Getting Scammed from a job site?

[Fried_Dough_Ho]

I have been looking for gainful employment for a little while and in my routine of submitting applications online, I received a very suspicious email today:

Dear Applicant:

Congratulations, this is a tentative offer of employment for the available position with [Large Technology Firm].

As you know, this position pays a generous hourly wage, with benefits, and also provides potential to earn additional bonuses and incentives throughout the year. You are also provided with a full lunch every day, which is made by a local catering company. We are hiring rapidly at this time, and are fully prepared to make you an employment offer, provided that you comply with the rest of the recruitment terms.

This is a full-time position. You will be providing administrative support including, but not limited to, answering phones, completing reports, tracking shipments, and some minor inventory management. Some experience working as an administrative assistant is preferred, but not required. Full paid training will be provided.

To accept these terms and move on to the final stage of the recruitment process, you must provide us with a current copy of your credit report to go in your employment file. [Large Technology Firm] has a zero-tolerance policy in regards to theft of company property. Your credit scores or payment history are not important to us; rather it is a means of verifying your identity, and will also serve as your acceptance of the position. Once you fill out the report, an email is automatically generated that notifies us of your acceptance of the position, that in turn will email you new hire paperwork and give you times for your orientation. Be sure to bring 2 forms of identification with you to the orientation.

Your free report can be obtained here: http://www.cscoredirect.com/?id=Xs8c

This tentative offer will expire in 72 hours from the time sent. If you choose not to accept it, or have any questions, please email me directly.

We appreciate your interest in joining the team at [Large Technology Firm] and hope you decide to come aboard!

Sincerely,

Thomas Williams
Human Resources Executive
thomas.williams@[Large Technology Firm]-usa.com
This message contains information from [Large Technology Firm] that may be confidential and privileged. If you are not an intended recipient, please refrain from any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of this information and note that such actions are prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender immediately.

So here is what is suspicious:

1. That I am being sent to a site to get my credit score (i.e., to provide them with personal information).

2. I have not physically interviewed with anybody. This email is a job offer without meeting me?

3. The company’s name really is a Large Technology Firm, however THEIR actual website is http://www.[Large Technology Firm].com/us/ – NOT with a hyphen-usa.

I tried to go to the legitimate firm’s website to confirm this but they do not seem to have anyway to contact anybody. Who could I report this to?

[Chessic_Sense]

Quite clearly a scam. I don’t know if their angle is to sell you credit reports or to phish your info, but either way, it’s a trap.

[Larry_Mudd]

Doesn’t pass the sniff test at all, but in case you need something offered in the way of proof, a phrase from the ad, “This is a full-time position. You will be providing administrative support including, but not limited to, answering phones, completing reports, tracking shipments, and some minor inventory management” appears in several ads which have the common feature of being connected with obviously faked-up return addresses for totally unrelated companies. @reebok-usa.com, @office-depot-usa.com, @miller-brewing-usa.com. etc.

People complain that they have signed up for a “seven day free trial”, been unable to cancel, and (shock!) had money taken from their accounts.

[Iggins]

I just saw a posting on Facebook from Stone Brewing that said people were getting fake employment letters asking for personal information, and of course, it was a scam. So it’s happening to a few companies.

[Canadjun]

The link in the OP’s message sends you to FreeScore360.com (OK - I like to live dangerously :D), and looking at the terms and conditions on FreeScore360.com, it certainly doesn’t look free!

I’m guessing it is just a sneaky way for FreeScore360.com to lure you into their web site.

[Fried_Dough_Ho]

I concur ~ I’m just wondering if there is any agency regulating this sort of scam. I don’t think it falls under the Canned SPAM act and they are definitely going about it in a pretty nasty fashion of a job offer.

[davidm]

Obvious scam. Just the fact that they’re offering you a job without even interviewing you is a sign that something is not right.

I would forward this to the job website so that they can cancel this “employer’s” account.

[Fried_Dough_Ho]

@davidm

I would forward this to the job website so that they can cancel this “employer’s” account.

There’s the rub; I am applying to a dozen+ jobs a day – mostly to blind ads. There is no way to trace back where it originated.

[Rachellelogram]

@Fried_Dough_Ho

There’s the rub; I am applying to a dozen+ jobs a day – mostly to blind ads. There is no way to trace back where it originated.

You can still forward a copy of the email to monster or craigslist (or whatever site you’re using). If you’re using multiple job-aggregation sites, forward it on to all of them.

Just a quick google search for “monster report abuse” brought up this page: http://help.monster.com/besafe/email/. I am sure the other sites you’re using, if any, have similar procedures.

[FatBaldGuy]

I would also send a copy to the real Large Technology Firm to let them know someone is trashing their good name. They may have the resources to track it down.

[Savannah]

Wisdom from Craigslist:

@victoria.craigslist.ca

SCAM ALERT - affiliate scammers are posting bogus ads promising (nonexistent!) employment, paid research trials, or other compensation, but then notifying repliers that they’ll need to jump through a hoop first, directing them to:

    * background checking services
    *** credit checking or reporting sites**
    * sites where you are instructed to enter your resume or other personal information
    * sites where you are asked to sign up for a "free" trial offer
    * sites offering training or education
    * sites offering a "system" for making money
    * survey or focus group sites
    * sites designed to deliver malware or misuse your identifying information

all in hopes of earning affiliate marketing commissions or otherwise profiting at the expense of persons seeking employment.

