Woman issues terrifying warning after elaborate job scam led to personal details ending up on dark web
Topics: Business, Jobs, Money, Crime, Technology
Joe Yates
Featured Image Credit: CBS News
Topics: Business, Jobs, Money, Crime, Technology
A new elaborate job scam almost saw a woman scammed out of her life savings, after handing her personal details over to fraudsters.
If the pressure of finding employment isn't hard enough, job hunters must now navigate scams - which Chicago's Shelby Springer discovered after applying for a job at a well-established Californian school.
After coming across the job listing online, the grad school student applied for the position as a remote proofreader - with the specification being that she would work with international students.
Before applying however, Springer did her due diligence and checked to see whether the school was real - going as far as checking to see whether the records it held were the same as those against California state Board of Education.
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When all things checked out, she filled out the application and received notification that she was to attend a virtual interview.
The first issue that she discovered was that the correspondence was not grammatically correct, but she dismissed it.
She told CBS News: "He used grammatical mistakes and spelling, and I was like okay that's what I'm being hired for."
Yes, she was accepted for the phoney role and was then asked to fill out an onboarding document where she was asked to provide her full name and address, as well as her bank account and Social Security number.
It was only when the hiring manager told her that she had to buy a laptop with all the software she needed pre-installed on it from a dodgy unverified website, that she knew something was up.
Fortunately, Springer recognised that an employer asking their soon-to-be employee to buy their equipment before the company would reimburse them, was a scam.
"I was like okay great I'll make sure to take it to the police station because I know it's a scam," she told the publication.
She was then blocked by the scammer and subsequently canceled her bank account and contacted an identity theft monitoring service to see whether her details had been copied.
Springer told the outlet: "They already found my social on the dark web, within two days of signing up for the service."
The job listing was found by Springer on Indeed, and multiple people called the school to inquire about whether there was an opening - to which they explained there was not.
The job-hunting company explained in a statement to CBS News Chicago: "Indeed removes tens of millions of job listings each month that do not meet our quality guidelines.
"In addition, Indeed will not do business with an employer if their job listings do not pass our stringent quality guidelines. We encourage job seekers to report any suspicious job advertisements to us, or if they feel it necessary, to make a report to the police."