They both discovered that a scammer used their name to post job listings on Elance-oDesk, a popular job listings site for online freelance work.
The fraudster used their professional reputations - resume, photo, portfolio site - both to solicit work and to hire people into doing writing for them. They only discovered their involuntary participation in the fraud when both potential contractors and employers contacted them directly.
Work-from-home scams were listed as the top internet crime in 2011 by the Internet Crime Complaint Centre. More recent surveys haven’t broken out categories the same way, but it looks like the old “$$$ WORK FROM HOME!!! $$$” scam is alive and well, if no longer as obvious. Because of how unsophisticated past schemes were, job seekers may not know how to spot the newest evolutions.
“Job seekers have grown sensitive to the typical warning signs of fake job listings, so scammers have evolved their tactics to trick them,” said Sara Sutton Fell, Founder and CEO of FlexJobs, a site for telecommuting, flexible schedule, part-time, and freelance jobs.
“In order to ensure a safer online job search experience, today’s job seekers need to be aware of how job scams have matured so they can adequately protect themselves.”
Here are five subtle job scam techniques, plus tips on how to safeguard yourself from them.
1. Fake urls.
This scam is about as normal as you could imagine: You see a work-from-home listing from a well-known company.
Your scam detection tip: Check the web address against one that you search for online. For instance, back in 2012, one scam used the web address cnbs4newsworld.com, which seems related to CNBC. However, a quick web search would reveal that CNBC doesn’t use that url.
(And all the links within it led to a site called Home Business System.) Other common variations on this scam or adding “inc” to the web name, or ending the url with “.net.” Another way to protect yourself from this scam is to compare the job listing with the ones on the company website.
2. Being contacted directly by a company you’ve never contacted yourself.
This, again, is a pretty run-of-the-mill routine: a company contacts you through LinkedIn offering you a work-from-home position. I’ve also been recruited through LinkedIn for jobs at totally legit companies, so it could be very easy to fall into this trap.
One person who fell for this scam was offered a better-paying position and asked to start working there the following week. The victim did, and after two weeks and two days, the company announced they decided to “go in a different direction” and completely disappeared — leaving the victim more than $1,000 in the red.
Your scam detection tip: Being contacted out of the blue by a company you’ve never applied to or had any previous interaction with is a red flag, especially if they ask you to give less than the typical two weeks’ notice at work. In this case, the scammers give a short deadline and offer a substantial increase in pay that makes it hard for the victim to think critically about the offer.
3. Conducting interviews by chat.
Your potential new employer asks to conduct the interview by chat — again, another tipoff that stems from a real-life practice. A good friend of mine was actually interviewed by instant message for the job he now has at a hot, buzzworthy company.
Your scam detection tip: If a company only communicates with you through online chat, that could be an indication that it is fraudulent. If a potential employer wants to communicate that way, ask to talk by phone, and also be sure to verify their web address and do some other online sleuthing.
Another clue here would be mistakes in grammar and punctuation, or the fraudster offering details, like their age, that are typically prohibited by human resources departments.
The most obvious part of this kind of scam is when you are offered the job, promised that your company-issued laptop will arrive soon, and asked to send an upfront payment for pre-installed software.
4. Lack of verifiable contact information.
Sometimes a company will have a legitimate-looking website, but it only offers an anonymous inquiry submission form and no other form of contact.
Your scam detection tip: Ask for other contact information and verify that separately via online search. FlexJobs also has a database of pre-screened companies offering work-from-home opportunities.
5. Being asked to give your personal banking information.
In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission helped refund $2.3 million to victims who had been snookered by a work-from-home scam by a company that used the names Google Money Tree, Google Pro and Google Treasure Chest.
It was not affiliated with Google. The fake companies promised the victims that they could earn $100,000 in six months after ordering a work-from-home kit for a $4 shipping fee — what wasn’t disclosed was that they would also be charged $72 per month.
Your scam detection tip: Being asked to make a small investment in order to receive a large sum of money sounds too good to be true — and it is. If you’re being asked to share your bank information upfront, whether it’s to pay for a kit that will help you work from home or any other seemingly legitimate reason, it’s probably a scam.
Laura Shin is the author of the Forbes eBook, The Millennial Game Plan: Career And Money Secrets For Today’s World. Available for Apple iBooks, Amazon Kindle, Nook and Vook.
