Beware of job offers that aren't what they appear to be.

 

No matter how miserable things get in the unemployment picture, you can always be sure someone out there will try to make it worse.

Lately, it’s a lot of someones—namely, criminals who are circulating a record number of scam employment offers, in the hopes that frustrated job seekers will be desperate enough to bite.

And the worst part is, they do. So often, in fact, that the Federal Trade Commission recently announced a crackdown:

[The action targets] con artists who are preying on unemployed Americans with job-placement and work-at-home scams, promoting empty promises that they can help people get jobs in the federal government, as movie extras, or as mystery shoppers; or make money working from their homes stuffing envelopes or assembling ornaments…The FTC announced seven new cases against promoters of the job and money-making scams, including one that victimized more than 100,000 people. This brings to 11 the number of cases the agency has brought since last spring challenging these types of operations. In each case, the FTC got a court order temporarily barring these operators from continuing their deceptive, illegal tactics and freezing their assets.

The companies indicted by “Operation Bottom Dollar” run the gamut of scams. Government Careers Inc. ran ads on job-seeker web sites that claimed they could connect respondents to postal service, border patrol and wildlife jobs for a fee of $119 for “study materials,” The government charges that there were in fact no tests for which to study, or that the vacancies did not exist at all. The same company charged $965 for resume editing and employment exam prep, promising not to collect fees until a job was secured, then demanding the money before the promised jobs materialized. One company promised, “Collect up to $9,250 with my simple 3 minute form.” Another sold lists of “pre-screened jobs.” Still another promised up to $500 a week assembling angel pins at home. The catch on the last job was that participants, after paying sometimes hundreds of dollars in start-up fees, needed to have their pins approved by the company -- which, of course, rejected almost all of them.

However the scams change, the most important rule for avoiding them remains the same: if it seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Rick Ellis from AIS Media explains how the most common frauds work and offers some tips for staying ahead of 21st century con artists:

One typical guise is an international company that needs to hire U.S. citizens as agents to perform certain services. The scam is simple: the lure of a home-based job that requires very little work and pays big dividends draws victims, who end up losing money and, in many cases, becoming victims of identity theft (and sometimes even unwilling accomplices to crime). The too-good-to-be-true positions include payroll clerks, customer-service representatives, shipping managers, mystery shoppers, and craft assemblers--all promising hefty salaries, benefits, and huge commissions. The company obtains personal and banking information from the new hire, and checks are sent with instructions to wire a portion of the funds to a third party to cover expenses. In some cases, packages immediately arrive with instructions on re-shipping merchandise to international destinations. Once the checks are deposited and the packages are shipped, the dream job quickly becomes a nightmare. The checks the victims deposited are fake. The duped "employees" lose the money they wired and are often susceptible to theft and identity theft. And in many cases, they have also unknowingly re-packaged and shipped stolen merchandise, often purchased with stolen credit card information.

 

Red flags should include emails from unknown senders; companies that have no legitimate, searchable web presence; requests for personal information; and applications that require a cash payment.

One particularly twisted take on the job-scam game has arisen in the wake of massive layoffs: a cell-phone scam preying on recipients of unemployment checks. In this one, victims are told their benefits have been deactivated, and that they need to call a number to have them reactivated. When they call the number, they are asked for access information to their accounts, which are then cleaned out.

Some people may not understand why anyone falls for scams like these, but this is a key point:

'Even when they know it's a scam, I've had people say, "Well yeah, but what if I can make a thousand dollars out of it?"' said Tabatha Marshall, founder of PhishBucket.org and a crusader against these schemes. 'People are hurting, and so many are willing to take the risk.'