Bogus job offers. Cash-handling scam. Lottery scam

Bogus job offers

More sophisticated scams advertise jobs with real companies and offer lucrative salaries and conditions with the fraudsters pretending to be recruitment agents. A bogus telephone or online interview may take place and after some time the applicant is informed that the job is theirs. To secure the job they are instructed to send money for their work visa or travel costs to the agent, or to a bogus travel agent who works on the scammer's behalf. No matter what the variation, they always involve the job seeker sending them or their agent money, credit card or bank account details. A newer form of employment scam has arisen in which users are sent a bogus job offer, but are not asked to give financial information. Instead, their personal information is harvested during the application process and then sold to third parties for a profit, or used for identity theft.

Another form of employment scam involves making people receive a fake " interview" where they are told the benefits of the company. The attendees are then made to assist to a conference where a scammer will use elaborate manipulation techniques to convince the attendees to purchase products, in a similar manner to the catalog merchant business model, as a hiring requisite. Quite often, the company lacks any form of the physical catalog to help them sell products (e. g. jewelry). When " given" the job, the individual is then asked to promote the scam job offer on their own. They are also made to work the company unpaid as a form of " training". Similar scams involve making alleged job candidates pay money upfront in person for training materials or services, with the claim that upon successful completion, they will be offered a guaranteed job, which never materializes.

Cash-handling scam

These scammers do internet searches on various companies to obtain hiring managers' names. They then advertise job offers on Job Search sites. The job hunter will then apply for the position with a resume. The person applying for the position will get a message almost instantly from a common email account such as " Yahoo", asking for credentials. The scammer will sometimes request that the victim has an " Instant Messenger" chat to obtain more information. The scammer guarantees employment, usually through automated computer programs that have a certain algorithm, with " canned responses" in broken English.

At the " Instant Messenger" stage, it is usually too late and the process has already begun. If the victim questions the integrity of the process, the computer program may call them a " scammer" and can be quite vulgar. Quite often, the fraudulent negotiables are still sent to the address on the victim's resume, even after the fake online rant.

The scammer sends the victim fraudulent negotiables, assuring them that they get to keep part of the funds. They will expect the victim to send the remainder to various parties that they specify, under the guise that they are legitimate business contacts. This is a money laundering scheme, as the victim becomes a pawn in the filtering process. The process continues until the victim catches on, or even gets caught.

Another form of the scam is the " Representative/Collection Agent" variation wherein the scammer advertises, usually on legitimate online job sites, available positions for " Representative or Collection Agent" for a company abroad. As the representative, the job involves receiving cash payments and depositing payments received from " customers" into one's account and remitting the rest to the overseas business bank account. This is essentially money laundering.

Lottery scam

The lottery scam involves fake notices of lottery wins, although the intended victim has not entered the lottery. The " winner" is usually asked to send sensitive information such as name, residential address, occupation/position, lottery number etc. to a free email account which is at times untraceable or without any link. In addition to harvesting this information, the scammer then notifies the victim that releasing the funds requires some small fee (insurance, registration, or shipping). Once the victim sends the fee, the scammer invents another fee.

The fake check technique described above is also used. Fake or stolen checks, representing a part payment of the winnings, being sent; then a fee, smaller than the amount received, is requested. The bank receiving the bad check eventually reclaims the funds from the victim.

In 2004, a variant of the lottery scam appeared in the United States: a scammer phones a victim purporting to be speaking on behalf of the government about a grant they qualify for, subject to an advance fee of typically US$250.