Although this type of scam had its peak during the worst moment of the last crisis, this system of deception, unfortunately, is still used today.
There are unscrupulous people who take advantage of the desperation of those who seek employment to profit from small scams. They offer job interviews or tempting false jobs to which, to gain access, they force us to disburse some amount of money in one way or another.
What the scam is all about
There are a variety of ways in which scammers can deceive their victims in this type of scams, especially through social networks, Whatsapp and other means of rapid communication.
We may receive false job offers by email, messaging, fraudulent ads, emerging web pages, etc. The objectives of the scammers can be several:
- Get our sensitive personal information, such as bank details, ID, passwords, etc. in order to supplant our identity or sell it to the highest bidder. This is the case of the message that we show below, that arrived by WhatsApp massively announcing a job in Mercadona with a salary of 1,250 euros per month and that was disseminated by the Police.
Providing our data to an offender, including a photocopy of our ID, would allow them, for example, to ask for a loan in some financial entities in our name and spend the money on what they deemed best.
- Get money directly. A lot of scams of this type require that we disburse a certain amount of initial money for materials or training that never comes. Also as a deposit that we must pay as a sample of interest that will supposedly be returned on the day of the false interview. After paying the money by some non-traceable means, we will not be able to continue contacting them.
- Intermediaries in banking transactions. This may be the worst of the scams we can fall into. They suggest earning a commission or percentage just for receiving some money into our account and then transfering it to another. In this case we would be falling into an international money laundering network and over time, the police would accuse us of tax fraud, with the serious risk of even going to prison.
- Special pricing numbers. Often, in order to access the false job offer, we must make a call to a special telephone number. The cost of the call will be largely received by the fraudster himself, so he will try to have us call as many times as possible and make our calls last long. These numbers can start with 803, 806 or 807 and if the call is made from a mobile phone it will cost even more.
How to recognize if an offer is real or fraudulent
There are some clues that should make us, at least, suspect the veracity of the offer.
- It arrives unexpectedly by some electronic means
- The origin is not the company itself or any one dedicated to the job which we have registered for
- They request an advance for some reason
- They request bank details or credit card information
- They force us to call special rate numbers
- They use generic email accounts @gmail, @hotmail, @outlook, etc.
- The offer remains published for a long time
- They offer salaries above expectations
- The schedules are extremely flexible
In case of any suspicion, what we should do is to contact in some way the people in charge of the company that supposedly offer the job- through its website, by contact forms, email, phone call, Whatsapp, etc. We will always find a way to ask directly to confirm the veracity of the offer.
What to do if we have been swindled
Report it to the Police, in addition to our right, it is also an obligation. Only with the help of these complaints and the information they provide, can the police forces investigate and find the scammers. If we keep silent because of laziness or because we consider that the scam is of a very small amount, the criminals will go unpunished and it will never reach the ears of the Police or will it not be taken into account as a massive crime.
Some places where to report these scams in Spain are: