EMPLOYMENT SCAMS

Employment scams are a form of criminal activity by individuals or organizations posing as recruiters that offer attractive positions to job seekers.

Employment scams, also known as job scams, are a form of criminal activity perpetrated by unscrupulous individuals or organizations posing as recruiters with personnel needs and/or hiring agencies that offer, and promise, attractive jobs and big money to people seeking for employment opportunities or interested in working in a concrete sector.

In this case, the cruise industry, the merchant marine and the oil companies engaged in offshore exploratory and production activities aboard rigs and support vessels; although the content of this section is perfectly applicable to any other employment sector.

In fact, there have always been many scams and fraud schemes around getting hired: fake job offers in order to acquire personal information, “inside” or exclusive” information about where the job opportunities are, or how to get hired in a particular employment sector, supposed services with upfront payment to find a job, and other come-ons worthy of study and analysis.

People who are looking for work may be targeted by so-called “agencies”, ready to take advantage of their delicate situation. Individuals with a complete lack of honesty and integrity, seeking to track down these same people and preying on them when they are at their most vulnerable to take their money or sensitive information with some creative, deceptive and appealing employment scam.

At Wind Rose Network, we take these matters very seriously, and consider as necessary to share our knowledge on employment scams to prevent fraudulent, deceptive and unfair practices in the marketplace; and to provide information to help job seekers spot and avoid them.

TYPICAL EMPLOYMENT SCAMS

Before getting carried away with promises of appealing employment opportunities with maritime companies, make sure that you have thoroughly considered all of the aspects of such job offers, and especially its source. Although there are a good number of legitimate opportunities to find a job meeting your criteria on the Internet, there are also many bogus and completely illegal services operated by cunning fraudsters seeking for the best way to exploit people’s desperation for employment and economic improvement.

RESUME BLASTING

This is one of the simplest forms of employment scamming, and focuses on a placement service by which your job application would be forwarded to "thousands" of companies and recruiting agencies, within a fixed time period and in return for a fee, including expressions such as "instant job", "satisfaction 100 % guaranteed", "no risk at all", etc.

A thorough study of such a proposal will show a series of suspicious aspects and inconsistencies that should raise your awareness level.

Sometimes, they provide a link to the referred list of companies. The curious thing is that, when you click it, a simple number pops up demanding an act of faith; or a real list, which amounts nowhere near the promised number.

In case you carry your investigation even further, and enter some of the websites the job applications are supposedly sent to, you will find no e-mail contact to send anything. We invite you heartily to check that many websites include a form that must be completely filled in to have the job application properly submitted. In many cases, they warn that any job application submitted by a different resource will not be considered, which is their way to avoid spam. And, if things are like that, how can these employment agencies forward your applications to them? Perhaps by filling hundreds of forms for each customer who hires their services?

If you use your calculator carefully, you will realize that it cannot be profitable.

Recruiters offer a certain number of jobs on which no employment agency has any influence. Their work (if it really exists) finishes when they send the job applications.

No employment service can guarantee a job.

The reality is quite simple, with two possibilities after the payment is completed:

In the most of cases, nothing is sent.
In other occasions, the scammer spams thousands of companies, industry websites and online sites specialized in job offers and recruitment with the naïve job seeker’s details just to receive correspondence that usually includes valuable information, which enables the fraudster to scam other victims in a never-ending pyramid-like scheme.

BOGUS JOB OFFERS

A more sophisticated job scam with three interesting variations (so far) designed to obtain:

Money or Financial Information: Advertisements offering well-paid jobs and interesting working conditions with real companies, with the fraudsters purporting to be recruiting agents or human resources representatives. If you reply to such advertisements, a bogus telephone interview may take place and, after some time, discussion and exchange of information, you are informed that you have been selected to fill the position. Nevertheless, and to secure the job, you are required to pay an upfront fee to cover the cost of work visa, travel to the workplace, paperwork and processing of the application, etc.

Financial Information: Advertisements are posted on Internet job boards or newspapers to attrack the attention of anybody interested in a job meeting the described criteria. This way, the scammer takes advantage of those who finally decide to contact them, by asking for credit card and bank account details or visa on the pretext of a supposed personnel selection process, or to deliver paychecks by direct bank deposit or money transfer.

Personal Information: More experienced scammers, knowing that asking for money or collecting financial information to steal money from bank accounts always attract more attention from the police and other authorities dedicated to investigate and prevent these activities, profit from people seeking for employment opportunities by harvesting personal information during supposed application processes. Job seekers naïvely fill out and submit forms with their full names, photos, physical and e-mail addresses, identity card and social security numbers, driving licences numbers, passport details etc., which are easy to sold to other fraudsters and criminals interested in committing bolder scams or identity theft.

