Video: Fraud alert!  Job hunters ripped off

It seems as the unemployment numbers rise, so do the number of scam artists trying to rip you off.  Now there’s a new fraud warning for people looking for a new job.

Federal officials say the number of work-at-home schemes is escalating and the targets are people who are desperate for work.

These scams usually cost the victims an average of $3,000.  Most originate in Canada and overseas which makes the perpetrators difficult to track down. 

Investigators say the best way to fight these scammers is to educate people on how they work.       

Karen VanHorn came too close for comfort to a work-at-home scam. “It’s very clear they knew I was hunting for a job.”
VanHorn had been unemployed for two months.  She says her severance pay was gone and she was getting desperate when she responded to an employment ad online. ”It looked legitimate in every way to somebody who is desperate to find a job.”

She says she had seen other suspicious job offers before, but this one looked legit because the company asked for her resume and a lengthy application.  “They said Allsoft is hiring and looking for administrative abilities and accounts payable and accounting and computer.  They asked for my resume and I thought - it’s a job!  And I e-mailed it to them and they e-mailed back and said this is great, please fill out this employment application.”

Luckily VanHorn got suspicious before accepting that offer.  “I thought scams don’t ask for a resume, they don’t care about your work history.  They just try to get your money.  It didn’t raise any red flags until I got the thing back and it said open an account. They were going to wire transfer money to your account then you’re going to send the cash by Western Union to us in the Netherlands.  I knew right then that I’d been had.  It just killed me.”

David Smitherman with the Birmingham Better Business Bureau says they’ve seen a big increase in the number of these types of work at home schemes in the past several months.  “The current economy is such that there are so many people unemployed and so many families are in desperate circumstances that their grasping at anything that comes their way.”

Last year there were more than 275,000 complaints of online crime.  In fact, reports of cyber crimes hit a record in 2008, increasing 33% from the previous year. 

Bill Burch, the Director of Corporate Security at Regions Financial in Birmingham said, “These people see a target, a vunerable target..” 

Burch says you can avoid becoming a victim by looking for the tell-tale signs of fraud.  “You get a check for substantially more than you are owed or are going to be paid, that’s a red flag.“

Regions Bank is aggressive in its efforts to prevent customers from getting scammed.  They even offer cash rewards to branch employees for spotting fraudulent checks before they ever make it into the system.

Burch said they catch most of them, he has a stack of bogus checks his staff members have intercepted.  And that’s just in the past few weeks. 

Ufortunately, a small percentage still make it past all the checkpoints.  The total dollar loss linked to all online fraud last year was 265 million dollars.

VanHorn is sad for people who get duped, and frustrated at the thieves who prey on people who are already having a tough time.  “They just want to victimize and they’re going to get old people that have had to go back to work because their retirement account’s been wiped out.  I wish something could be done to stop it.”

Bill Burch agrees.  “It’s a pretty brutal, pretty vicious attack on a vulnerable group of people.”

Officials tell us many of these scammers actually find their victims by trolling legitimate websites where people who are looking for work have posted their resumes.

Karen VanHorn is relieved that she caught on before it was too late.  “They almost got me, and they might get somebody else, because if they got me from one of those job sites how many other people are on those job sites?“

Very often the targets believe a real company is answering their applications.  That’s how many people who normally wouldn’t be fooled by an unsolicited e-mail get taken in. 

The FBI has a list of common fraud schemes online.