Ghana scam and direct deposit scam?
Of course, it is a scam.  Regardless of how the scam might work, you already know that the person on the other end is lying, and you also know that people in trouble don't contact perfect strangers out of the blue by e-mail for help, nor do they call up random phone numbers looking for help. Scammers prey on the gullibility, greed, and sometimes generosity of the victims. As to how this scam works, the money that the scammer would be depositing into your father's account is not real.  However, it will take the bank a few days to figure that out.  In the mean time, your father will be sending out real money back to the scammer.  When the bank figures out what is going on, they will want your father to pay back this money. It used to be Nigerian royalty, now it's Ghanaian porn stars.  Great.  This is a bog-standard 419 scam.  It's probably the most lucrative single swindle in the world.  It's always hard to get people to believe they have been tricked, but don't let your dad participate. The reason this sort of question gets asked over and over again is because it's initially difficult to comprehend how you can possibly be scammed if you have no money in your bank account. Perhaps this would make it easier to understand: Someone approaches you in the parking lot of a mall and says, Excuse me, complete stranger, please take this $100 bill and go buy me a pair of $50 shoes at the shoe store. Then go buy whatever you'd like with the rest of the money. Sounds like a good deal, right? The $100 bill is counterfeit. If it were not, the person would buy the shoes themselves. It doesn't get any simpler than that. "It's a scam. Here's someone who paid ""Josie"" 2000 pounds and lost it all Here's a Google search result list of how this softcore porn actor, Josie Ann Miller, is being used as the face and name of scams" Yes, this is a scam. Tell your dad not to pay any money.  There will likely be a large deposit in his account, but if he withdraws the money from his account, the bank will come after him looking for the money when the transfer to his account is reversed. "So Linda/Josie's initial plan was to have your dad pay money to (supposedly) help her get the gold chest. After he would have paid, there would have been another complication, and more yet (someone to bribe, a plane ticket to buy, transport to arrange, customs to handle, whatever, the list would last as long as there's money to take). Even if he does not have much money, the appeal of his share of the treasure could have been enough to tempt him to spend money he can't, or borrow, etc. Once ""she"" found out that he doesn't have any money and/or is apparently not willing to send any, ""she"" switched to a different scam: she would send him a large check, have him deposit it on his bank account, transfer most of the money (minus his generous share) to ""her"". Once the money is irreversibly transferred, the check will bounce. End result: 0 in the account before the transaction, minus a lot afterwards. It's quite simple: if an e-mail from a perfect stranger includes any of the following keywords, it's a scam:" Sadly, people with millions of dollars rarely give it away to complete strangers that they found at random on the Internet in exchange for trivial efforts. Anyone who claims to be willing to give you millions of dollars for just about nothing in return is almost certainly pulling a scam. It doesn't matter if you can't figure out how they're going to cheat you. They have plan.  Just because your father has no money doesn't mean he can't be robbed. The scammer is almost surely planning to move some money around, and leave your father with a debt that he will be legally obligated to pay. She'll then take off with the money. (Of course you figured out that the picture is fake. It may not even be a pretty young girl -- that may well just be a persona the scammer created to appeal to your father. It might really be a fat, balding old man.) Your father would be smarter to sit in his back yard and wait for money to fall from the sky. The scammer is definitely up to something fishy. He (it's certain that the she is a he) may deposit some money into your father's account to gain his trust. After which, he will propose to come meet your dad. That's where the scamming begins. He will come up with a story about flight, VISA issues, or a problem he has to solve before coming over. Another is that he can use your dad's empty account to receive monies he scammed off people. That way there's no direct link with him and his other victim.
"Let me guess, it's a fairly large amount of money, a few thousand at least. This is a scam. This is a variation on the many fake check scams out there. You deposit the check and you think it ""cleared"" your bank, but it didn't clear. A clever fake check can take a couple weeks to bounce and the bank will demand the money back. Any money you wire back to the fraudster in the meantime will be lost forever." The problem is, I don't understand, how such sites work. Is that scam or not? Some of my friends told me that they've actually received the revenue after they deposited a bit of money to similar sites, and I don't have any evidence not to trust them. Yes there are scam. Stay away. Quite likely people got real money back into Bank Account. Or more likely it shows that there is more [notional] money in the sites account.  If such sites really 'work', then how and why? These sites work, because there are quite a few people who believe in free / easy money. The site could be classic pyramid / Ponzi scheme. They could also be involved in some kind of Money Laundering. Why would anyone trust them so much to give them money for absolutely no reason? Okay, I'm not so clever, but they can't make profit only because of stupid people, can they? The same way you did, at times just for fun to experiment. At times because they believe there is easy get rich way. There is a reward that works so that if you see 120 you start believing in it. If you try and withdraw, there will be quite a few obstacles; under the pretext of holding period, withdrawal fees etc... but mostly they will encourage you to keep depositing small amounts and see it grow. This of it this way; if one can make 20% day on day ... one does not need someone else's money. The power of compounding would mean very quickly $ 100 would become 88 BILLION in 120 days! This is dangerous as it is a typical a scam.  Trudy convinces Bob to help her avoid an ATM free or some other pretense.  She writes Bob a check for $100, but is willing to take only $80 to return the favor.  Bob agrees. Bob deposits the check, gives Trudy the $80 and then later finds out the check is bad.   In most cases Bob will not be able to find or contact Trudy.   However, in some rare cases if Trudy feels Bob is very gullible, she will do the same thing again and again as long as Bob allows.  Sometimes the amounts will increase to surprisingly high levels. Online payment service providers should allow you to agree to payments from customers and secure your company against scams. To fight against innovative scammers, you need to take additional safety measures in defending your business. Improving your payment security should be a concern to website associated with scams I agree with you: it sounds like a scam. Those terms are too good to be true.  Online, it is too easy to pretend to be someone you are not. When choosing a bank to work with, you need to be confident of its legitimacy. Make sure you have heard of it someplace other than their own website and can trust it. In this case, this isn't even a bank; it is just an individual stranger. I can't see how this could possibly be legitimate.  With the information that they are asking for, they could potentially impersonate you and steal your money. I would stay away from this. Ok, few things to understand first: Secondly, think about the way a scam usually flows. A person (scammer) with an actual bank account with money issues a valid cashiers check, trick someone else (victim) into receiving it (typically in exchange for a percent) and passing along a portion to another account (back to the scammer). The scammer then reports the first transaction as fraudulent and the bank takes back that transaction. Now the victim is stuck with the second transaction, and without the funds from the first. Meanwhile the scammer has both the original funds and the percentage from the second one. In a way they're attractive for scammers because they're so trusted. "Also, do not trust anyone who phones you up. If someone phones up, claiming to be your bank, and trying to ""sort out this situation""; how do you know it's your bank? You've given the scammer your phone number - it could be the scammer calling. Only discuss this with someone at the bank when you have phoned them." "This is not only a scam but it is potentially fraud that may get you in trouble. This ""friend"" of yours will wire you some money in which you do not know where this money is really from. It's obvious from other answers that his story is fictitious. Thus it is likely that this money was stolen through another scam/hack in which now he wants to wash this money through your bank account. If it turns out that is was stolen, any money you withdrawal for your ""cut"", will have to be returned and your account will be frozen."