To continue our last post Spotting Job Search Scams here are a few more types of Employment based scams you should be aware of:

CV/Resume Blasting

This is by far the simplest form of employment scam where a company contacts you offering guaranteed employment within a fixed period (say 30 days). This company then distributes your CV to prospective employers in the hope of tricking the victim into believing that their business is actually genuine.

The victim then pays money to have his or her details sent to employers who are hiring, but what the fraudsters do instead is spam hundreds or thousands of employers, industry websites, and online magazines with a victim’s details in hopes of having the companies send them correspondence they can use to scam new victims. Occasionally, they will also have the company pay for travel and other work related expenses by passing themselves off as the victim, thus scamming both the employers and job seekers.

Another version of this is based around a 419 scam. Often these job offers come from Malaysia and you apply, but before you can get the ‘job’ you have to pay money for ‘visa fees’ (or the like). The scamsters pocket the money you sent them and you hear nothing from them again.

Bogus Job Offers

A more sophisticated version of the scam happens when the scamsters actually advertise jobs with companies and offer lucrative salaries and conditions with the fraudsters pretending to be recruitment agents. A bogus telephone interview may take place and after some time you are informed that the job is yours. To secure the job you are instructed to send money for your work visa or travel costs to the agent or a bogus travel agent who works on their behalf. No matter what the variation, they always involve the job seeker sending them or their agent money, credit card or bank account details.

Increasingly these scams are being perpetrated thorugh internet job boards. For example, a fraudster places a bogus job listing on a legitimate employment site, which is then e-mailed to thousands of job seekers wishing to find a job meeting that criteria. The fraudsters then take advantage of those who contact them, by asking for employment, visa, or travel fees in advance before they can consider the person for employment. Often, they create fabricated websites mirroring the real company sites, or create fake websites parodying a non-existent company which is legitimately registered in their origin country for the sole purpose of scamming victims.

As always, if something seems too good to be true then it probably is. And if you are contacted by anyone always do your homework regarding the company that’s contacting you. And if the contact email is one of the ‘free’ email sites: hotmail, yahoo etc then give the email a wide berth.

What is a guaranteed employment or income scam?

A guaranteed employment or income scam claims to guarantee you either a job or a certain level of income. The scammers usually contact you by spam emails and the offers often involve the payment of an up-front fee  for a ‘business plan’, certain start up materials or software. The scammers might ask you to make goods which will never be sold or sell you software that doesn’t do what they claimed it would.

Some scammers also offer ‘career’ services that ask you to subscribe to a job directory or list and ‘guarantee’ a job.

Warning signs

• You receive a spam email offering you either a guaranteed income or guaranteed job.
• The advertisement requires you to send a fee to receive your start up materials.
• The advertisement only specifies a post office box address and not a street address.
• The email or letter may not be addressed specifically to you.

Home Working Scams

• Homeworking scams feed off our need to believe that there has to a better way of earning money. Some scams just promise a few extra quid whilst others promise riches and the millionaire lifestyle from stuffing envelopes, to some ‘brainless’ scheme involving email, to your very own shopping mall website. In a way, it is easier to be sucked into the smaller scam requiring only your £5 or £10 or £30 because you feel you have less to lose and hopefully much to gain.
• Scams involve a clever use of psychology. This is where the fun bit comes into it, but only if you are feeling strong enough to resist! When you see something promoting some unbelievable homeworking opportunity together with pictures of sunset beaches and promises of a ‘residual income’ or ‘Earn £20,000 per month’ or even just ‘Earn a bit extra’ then take a deep breath, make yourself a cup of tea and sit back and read what they have to say. Look at the language they use, the superfluous use of prose and the exclamation marks galore. See how the advert gradually draws you into feeling that this must be a great way to earn money. After a while you get a nose for these things and will see the same scams dressed up in different ways.
• The one thing these scams have in common is the fee you have to pay. It might be called an administration fee; it may be a refundable deposit for materials, or a registration fee or a fee for a directory. The fee may be required in the form of a cheque or it may be part of your making a premium rate telephone call. Now if you were to apply for a regular non-homeworking job through a classified ad would you expect to have to pay an adminstration fee? Of course not! Many homeworking scams involve piecework from painting cottages to assembling electronic components. You start off by paying an initial £15-20 to register and then you are asked to pay another £30-40 for the materials. You do the work as specified but it is then returned to you as being substandard work. In fact you are working with substandard materials (not worth the deposit you have paid) and even if you do exactly as asked they will just move the goal posts so that payment is never made. By this time you are more than £45 out of pocket, have wasted a lot of precious time and only a pile of rubbish to show for your money.
• The other well-known homeworking scam involves envelopes. Whether it is addressing or stuffing them both are scams designed to relieve you of money and if you are to make any money from this then you have operate the same scam! There is a lot more about the ins and outs of envelope scams on the Homeworking.com website.
• The Internet has produced a breed of sophisticated scams which at the expensive end involves shopping malls. You are told how the Internet is the place to make millions and to get on board now with your very own turn-key shopping mall which they will produce with your name on it. The bottom line is anything from £1,000 to £4,000 for the pleasure of a useless shopping mall site which no-one will visit and the only way to make some money back is by selling on the scam and getting other people to start their own shopping malls. The cheaper end of the Internet scams involves email chain letters the latest proclaiming, “Parents of 15 year old found $71,000 CASH hidden in his closet”. Statistically, it is impossible to earn the amounts that are promised unless every man, woman and child on this planet are connected to the Internet and take part in the same scam!
• At this point you may wonder what sort of work people really do at home?

© The Career Enigineer
WoWMyCV.co.uk

        

Tags: career, Career Advice, Careers, Employers, Employment, fake employment, job scams, Job search, Jobs, Online Reputation, scammers, Skills, Unemployment, work

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 at 6:10 pm and is filed under Articles, Career Engineer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.