What Are Business Relationship Scams?

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Business relationship scams are related to doing business and cover a wide variety of general scam types. It can be a scam offer to joint venture on a business, to invest in a business you own or a business the scammer claims to already be involved with, or to establish partnerships or for you to act as a beneficiary for the movement of a large amount of money.

Many of the scammers will claim to be bankers, investor, investment managers, brokers, business consultants, or someone working for a large company. When the scammers are claiming to be bankers they often state they are looking for your assistance to help them transfer a large sum of money they claim is sitting in a so-called dormant bank account. Sometimes they call the funds "overdue payments", "recovered funds", funds from a deceased client, etc.

In some instances the companies and businesses mentioned in the scam emails are real companies and the scammer is spoofing by claiming they are involved with a real company, but many of the companies and banks that are introduced are simply fake. In other scam instances the scammers will claim to be an overseas businessman or investor seeking advice on how to invest a large sum of money into a business your country.

The scammers either use false names or may spoof names of real people and/or use fake copies of identities. Sometimes real business or company websites are mentioned within the body of the scam email to confuse people into thinking they are being contacted by a real company. Fraudulent Internet web domains and fake websites are also used to make the scams appear more convincing.

Often the scammers will offer a percentage split of the so-called funds which they are proposing to move or transfer into your hands. The split of the fictitious funds is offered in return for helping them to receive, move, transfer, or invest the so-called large sum of money. However, all of these emails are scams and are in no way connected to any real businesses opportunities and there is no real investors or money to be invested behind any of these fraudulent offers.

During the course of the scam the scammer may provide a so-called online banking website (with login details) in an attempt to prove that the funds truly exist and are safely sitting in a bank account awaiting payout. In all cases these bank websites are always fraudulent/fake websites owned and controlled by the scammer and the money that they are showing within the bank account are fictitious funds in a non-existent bank account. The scammer may also ask you to contact 2-3 different people that the scammer claims are also involved with the transaction as a psychological technique designed to make the transaction seem more legitimate. In most cases though you are dealing with only one scammer who is acting behind all of the various different personas being presented.

The scammer will eventually ask you to send some money before any of the money being promised can be sent out to you. This is a type of scam known as Advance-Fee Fraud. Advance-Fee Fraud is best described as an offer of money, merchandise, services, employment, or even romance, but where the victim is asked to pay a fee in advance to obtain whatever is being promised to them by the scammer. The main scam strategy of all advance-fee fraud scams is to try to persuade the victim to send money, and then continue to send more money to the scammer, as many times as possible, until the victim eventually runs out of money and/or goes into debt as a result of losses from the scam. And in the end, the victim never receives any of the money at all being promised by the scammer.

Please click here to read more about the psychological techniques used to deceive people with Advance-Fee Fraud scams. The following article on Wikipedia also explains more about Advance-Fee Scams in general: Wikipedia Link