In all these cases, these scam artists often make use of sophisticated resources for scamming their victims, including fabricated websites mirroring the real Internet sites of companies or recruiting agencies, or websites representing fake companies and organizations supposedly registered in their country.

PHONEY EMPLOYMENT AGENCY

Sometimes, scammers carry out a more active campaign by scanning personal web pages and resumes on employment sites in Internet.

They send out e-mail messages to prospective candidates to pose as companies and hiring agencies, presenting themselves with official-looking websites and documentation, and making use of all sorts of phoney resources and carefully rehearsed pitches on the phone or in person – likely in a rented office, hotel room or similar environment – to gain the job applicant's confidence.

After a series of promises and affirmations supposedly made on behalf of legitimate companies, the victim is pressured to sign a contract and asked to provide personal information and an upfront fee.

Once the job applicatant has made the payment, the “agency” either declines the employment offer due to supposed bad references from a previous employer, or adducing any other more or less elaborate lie or invention. Or just ceases operating and disappears.

“900" NUMBER OPERATORS

Advertisements instructing job seekers to call a “900” number for more information on requirements to participate in a hiring process to fill different (and non-specified) vacancies on cruise ships or oil rigs.

“900” numbers usually charge a high per-call or per-minute rate. As a result, many national regulations require that operators of “900” numbers provide information on their cost up front.

Nevertheless, artful fraudsters find their way to avoid it, failing to disclosure the cost of the call, or even creating delays to increase the final fee. Generally, victims daring to ask for such information are immediately subject to a torrent of verbal diarrhoea and well-rehearsed pseudo-commercial spiel about the many advantages of working aboard a cruise ship or an oil rig intended to confuse them and make them lose the time sense.

If the victim does not become aware of what is happening, and after an indeterminate period of time (never inferior to 20 – 30 minutes), the operator instructs her/him to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to have her/his job application mailed out. Once completed, the procedure results in the customer receiving a generic job application.

Nothing that you cannot find on the Internet for free.

Sometime later, a phone bill arrives for $30-$40.

SCAM COURSES

Opportunistic training agencies with experience in the sector and no principles or ethics, or just a scammer trying to take advantage of those willing to pay for specialized training services leading to a promising career with a cruise or offshore oil company.

Job hunters may be required to pay from several hundreds to several thousands dollars to receive an online or mail training course, which supposedly open the gates to an employment paradise aboard cruise ships or oil rigs.

You receive the typical package containing a folder with several hundred pages in it, and perhaps some CD, describing the ins and outs of working aboard a cruise ship or oil rig, including e-mail and telephone support service throughout the course to reply to your questions and doubts.

If you are a dedicated student, you will be able to take a test in a few weeks, obtaining a diploma that certifies your participation to the course and a level of knowledge that meets the professional standards in the industry.

Then, you are encouraged to seek for a job.

The problem is that, in the most cases, maritime companies and recruiting agencies recognize neither such courses nor the resulting diploma.

Nothing more than smoke and illusion. Just a trick to fool people into paying a quantity of money and, worse, wasting a part of their lives in the study of a course that is worth no more than the cost of the paper on which it is printed.

JOB LISTING SERVICES

The idea is to lure potential victims into thinking that they are dealing with a legitimate hiring agency or a trusted human resources representative working for a maritime company.

The scammer contacts job seekers with the purpose of offering a listing of vacancies that includes fake references and photocopied of classified job ads taken from newspapers and boards from across the world.

Typically, such ads are weeks or months old, and the promised vacancies were filled long ago.

In other cases, ads may be from companies located in countries with strict employment quotas and regulations that discourage the hiring of foreigners or citizens not from certain areas or international organizations (USA and Canada, the European Union, etc.) .

There are also fraudulent agencies pretending to have special list of companies and verified recruiters just waiting for your application to offer you the job that best matches your background and preferences aboard a cruise or oil rig. Instead, they provide nothing more than a listing of companies with not a single position available to apply for, which are not accepting applications or resumes, and that of course have never heard of such agencies.

In fact, any job seeker can get a good number of addresses of maritime companies on the Internet. It is just a problem of spending some days of weeks in front of the computer screen.

Anybody who does proclaim her/himself as the owner of such an informative privilege is at least a spammer and, probably, a job scammer.

