Phrases such as “work from home” and “no experience necessary” may sound promising, but they are words that should strike fear in the hearts of job-seekers looking for honest employment.
The risk of encountering deceitful solicitations is especially high for those who troll the Internet for job leads. According to one Web site that screens and posts “work from home” jobs, the scam ratio is 59 to one, which means there are 59 scams for every one legitimate lead.
Job-seekers must be careful when searching for jobs on the Internet to avoid job offers that are misleading or downright dishonest, says Michael Haaren, co-founder of RatRaceRebellion.com, a division of the training and development firm Staffcentrix, in Woodstock, Conn. The contracting economy and high rate of unemployment have created near-perfect conditions for job scams to proliferate.
“The recession has created a lot of desperation among job-seekers, and desperation is like blood in the water for sharks,” Haaren said.
Haaren says his Web site, RatRaceRebellion.com, screens 4,500 to 5,000 jobs each week, filtering out the scams and posting the genuine jobs on the Web site. Only a handful of useful job offerings survive the screening process, Haaren says. Most so-called job listings that supposed employers try to post on the site are bogus, he claims, meaning that they are written in a misleading fashion, often intentionally, to snare unwary job-seekers into disadvantageous schemes.
The National Consumers League, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit advocacy group that represents consumers on workplace and marketplace issues, rates “business opportunities, franchises and distributorships” as one of the top 10 scams as of June 2009. Many franchise establishments, such as McDonald’s, or direct-selling organizations, such as Avon, are legitimate. However, scammers will masquerade as franchise, direct-selling and other types of business models in order to dupe the desperate and take their money. People desperate for work are frequent targets.
J
ohn Breyault, director of NCL’s fraud center, cites the example of a snack vending machine company that asked job applicants to invest in gumball machines, holding out the prospect of short work hours and a large payout.
Gullible job-seekers who signed on to invest in the gum venture lost their money. “You basically purchased these vending machines, put them in places you were told to put them and they never made any money,” Breyault said.
Mystery shopping jobs are another popular deception. They account for about 35 percent of all scams involving phony checks, the No. 1 scam on the NCL’s list of top 10 consumer frauds, Breyault says. He estimates that fake check scams make up about 45 percent of all scams on the Internet.
Breyault says these scams often involve a bogus employer who hires an individual to secretly shop at different stores or restaurants and rate them. The scammer overpays the secret shopper with a fraudulent check, then asks the shopper to wire back the extra money. The result: The victim quickly wires real money to the scammer, but is left on the hook with the bank when the scammer’s fraudulent check bounces.
To help avoid being scammed, Haaren and Breyault offer some advice to job-seekers:
Ignore incoming e-mail with “work at home” in the subject line. Typically, genuine job ads will have the type of job posted in the subject header or beginning of the ad. “When you see ‘Work at Home’ in the header, that’s usually a pretty good indication you’re looking at a scam,” Haaren said.
Steer clear of job descriptions that specify “No experience necessary” or “No resumé required.” True job leads usually require some experience; even entry-level positions will usually require some level of skills, training or education. Employers will ask for an application or a resumé to prove that a potential employee has the skills or education necessary to do the job, Haaren says.
Never pay for job information. Scammers often ask for a fee to provide information, kits or some sort of preparation that ostensibly will lead to a job. “Legitimate employers don’t ask you to pay fees to provide you more information about a job,” Haaren said.
Real jobs require real work. Don’t be fooled by terms like “guaranteed income” or “little or no work.”
“Those are red-flag words that would turn me off from an opportunity,” Breyault said. “Any business franchise or distributorship you’re involved in to make money is going to take hard work. There’s no way around that. Someone who promises you easy money with little or no work is just trying to separate you from your money and scam you.”
Get job offers and employment promises in writing. If you find a business opportunity that interests you, make sure you get any promises in writing. Keep records of those, Breyault says.
Do your homework. Before pursuing a job lead, do a Google search for the name of the company. What you find in an Internet search of a company – or more important, what you do not find – can be a big help in detecting fraud, Breyault and Haaren say.
“I think Google is a great anti-fraud tool,” Breyault said. “If you can’t find any information about the company with a Google search, that’s a red flag to me.”
Haaren says the Internet is a great tool if it’s used correctly, but is also a haven for scammers. “For all the good that it has brought us, the Internet has been a watershed event for the scammers,” Haaren said. “The Internet has been a blessing for the scammers and a curse for the public in many ways.”
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