What is an employment
or job scam (fraud)?
A job scam (419 in the Nigerian parlance) happens when a swindler
impersonates or fronts as a genuine employer with the promise of an inviting career
opportunity which often entails that the prospective job-seeker pays money in advance.
Please for the purpose of this essay, I shall be using employment and job, fraud
and scam interchangeably.
Job or employment scam,
a global problem:
According to Scambusters.org, ‘’poor
economy and new tricks drive up job scams by 500%’’ in the United States of America. Statistics from the City of London Police’s National Fraud
Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) - reckons that the most defrauded job-seekers were
between the ages of 18 and 25 and that on average, victims lose approximately
£4,000 to job scams. Cases abound of job seekers been robbed, kidnapped or
maimed because they failed to do a due diligence on prospective recruiting
companies.
Sources and variants of employment
scam:
There
are many sources, variants or formats of employment scam: it could be in the
form of an advert in a newspaper, website or social media platforms such as LinkedIn,
Facebook, Craiglist, OLX, job portals or even by referral from someone who
claims to be your acquaintance or old school mate. Sometimes they claim to be
recruiting for government establishments: Immigration Service, Customs, and security agencies amongst others. Masterminds of
employment scams keep reinventing their templates/formats for varied audiences
(‘magas’) as the victims are called in the 419 parlance. While the target
audience for typical ‘yahoo yahoo’ or internet dating/romance scams are unleashed
on vulnerable and perennially love-seeking Caucasian women, fraudulent
employment and multi-level marketing Ponzi schemes seem to be the executable format
for desperate, vulnerable unemployed Africans. Knowing that many Africans yearn
to travel overseas for greener pastures, fake visa (lottery) racket is also
thrown into the mix.
The unemployment time-bomb in Nigeria:
Aside from the Boko Haram miasma, the unparalleled insecurity stifling
and pervading the length and breadth of Nigeria, another time-bomb with
potential national security ramifications is unprecedented level of youth UNEMPLOYMENT.
There’s no point citing the extremely specious, redacted government unemployment
guesstimate, statistics in Nigeria. But to give us an idea, Nigeria’s National
Bureau of Statistics, NBS, says 504,596
Nigerians joined the labour market in the first quarter of 2015. Nigerian universities
and higher institutions churn out hundreds of thousands of graduates annually
and there are few new job openings, the supply is greater than the demand. The
few jobs out there, especially those in government establishments are exclusive
preserves of well-connected, sometimes quota candidates who may be less
qualified. Devoid of some cushioning effects (food stamps, unemployment, and
housing allowance/benefit) to the hapless, the situation in Nigeria can be likened
to that of a jungle where only the strongest and fittest survives. The
multiplier-effect of a scenario of abject poverty in the midst of plenty is increased
desperation by youths or the unemployed to catch up with the Joneses and a growing
employment scam industry which preys on the vulnerability of mostly naïve, distressed
unemployed folks.
The intersection of unemployment,
crime and security:
While one does not in any way exonerate or extenuate folks who perpetuate
employment fraud or crimes generally; there seem to be a relationship between
unemployment, frustration, despair and crime. We are all aware of the age-long,
trite sayings that: a hungry man is an angry man and that an idle mind is a
devil’s workshop. To further buttress how youth unemployment and crime
(kidnapping) are intertwined, a scenario suffices: while recounting his
horrible experience in the hands of kidnappers, a legal luminary - Chief Mike
Ozekhome was quoted as saying that his kidnappers, ‘’spoke Queen’s English,
discussed and analyzed politics knowledgeably’’. It follows that youth unemployment directly
or indirectly has a butterfly-effect on fraudulent employment schemes, incessant
armed robbery, kidnapping for ransom, crude oil bunkering and pipeline
vandalization, prostitution, and is feasibly one of the factors fueling
terrorism, insurgency and instability in Nigeria.
Real life experience of employment
fraud:
This
essay was prompted by a recent experience of a friend of mine who nearly fell
for a ‘Shell’ Petroleum Development Company (SPDC Nigeria) employment scam. One
thing led to the other and my friend was sent an ‘’acceptance form’’ for a job
in SPDC Nigeria. He showed me the so-called acceptance letter which I perused
with my trained eyes. Having gathered earlier that Shell was on the verge of
retrenching 6,500 staff and coupled with the aforementioned red flags, I doubted
the plausibility of the said job offer emanating from Shell and promptly told
him I was 95 percent sure it was a job scam and asked him to be on his guard. The
email address reads: NIGERIANSHELL.SHELL.COM (all uppercase letters) which I
know the genuine Shell will not make that mistake. The Shell logo looked very
much like copy and paste, the grammar was not convincing and fraught with exclamation
marks (!). They pegged his monthly salary in the neighborhood of N500, 000.00 (about $2,200), not bad for a
low skilled job. Dude did not take my warning seriously. Him and his wife were
already praying, fasting about the miracle job offer and writing long list of
things they needed to buy once he starts work with Shell. Somehow he had spent
nearly N10, 000 in the process: phone
calls, transportation, scanning and emailing dozens of documents requested of
him. He felt it was genuine since someone who claimed to know him referred him
to the opportunity and besides they didn’t demand for huge sum of money ab
initio and that the N10k he spent was
negligible considering the fantastic salary package. I told him scammers don’t
always put hefty monetary demands from the onset and asked him to string along but
must avoid ‘investing’ additional money for whatever guise. After sending back
the ‘’acceptance letter’’, they told him he needs to get a letter from the King
of Bonny Kingdom which they will help him fix. It was at this stage they
dropped the bomb shell; he needs to pay N150,
000 to enable them procure the recommendation letter from the King of Bonny!
