Would you think less of me if I were a professional money-launderer?

The company offering to pay me 5K a month to work part-time from home emailed in response to my resume to say that I'm just perfect for them. Sight-unseen, without even a phone call. There's minimal training, via email, and they'll pay me $3,600/month to start.

All I have to do is to accept payments from people I don't know, put them in my personal bank account, skim my bit off the top, and then transfer the money to a different account when asked so to do. They gave e-bay as an example but never claimed all or even any of the money was coming from e-bay transactions.

Tempting, no? I don't think they could put me in jail, either. I'd clearly have no idea of anything Naughty and no provable connection with the same.

I skim 8% off the top in addition to the salary, which is (I assume) where the $5k salary comes in.

I ask you. What legitimate company pays $5k a month for someone to handle, doing the math, $17,500 worth of business? None. I used to handle $500,000+ worth of business for one company. I didn't even make 10% of that, but I'm expected to believe this bunch wants to pay me 27% or 28%?

They sent a contract but it and the email I received were clearly not written by a native English speaker. You can get to their website (where they claim to be a bank-US, France, Netherlands, Ukraine--and isn't that an interesting combination?)) via direct link ("Welcome to Finincal Web Site!" it says), but Google never heard of them. They have pictures of their "team" (five fairly whitebread faces) and a Pennsylvania address.

People buy stuff, you see. Individuals buy yachts. Businesses do deals with other businesses. All of these folks need their money held in escrow from time to time. And this "bank" finds my checking account a more satisfactory form of escrow than, oh, I don't know, an escrow account.

You tell me. CIA front? Clumsy terr*rist organization? Mob money-laundering ploy?

Another company responded with an offer to set me up in my own business as a virtual office assistant.

They're going to provide me with everything I need to start my own business being an admin assistant from home and they assure me that all of the tasks I'm routinely expected to do as a full-time employee can be charged for separately when I'm a free-lancer. Which is probably true, but I left that rung of the employment ladder behind fifteen years ago and am not eager to return to it.

Admittedly I've answered a couple of ads more because they were weird and intriguing than because I was interested in the world they were offering, but this job-hunting process is turning out to be a lot more entertaining than I'd anticipated.