I have a friend who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. There is a guy she met on Facebook who stays in Malaysia but originally from Nigeria.
This guy asked to send her money and open lots of accounts, transfer the money, withdraw it and pay it to these guys. She is promised to get a percentage from the transactions.
Is this a scam?
Two possibilities here, both very bad:
First, it's simply money laundering. When the government figures out what is going on who are they going to come for?
Second, the funds coming to her are stolen. She passes them on, the original transaction is discovered and reverted, she lost everything she passed on.
I would say: if you feel you have to ask then it almost certainly is a scam. You are almost certainly better off NOT doing it even if you can't quite work out what the angle is.
This is a variance of Advance-fee scam.
The scammer definitely going to ask the gullible(and greedy) victim for fees with absurd reasons (absurd to those rational people).
In fact, real money laundering is a professional task, which will not delegate to a John Doe or Janie Doe. Under international anti-money laundering rules and agreement, bank will report abnormal account activities to the authority. So it is really a dead-end asking a stranger to perform the money-launder mule task.
