Although warnings for work-from-home shams have been issued repeatedly by various IT security media outlets, they still remain less popular than scams like the pop-culture-referenced Nigerian email spam or the ever-present phishing problem that's been making the headlines as of late. As such, a lot more people are being victimized by this comparatively obscure swindling scheme, particularly down-on-their-luck Americans who want to make a quick buck via a home-based job.

All the same, the RSA—the Security Division of EMC—has recently disclosed the details behind a complex, intricate, and sophisticated reshipping scam masterminded by Eastern European crooks that turned several U.S. residents into freight-sending middlemen of sorts. The deceptive online con got applications from around one thousand nine hundred prospective victims, from which the criminals got thirty-three people to receive high-value products bought with stolen credit cards and deliver them to a warehouse in Latvia.

The forwarded goods included high-end, state-of-the-art electronics like laptops, Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles, and Apple iPhones. The clueless dispatchers had over thirty-six thousand dollars' worth of items to ship every month as part of the diabolical and multifaceted scheme that lasted uninterrupted for a whole year. The items were bought in the United States by the tricksters and fraudsters, which were then distributed through unsuspecting middlemen with tenuous connections to the scam and sent to Eastern Europe, where the brains of the operation resold the electronic goods for a hefty profit.

The RSA believes that only a scant number of parcel mules ever got compensated for their hard work, since the whole operation was a scam that only the fraudulent instigators can profit in; that is, the fraudsters who ran the scheme and the carders responsible for the purchases split the money 70/30 in favor the fraudsters.

The con artists hid themselves behind the efficiently and resourcefully developed website of a bogus company that called itself Air Parcel Express. The legitimate-looking firm spoofed the name from an actual, Miami-based organization that has nothing to do with the fraudulent scheme. The RSA further postulates that it was the sheer professionalism and sophistication of these meticulously built sites that separated this parcel mule scam from many other second- or third-rate swindles out there.