BBB Warns Job Seekers about Phony Job Offer

sue@cleveland.bbb.org


For Immediate Release – August 26, 2008 - When a Middleburg Heights woman found this “Help Wanted” ad in a local newspaper, she quickly sent her resume and hoped her long job search would be over. She had responded to more than 170 ads since June with no luck.  Her hopes were dashed, however, when she received the company’s response and realized the ad was nothing more than bait for a “payment transfer” job scam.

The “employer” claimed to be a United Kingdom company, YTC, which sold floor and wall tiles worldwide. They were looking for someone to process payments from buyers located in the United States who paid with money orders, traveler’s checks and casher’s checks. YTC claimed these payments took 21 to 28 “working” days to process if deposited in the United Kingdom.

To avoid this delay, YTC would send the “bookkeeper” several UPS or FedEx packages each month. Each package would contain the payments made by U.S. customers. The “employee” would deposit the payments into his or her own account, deduct 10% as commission, and wire the balance to YTC. 

In this type of job scam, the unsuspecting hire later discovers that the money orders, traveler’s checks and cashier’s checks were all clever counterfeits.  Job seekers duped by these scams are unable to recover the funds that were wired to the “employer” and must reimburse the bank for the counterfeit deposits. 

It appears the people behind the phony job scam are using the name of an actual UK company called Yorkshire Tile Company.  Yorkshire Tile Company has a web site at www.ytc-tiles.com.   The job scammers used www.ytc-tile.com and also used information from the real company’s “About Us” page in the email sent to applicants. The BBB contacted Yorkshire Tile Company and confirmed it had nothing to do with the bookkeeper ad.

Fraudulent job offers can appear to be very legitimate. How do you tell the difference? Your BBB offers these tips:

• Do not pay an upfront fee for the promise of employment. The BBB investigated a recent job scam that required applicants to fly to Miami to be interviewed. Job seekers were required to wire the airfare in advance, with promise of reimbursement. They later discovered that airline tickets were never purchased and the wired funds were never recovered.

• Do not provide personal information such as your Social Security or bank account numbers or copy of your driver’s license to any unfamiliar company.

• Be leery of e-mails from fraudulent employers that contain misspellings and poor grammar.  Another sign - the e-mail address of the sender is from a free e-mail service, such as yahoo, gmail or hotmail.

• Go to bbb.org to get a BBB Reliability Report® on the employer.

• Search the company name and telephone number in Google or other search engine. You may find warnings posted by others who were scammed.

• Never accept jobs that require you to reship merchandise overseas on behalf of your employer.  The merchandise, in this scam, is typically stolen property.

• Do not agree to accept checks to be deposited into your account with instructions to keep a portion and wire the balance to another party, typically overseas.  You will later discover the checks were counterfeit and your employer cannot be found.