That was when it dawned on him the whole thing was a scam.
Yours sincerely also had a similar experience with job scam in the
past. I got a LinkedIn invitation from someone claiming to be Nigeria’s erstwhile
Minister of Petroleum – Mrs. Diezani Alison Madueke. I checked out her profile
which ticked the right buttons – more than 500 contacts, schools attended,
qualifications with dates amongst other were meticulously enumerated and her
picture was there. I was curious but nonetheless I accepted the invitation. ‘She’
then sent me a message asking if I am interested or knows someone who is interested
in enlisting into the Immigration Service, that she’s got a slot there. I promptly
knew it was a scam and didn’t respond to her message.
Signs, tips to guard against been
victim of employment fraud:
Sequel
to the foregoing and to prevent folks from learning the hard way, I decided to
aggregate telltale signs or red flags to fish out phony, fraudulent employment offers
and scam messages:
1.
Many a times you can’t
remember and didn’t formally apply for the job but they contacted you saying they
found your CV online. Don’t ever give out your personal
information, bank details over the phone to a stranger and be careful who,
where or what employment agency you send your CV, personal information to. Note that scammers troll online recruitment platforms
looking for victims to prey on.
2.
The employment process happens pretty
fast; you get an instant offer/acceptance letter within hours, days. Phishing
scams and identity theft are for real. Research or Google a prospective company
to ascertain whether they are actually recruiting and they are who they claim
to be.
3.
The golden rule to detect a
job scam is that it often entails you paying a fee in advance in
the guise of say a ‘’processing fee’’, ‘’test fee’’, ‘’placement fee’’,
‘’background checks’’ etc. or for training. They also create some sense of
urgency by giving you a deadline to pay the money.
4.
A mouth-watering salary package especially
for an unskilled role may also be a red flag that a job offer may after all be
fraudulent.
5.
Be very cautious of job
adverts with vague job descriptions that claim little, no experience or
qualifications are needed.
6.
Take note of the grammar, punctuation, spelling
mistakes or typos on the message (email, SMS) sent to you. More often than not,
scam employment emails or messages are written in UPPER CASE letters, spiced
with lots of exclamation (!) marks and may sound emotional (unprofessional). Remember
some of the perpetrators of fraudulent employment schemes are probably
illiterates and unemployed themselves.
7.
The email addresses are probably free web mailers such as Yahoo
mail, Google mail, Hotmail amongst others. That is not to say that genuine
companies that don’t want undue pressure or interference cannot use free email
platforms to solicit for applications. Even if it looks like a genuine website,
bear in mind that websites and email address can be cloned. An example is the one
I cited above: NIGERIANSHELL@SHELL.COM
or say SHELL@GMAIL.COM, VACANCY@SHELLNG.COM.
A company cannot claim to be
Halliburton and ask you to send your CV to halliburton@yahoo.com. If it is truly Halliburton, then their email
address will match their website e.g. vacancy@hilliburton.com.
8.
Genuine recruiters will ask that you
email or forward your CV to them. Be on your guard if you are
asked to send your personal details (name, address, qualifications etc.) via
SMS.
9.
Have you ever
gotten a call from somebody you don’t know claiming to have served with you in
the same Platoon during your NYSC days? They go ahead telling you they now work
with Slumberger, NNPC, Shell etc. and promise to help you secure employment in
their place of work. This seems to be a new template for scammers. A lot of
people have fallen for this scam. The caller may have gotten your phone number
from the NYSC Corper’s magazine of the state you served.
10.
Fraudulent employment syndicates sometimes
pretend to be reputable international humanitarian NGOs. Note the difference
between this two: USAAID and USAID.
11.
Please beware of those get-rich-quick how-I-make-$5,000-a-day-working-from-home,
multi-level marketing hogwash or pyramid schemes which are fashioned after the
infamous ‘’Ponzi scheme’’ - pays returns from one’s money or from subsequent
investors than from ACTUAL profit. Staffcentrix, a firm that focuses in screening online job offers,
asserts that less than 2% of work-at-home career opportunities advertised on
the Internet are genuine. If the opportunity entails making or selling a product or service,
ascertain if there is truly a market for it and speak to people in the know
about it.
12.
You
may also find this list
of 28 listed fake/scam employment firms and Cruise ship job
scams useful.
Written By:
© Don OKEREKE, a tech-savvy security thought leader, analyst, researcher,
content creator, UX writer, military veteran.
Follow me on Twitter:
@DonOkereke
