A re-occurring crime on UMBC’s campus is the “Online Job Scams”. Job seekers who use online job search web sites must be careful to avoid a type
of job scam in which the applicant is asked to accept payment to his or her
own bank account. These scams are known as “payment-forwarding” or
“payment-transfer” scams. These scams involve a con artist who pretends to
be an employer and uses a job advertisement to lure an unsuspecting job
seeker. Con artists are quite convincing, and may even use company names
and corporate logos to convince victims that they are legitimate employers.
There is NO chance of recovering funds or arresting these criminals.
Red flags:
1. Do not forward, transfer, or "wire" money to an employer.
2. Do not transfer money and retain a portion for payment.
3. A contact email address that is not a primary domain. For example, employers calling
itself “Omega Inc.” with a “Yahoo!” email address.
4. Misspellings and grammatical mistakes in the job ad.
5. Monster .com lists descriptive words in job postings that are tip-offs to fraud. Their
list includes "package-forwarding," "money transfers," "wiring funds," "eBay," and
"PayPal."
6. World Privacy Forum researchers also found that the terms "Foreign Agent
Agreement" often appears in contracts and emails sent to job seekers.
7. Interviewers who tell you you're a finalist even though you haven't had much of an
interview.
8. Companies that you can't find references to in search engines or on sites like the
Better Business Bureau. Conversely, companies that are established, but the
contact names, numbers and email addresses don't match up with what you've
received. This could indicate someone's just borrowing a legitimate company's
name.