TIPS TO AVOID EMPLOYMENT SCAMS

You have to be on the alert about certain suspicious points and misleading information that must raise your mistrust about false claims and probable employment scams:

Offers for specialized job training in exchange for “guaranteed” employment.
Upfront fee for placement services that offer a dream job.
High-pressure sales techniques and a refuse to take “no” for an answer.
Companies or agencies that refuse to provide verifiable references.
A lack of interest in meeting the future employee.
In such cases it is advisable to seek for information on the prospective employers or recruiter through another source and contact them directly or visit their offices in regular business hours:
Companies or agencies asking for financial information.
Legitimate employers do not usually need credit card or bank account numbers, which is just an option of direct deposit of paycheck.
Wait until the personal interview at the company’s offices before agreeing to a direct deposit option, refusing to accept the job if this is the only option offered by the supposed employer.
Companies or agencies asking for non-work related personal information such as social insurance number, passport or any other detail before offered a job in writing and received a copy of the contract.
Carefully evaluation of contact information in job advertisements or related e-mails, spelling errors, free e-mail address that does not feature the company's name, and inconsistencies with physical addresses or area or zip codes. All of them are common indicators for spotting job scams.
Lack of clear information on the services offered or the terms and conditions of the contract.
Ask for information on every aspect of the service, including general terms and conditions, full cost, etc. If you receive no reply in several days, or the company or agency refuses to provide you with crystal clear information on anything related to those subjects, you can assume that it is a job scam.
Careful attention to websites address (http://www.theweb.com) in the case of sites specialized in employment opportunities or usual recruiters, avoiding using links in advertisements, forums or other Internet sites,which may lead to mirroring websites and phoney replicas designed for stealing personal information in a new form of deception called “Pharming”.
Companies or agencies that operate outside of the country or state where they advertise.
Usually, unscrupulous operators purposefully seek to distance themselves from their victims in order to avoid closer scrutiny and complicate an investigation by police authorities. They do not use a legitimate street addresses, but they rely on post office box addresses, or establish their headquarters, with little more than a nameplate on the door, in one state but operated from other distant location or even from abroad.
Agencies stating limited time reduced rates or special deadlines to apply for a position.
They will warn you to apply (and pay) before a date. In other case, the marvellous job opportunity will disappear, and you will be taken off the list of fortunate applicants.
After the famous deadline, the offer is the same.
With another deadline, of course.
Companies or agencies offering salaries too high for the promised job.
Many of them offer fantastic starting incomes, which cannot be farther from the reality. In this way, you can find agencies that claim $60.000 or even $100.000 per year for an entry-level job. Of course, this is not going to happen. It is just part of the trick.
In case, you are interested in such services, the best option is phoning or getting in contact with some company to inquire about this specific subject.
Income is usually higher in the maritime sector that in land-based companies, but only through long working days and because all of the expenses are paid for by the employer company.
Legitimate companies pay wages based on the skills and training needed. So, do not trust offers that imply earning a doctor or chief engineer salary. That is impossible, unless you are doctors or chief engineers.
Get caught up neither in dazzling offers, nor in the urgency and desperation of the moment to find a job. These circumstances reduce, or even deplete, your capability to measure the veracity of the claim when evaluating and deciding how to spend your money.
Of course, never depend on oral promises.
Listing or bank services that provide third parts with access to your resume.
In this case, privacy and confidentiality must be preserved and safeguarded, and the activity of such agencies must strictly compliant with privacy policy and data protection regulations, and internal security rules that guarantee the highest possible protection of stored data.
Supposed money-back guarantees.
Job seekers should not be duped by any promise of a refund if no job or lead materializes, which is an excellent incentive to bait those people not willing to pay money for a failed job search.
Fraudulent employment services will use an endless string of excuses for why you are not entitled to a refund. For instance, a request for copies of the rejection letters from the companies. The problem is that, in the most of the cases, you will not receive any of such letter from those companies, which are not obliged to reply.
In other cases, complaints and requests for refund will be dismissed on the grounds that the contract did not guarantee employment, complemented by a series of explanations about the natural competitiveness in a sector becoming more and more crowded with job seekers.
Other common subterfuge is to include a requirement that job seekers check in regularly with the agency. Those who unwittingly fail to make the required contact may forfeit their right for a refund.
Nevertheless, and in most cases, even refund policies with specific written details describing requirements and limits to be entitled to refund are useless, because the scammer rarely stays around long enough to receive the complaints of dissatisfied customers.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU ENCOUNTER AN EMPLOYMENT SCAM

If you believe you have encountered a fraudulent job scheme, or you are the victim of an employment scam, report it immediately to your local police authorities, and follow these steps to lessen the damage to you and others:

Close any affected e-mail accounts.
If you believe that you have given information to an unknown source mirroring as a real company or recruiting agency, contact the genuine organization to clarify the status of the submitted data.
Change the passwords on all of your online accounts, and open new bank accounts with strong passwords.
Record and save everything.
As you complete these steps to clear up the incident, always keep careful records of everything: printed copies of paperwork, written correspondence, receipts, e-mail messages (both sent and received), and records of telephone calls, if possible.

by José Manuel Rosón Bravo