By Sheldon Greaves

During my working life, I’ve spent more than my share of time among the unemployed and underemployed. One thing one gets used to is a steady dribble of get-rich-quick schemes scamming job seekers. Other scams involve “jobs” stuffing envelopes or other menial tasks that end up paying well below minimum wage. Some of these jobs even turn out to be just one facet of larger money-laundering operations. While most of these low-ball employment “opportunities” are legal, their ultimate goal is to steal your labor, or obtain it for next to nothing.

But a new (well, new-ish) development offers desperate job seekers an actual, real job and instead uses a phony “on-boarding” process to steal the victim’s financial information and drain their bank accounts. It is my considered opinion that there is a special place in Hell for such people.

So it was with some interest that I read this item by Lee Goldberg on ars technica, sent to me by a friend (““WHAT HAPPENED????” How a remote tech writing gig proved to be an old-school scam“). The author relates how, in the wake of a layoff and extended period of unemployment, he was contacted by someone from ZipRecruiter with a job offer that actually looked pretty good. After an interview–conducted by chat session without any video or audio–and a few other preliminaries, they offered him a job working remotely for $45-50 per hour. Not a bad gig, or so it seemed.

Things Go Sideways

But something was off; the communiques contained odd grammatical errors. The decision at the last minute to forego video or audio for the interview, and other subtle hints suggested something fishy. As an aside, the grammatical giveaways found in so many scams is one reason I’m grateful that English is such a devilishly difficult language to learn.

Having been in the author’s desperate straits, it’s easy to see how one might overlook these and other warnings. As Frank Herbert wrote, “Hope clouds observation.” However, when the “employer” sent Goldberg a check, ostensibly to pay for equipment to be used in his new job, it was on a check belonging to a Catholic High School instead of the biotech company that was presumably offering the job.

The story ends well; Mr. Goldberg not only evaded the trap, but managed to play the scammer along, and accumulated some useful evidence. The FBI is now looking into this, apparently. I strongly recommend you read the whole article. It’s a great example of how these kinds of scams work, and offers some nice ways to fight back.

Speaking of fighting back, this particular species of scam aimed at desperate job seekers is growing more common. It is an interesting counterpoint to the claim of exceedingly low unemployment, but that’s another matter. In the anti-fraud world, this is known as a Remote Deposit Capture (RDC) fraud.

For more information on these and similar kinds of scams, take a look at the following resources:
List of Fake Job Scam Examples. Classic Scams You Should Learn to Avoid
Fraudulent Checks Meet Remote Deposit Capture, (PDF by Guardian Analytics, 2016)
Job Scams, Federal Trade Commission.

Finally, there is the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, where you can report suspected criminal activity.