My husband applied for a Forklift Operator job on craigslist (ugh). He received a reply from the company offering him the job. He hasn’t even interviewed/met with these people. Everything SOUNDED good (40 hr. workweek, raise after 30 days). They even have a start date for him which is January 14th. I was suspect about the job offer since they haven’t even interviewed him. Then the email gets even weirder.
The second paragraph of the email says that the requirement for this job is to have an iPhone 5. They will give him one for free :dubious:, and they provide a link to acquire said phone. He must bring it on his first day of work. I told him not to click on the link because, frankly, I don’t trust links on craigslist.
Several things ping my scam radar. First, who hires someone sight unseen? Second, why would a company provide a very expensive phone “FREE OF CHARGE” to a potential employee before they actually start the job?
If he clicks on the link, he will likely get sent to a site where he can enter some info to receive his “free iphone” which will never actually arrive. At that point, the scammers will use that info to steal his identity, empty his bank account or just barrage him with spam.
Yes of course it’s a scam. If you want to satisfy yourself that it’s a scam, take the first 10 words or so from the initial job posting, put them in quotes, and search them on Google.
Alternatively, research the company which will supposedly be employing your husband. Either it’s a shell company which doesn’t really exist or it’s a real company which has no idea that your husband thinks he’s going to work there.
One thing he could do is say that he already has an iPhone 5 (I don’t know, maybe his wife got him one for Christmas <3) and will be reporting for duty as scheduled. If this is a scam to get him to click the link, the dialogue will go dead or else they will come up with some other reason that he has to click this link or that link.
Is the job local? Can you or him just mosey on over there and ask a manger on site?
One general rule of thumb when you are wary of a website is to do a “whois” on the domain name to see when and where it was registered. If it was registered in the last couple months, that increases the odds of it being phony considerably. If was registered in another country (esp. E. Europe), then beware as well.
They could have some sort of business process/BPM app that only runs on an iPhone or something. E.g. managers enter tasks onto a website and the website sends out an update to the workers’ iPhones to tell John to move the wood back into the warehouse and for Bill to put crates FFE33 and FFW21 on Loading Dock 3 by 3PM.
Thanks to everyone who commented. He’s just going to ignore the email. Should he report is as spam on craigslist?
The job does have (our city) in the description, but there is no indication of the company’s name. The lady who signed the email indicated that she would be calling my husband today to make sure he got the phone. AFAIK, she never called.
Yes, I would say a firm job offer with no interview from an unnamed company = scam.
By the way, another way to confirm that it’s a scam is to set up a throwaway e-mail address and send in an application from someone who obviously is totally unqualified. Chances are they will still be offered the job. Contingent upon clicking the iphone link of course.
Wow. So a company that won’t give its name hired your husband without any kind of an interview or (and this seems to be fairly common for forklift operators) a drug test or background check?
By any chance, did the email reply come from a Gmail address?
That’s certainly possible, an iPhone has become a requirement for some jobs, usually provided by the company. But they still wouldn’t be giving people they haven’t employed yet a link to obtain a free iPhone.
ETA: Which you probably knew. I see you were only responding to that specific question of why a forklift operator would need an iPhone.
Thanks for sending the link. Baracus had it in one - it’s a series of scammy surveys, each of which pays them a small commission per submission. They use a sequence of random redirects and cloaking tricks to disguise the source, all common tricks by black hat scammers. They made an error at one point, but allowing for that it eventually reaches a premium SMS subscription service that bills $10 a week to your mobile account.
I didn’t track past that, but it probably continues through an endless sequence of scams, each one earning them a few cents or dollars more. The job offer is just bait to motivate you to go as far as possible.