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Internet scams using fake jobs as bait

By Imran Akbar

After the notorious Nigerian advance fee fraud that used the Internet to snare people from across the world, a new scam has emerged that rob people by offering them lucrative oil industry jobs.

The Nigerian scam, also known as ‘Scam 419’ used e-mails or postal letters that offered to move billions of US dollars in people’s accounts. People from almost every country, including Pakistan, were affected and some companies suffered huge losses. Many people who were involved in the scam were arrested but majority of them belonged to Nigeria and other African countries. Fake US currency, bank letters, stamps, company letterheads were recovered from the scammers. The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) issued a detailed report about the scam and disclosed that losses worth US $500 million were suffered by 419 people who were the major contributors to the fund. The report also showed that thousands of people who were involved in the scam were killed or kidnapped throughout the world.

The exposure of the scam, however, did not put an end to Internet scams and Internet surfers continue to fall prey to similar traps.

Scammers have now mounted a new scam that offers jobs in oil and other companies with very attractive salaries ranging from US $45,000 to 95,000. Scammers mostly target Asian countries, including Pakistan, due to the rampant unemployment in the countries.

There are various types of scams; some offer a guaranteed employment within a fixed time period if you deposit a ‘fee’. What all these companies have in common is that they take clients personnel information, including bank account and credit car numbers and then sell them to hundreds or thousands of employers, industry websites and online magazines. Some recruiting companies offer a money back guarantee as an incentive to use them but very few job seekers ever receive refunds.

Scammers also advertise a job on the behalf of a real company. A bogus telephone or email interview might also take place and after some time you are informed that you have been selected for the job and you only have to send a fixed amount of money for your work visa or travel costs but it turns out in the end that everything was a fake.

In order to avoid the scams, Internet surfers must never give their bank account, PayPal account, or credit card numbers or forward, transfer, or “wire” money to a would be employer.

Remember that a genuine employer or agency will not ask for money for visa processing or travel costs. Although one might be required to provide for airfare, but you it should also be done through a travel agent. Most of the scammers use e-mails or when you answer a job advertisement by e-mail. Fraudsters use free e-mail or web mail accounts such as hotmail and yahoo to send mails to their clients but a genuine employer and agencies never use free e-mail services. To check a genuine e-mail address or domain name, copy the text after the “@” sign from an e-mail address, add “www.” as a prefix and test the address in your browser. If genuine, it should show the web site of the company otherwise it would be dead end. Check for telephone and fax numbers and contact the company directly to ensure the person actually works for them. Always ask for phone, fax and office address details of the agency. You can easily check out through international directory enquiries or the local chamber of commerce websites.

Some past Internet scams were namely the Auction Fraud, Auction Fraud Romania, Counterfeit Cashier’s Check, Credit Card Fraud, Debt Elimination, DHL/UPS, Employment/Business Opportunities, Escrow Services Fraud, Identity Theft, Internet Extortion, Investment Fraud, Lotteries, Nigerian Letter or “419”, Phishing/Spoofing, Ponzi/Pyramid, Reshipping, Spam, Third Party Receiver of Funds. For latest information’s on internet sacms these websites can be consulted http://www.419legal.org, www.fraud.org, www.ifccfbi.gov, http://www.data-wales.co.uk/ni_fake_jobs.htm, www.data-wales.co.uk. The World Privacy Forum issued a detail report on online job scams, which can be accessed at http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/jobscamreportpt1.html

There is urgent need for an awareness campaign on part of the government to save people from such scams. There should be an official website of the government containing information, details and updates of information regarding online scams to safeguard people from Internet scams.

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