The "Oasis Cruises" gave tel. no. ++ 601 229 64213 and 601 630 35304 (in Malaysia), address: 456 Jalan Gombak, Port Dickson. The message was signed by Datuk Seri Muhammed Rahimi, Senior Manager, Human Resources & Administration.

The "company" have a website: www.oasiscruises.com. Due to coding errors only dark blue background can be seen in Explorer, while Firefox shows the pages OK. The server is owned by Telekom Malaysia Berhad and the email is on: oasiscruises.com

On the website it's stated the company is doing around the world cruises, like for instance Australia to Southampton (UK). It's also said at least one of their cruise ships carries 245 passengers. There is a page with six photos of "cruise liners". Two of the ship's photos are duplicated, and one of these is both from abeam and from the SB bow. So out of six pictures, there's a total of three ships only.

The website lists the names of five ships: Wuma Viva, Oasis Princess, Viva, Conda, and Wuma. Only the name "Viva" can be found in ITU (International Telecommunications Union). Several ships with this name are listed but only two with EPIRB - both registered in Germany. When you zoom in on the ship pictures the flag looks very much Malaysian, it's definitely not German.

The one example above is not the only target - this offer is continuously sent to seafarers (cruise ship crew) who have their email address available on the internet.

The cruise ship employment scam is still going strong in 2007. Mr Mohammed Abus at Anaclet Chambers in Kuala Lumpur still busy collecting money (?). Last fake job offer I know about was received in March 2007. I hope not too many people are sending him anything.

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If you get anything like the offer and request for advance fee like above, you can check if the lawyer is a member of the Malaysian Bar Association or not. Go to List of Malaysian Lawyers 2005, the list was compiled by US Embassy (Consular Section) in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). Even if the lawyer isn't listed, he/she could have been admitted to the bar later, but that in itself is a reason for extreme caution. You need Adobe Reader 7.0 to open the document.

When a shipowner or recruiting agent contacts you to offer a highly paid job you haven't applied for, be very cautious. Every personnel office is too busy to surf the Internet searching for seamen CVs and then trying to contact people with job offers. Except when you have some very special skill or knowledge (like a top consultant).

Every seafarer with his/her e-mail address available on the Net is a possible target. See Don Pedro's How to Hide my Email Address.

There is one or several other groups (Nigerian) running employment scams targeting seafarers in general. If an offer sounds too good, then it's probably fake.

In December 2006 I was told about a British "recruiter" going around in Sri Lanka offering employment on cruise liners. He collecting 2.000 USD each from 200 people. Since then both he and the money has disappeared.

A searchable and indexed archive of scams received by email. You can check every email you are suspicious about against the archive. You can also include the scam search in the Google toolbar - if you have the toolbar.