Lots of variations on this scam, but each generally involves dangling (nonexistent!) compensation, and then directing you to a website where you are asked to sign up for something, use your credit card, or input personal information such as your email address.

[Fried_Dough_Ho]

@FatBaldGuy

I would also send a copy to the real Large Technology Firm to let them know someone is trashing their good name. They may have the resources to track it down.

The last sentence of the original post:
I tried to go to the legitimate firm’s website to confirm this but they do not seem to have anyway to contact anybody.

[bleibtreu]

@Canadjun

I’m guessing it is just a sneaky way for FreeScore360.com to lure you into their web site.

But, not being done by FreeScore360 themselves. They have an affiliate program. The query string “?id=Xs8c” in the link to that site is the affiliate ID which identifies the person who made that “job offer”. That affiliate gets paid something by FreeScore360 if you pay for your credit report.

It’s probably a violation of the terms of the affiliate agreement, so one place to report it is to FreeScore360.com. They’ll probably shut it down, if only because that gets them out of having to pay any commissions that are owed.

[Joey_P]

Reminds me of something I fell for years ago. I bought a domain name and tried to resell it on Ebay. One buyer contacted me, and offered to buy it, but wanted it appraised first. They even gave me a list of a few services I could use. I picked out one of the free ones and had it appraised. It came back at well over what I was selling it for and I submitted the report to the buyer. They wrote back that they would really rather I used one of the paid ones. Hmmm, okay, I ponied up the money ($50 I think), had it appraised there. These people came back even higher. So I submitted the report told them that both appraisals came back much higher then my selling price, but I’ll still sell it for same price. They thanked me, but told me they would really rather I used the OTHER paid service they mentioned, at that point I replied that they are more then welcome to have my domain name appraised, but they would have to do it on their dime. Never heard back. About a year later I realized what happened.

[enigmatic]

I’ve just been looking for pharma jobs, so we are talking pretty big companies.

I’m extremely careful with my primary email address, I’ve had a googlemail account for probably a couple of years now without anything landing in my spam filter, it took less than a fortnight for banking scam mails and tele-scam calls to start showing up after I submitted my details to their “recruiting partners”. Obviously this could be an astonishing coincidence, and it only takes one breach in security, but it didn’t really surprise me.

The worst was what seemed to be an email from someone stating that they had been a recruiter from the company I had just applied (directly) to, asking me if I wanted to talk about job options. I noticed that the address given was from a second company specialising in paid career counselling. For some reason I didn’t get a response when I asked for confirmation that she wanted to talk to me about vacancies at the pharma company :rolleyes:.

I got the definite impression that companies know that there is money to be made or saved by outsourcing recruitment in shady directions, and that applicants are sufficiently desperate at the moment to put up with it.

[bleibtreu]

@rachelellogram

You can still forward a copy of the email to monster or craigslist (or whatever site you’re using). If you’re using multiple job-aggregation sites, forward it on to all of them.

There’s no harm in that, but it’s pretty unlikely that they’d be able to track it down (even assuming that a specific site is really motivated to try).

All a person would have to do to pull something like this is to place a blind ad, making no mention of the hiring company’s name. Then reply to the people who responded with something like the OP got, now giving a legit company name. There’s nothing, then, to connect that email to any particular ad that the person responded to.

The only entity that could identify the party behind it is FreeScore360, since they’re the only ones who know which participant in their affiliate program is identified by the ID “Xs8c” in the query string.

Scams like this are commonplace in affiliate programs. In fact, whenever I am about to open a url that includes an obvious affiliate link, unless I know exactly what it is, I don’t click on the link. I cut-and-paste and remove the affiliate ID. Almost without fail, you end up at exactly the same landing page with no loss of ability to do whatever it is you want to do, but without identifying to the site operator who it was that referred you there.

[Menrera]

This is a tentative offer of employment for the available warehouse position with Boulevard Brewing Company.

As you know, this position pays a generous hourly wage, plus benefits, and also provides potential to earn both pay increases and growth opportunities into supervisory and management positions. We are hiring rapidly at this time, and are fully prepared to make you an employment offer, provided that you comply with the rest of the recruitment terms.

This is a full-time position. Depending on your experience and physical ability, you will be working either inside the warehouse in packing and shipping, outside on the truck-loading team, or operating a forklift. These jobs vary in pay

To accept these terms and move on to the final stage of the recruitment process, you must provide us with a current copy of your credit report to go in your employment file. Boulevard Brewing Company has a zero-tolerance policy in regards to theft of company property. Your credit scores and payment history are not important to us; rather it is a means of verifying your identity, and will also serve as your acceptance of the position. Once you fill out the report, an email is automatically generated that notifies us of your acceptance. Upon receiving notification that you have completed your report, we immediately mail your new hire paperwork along with times for your orientation and uniform fitting. Be sure to bring 2 forms of identification with you to the orientation.

Your report can be obtained here: http://www.boulevard-brewing.com/?R5W=qURC

This tentative offer of employment will expire in three (3) full business days past the date sent. If you have any questions, please contact me directly.

We appreciate your interest in joining the team at Boulevard Brewing Company, and hope you decide to come aboard!
Donald Thompson
donald9@boulevard-brewing.com
Division Manager, Human Resources
Boulevard Brewing Company
This message contains information from Boulevard Brewing Company that may be confidential and privileged. If you are not an intended recipient, please refrain from any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of this information and note that such actions are prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender immediately.

I also got a similar email a month ago, I just hope people will not fall for this kind of trick.