking to them to ask if they want a loan?
3) Put something, even on the printed receipt that simply says "you must activate the internet" - I am a computer engineer by trade and found this whole episode confusing, imagine what non technical people will do ?

Thankfully the charges have stopped and it's all working, the irony is that the phone is fine and the offer was very good, it was let down by incredible lack of control or process behind the scenes.
If you buy a PAYG phone with any freebies then take note of this story and check before you start using it !