Pepsi Car Wrap Money Laundering Scam

According to this email, which is supposedly from an advertising company, you can make 350 Canadian dollars per week just by ‘wrapping’ your car with advertisements for Pepsi.

The message instructs you to text or email with your contact details and make of vehicle and assures you that applying the advertising warp will not damage your car.

However, the email is fraudulent. It is not from any genuine advertising company or from PepsiCo. Instead, it is a scam designed to launder the proceeds of crime.

If you contact the sender to take up the offer, you will soon receive a cheque, ostensibly to cover your first week’s fee. However, the cheque will be for considerably more than the specified $350.

The scammers will instruct you to bank the cheque, deduct the $350, and then wire the remainder to a third party as cash. The scammers will claim that the extra money is to cover expenses associated with creating and installing the advertising wraps.

However, the cheque will turn out to be fake or stolen and will be rejected by your bank. You will be wiring money back to the criminals, not to an installer as you may think. Via this mechanism, criminals are able to turn fake or stolen cheques into untraceable cash.

And, police investigating the fraudulent cheques may sooner or later arrive at your door. Thus, you may be left out of pocket an in potentially serious legal trouble for processing stolen cheques.

In some variations, the scammers will transfer money directly into your bank account. Again, you will be asked to withdraw the excess and wire it as cash to a third party. But, you will later discover that the money has been transferred from a hijacked bank account.

Scammers have repeatedly used the ‘car wrap’ ruse. Other versions claimed to be from  Red Bull,  Rockstar Energy Drink, and  HP.

There are also many other types of  job related money laundering scams.

Be wary of any deal or job offer in which you are expected to accept money into your own bank account via cheques, money orders, or electronic transfers, deduct a portion as your payment, and then wire the remainder to a third party.

No legitimate company is ever likely to conduct its business in this manner.