Information and Alerts

Alert

Since October 2025, BBB has received Scam Tracker reports alleging that individuals seeking remote employment were contacted by representatives from VASCAP. This business uses convincing onboarding steps to appear legitimate. BBB’s review of these reports indicates a pattern of collecting sensitive personal information and attempts to involve hires in financial transactions using their personal bank accounts. These activities are consistent with money-mule schemes and employment-related impersonation scams.

In November of 2025, BBB submitted a written request to the company encouraging them to address the pattern of complaints. As of this date, the business has not replied to this request.

Here are examples of submissions to BBB Scam Tracker:

11/17/2025:
The company reached out to me with a remote job offer as an Executive Assistant. After interviews and providing W-2 information. I was then contacted for a match/position with an Executive who claimed to be a Diamond-Jewelry designer in NYC & Italy. After about 1.5 weeks of general employment, I was hit up for a "special assignment" by the employer that went through VASCAP to appear legit. It is a very well thought out scheme and the ultimate goal is to use your personal bank account to pay for an auction to be held in NYC and use the account as a mule to wire funds.


11/03/2025:
I received a text message from Amelia Bailey at VASCAP saying they had reviewed my LinkedIn application and asked me to send an updated resume and available interview times to [email protected] for a 30-minute interview. I received the Zoom link from [email protected] and interviewed with a guy named Kelby C. He seemed like a real person, said he was in Northern California. About a week later, I received an offer of employment email from [email protected] with an offer letter attached. There were several steps to the onboarding process, all of which seemed legit. They even provided the company's EIN info, and I wish I had taken the time to look them up before sending them my SSN and banking info for payroll and direct deposits. I know now the company (VIRTUAL ASSISTANT SERVICES, INC.) and the EIN # ending in 6964 went out of business in 2008, according to sunbiz.org. Once the onboarding was complete, I was matched with a client who they said was an award-winning American wildlife artist and active gemstone collector. They also told me the person had suffered hearing loss, and because of this, they operate in a written-first environment. My initial introduction to the client was with Makram Attalla (Director of HR & Client Operations) and the client in a Teams Chat. Given that they told me the client had a hearing loss and preferred written communication, I didn’t think much of it. After about a week of working with the client, she sent me a proposal that was so incredibly strange. They wanted me to act as a straw buyer and help them get an auction item and wanted to put a large sum of money into my name (my bank account), pay me 5% of the deposited amount, and then a 10% commission on the item once they resold it. I said I was willing to help as long as no laws were broken… After that, I heard less and less from the client. All along, something in the back of my mind seemed like it was off. I started digging, and here we are.


10/21/25:
I initially bumped into this company on LinkedIn after applying for through an alleged recruitment company. A text came from an Amelia Bailey. I didn’t recognize the name of the company or the number so I ran it through google and it did say a potential scam. That should have been my first clue, but when I responded and she brought up my app from LinkedIn I let my fear go. I interviewed with a seemingly real individual over zoom. Then was sent a job offer less than a week later. They told me onboarding would take a few days and then they would match me with a client within a week or two. Before I said yes to anything I researched them and found the website they sent. They even provided their company EIN information to prove they were real. So again I let my concerns go. The HR person said it would take a week or two to match me with a client but I received an email to match with someone before I even finished onboarding. The person was allegedly an acclaimed wildlife artist. Sent me a whole introductory write up about her. When I accepted the match we had our initial conversation completely through messaging on Teams because she was allegedly deaf. They had me set up a signal account to be able to send messages safely, etc. everything seemed to be above board until week 2 when I received a proposal that felt way too good to be true. The alarms were ringing. She had a whole written agreement and everything. Said she would contact HR as well to make sure everything was above board, but when I never heard from HR personally I did have even more concerns. Then she attempted to send me the check for registration, but FedEx intercepted the delivery both attempts and told me they were sending the packages to their security office due to invalid FedEx account. I didn’t even know that was a thing. So when I googled why they would do that I found that it is basically fraud detection. Then I received a call from another employee who bumped into basically a back door for the vascap website where he found all of our employee information and felt like this was all a scam. He was able to tell me all the things I had been doing for “work” because he was doing the same thing with the same client. Then I received a message from the client on signal saying that her computer had been hacked and I let her know that I was no longer comfortable communicating with her without seeing her. So she agreed to meet on zoom. We did but I could tell it was an AI person and she didn’t talk. The person kept sending me messages on signal rather than on zoom. And there was never sound on her end. Even if she is hard of hearing I would still be able to hear her surroundings if it was legit. I recorded the minute that I was on the zoom and I knew then that it was a scam. The website is apparently now “under maintenance” per the hr email I received for 5 days. Thankfully I lost no money, but they have my tax forms which means my address and SSN so I will be going to change my SSN tomorrow. I hope someone catches these people.