SOURCE = Fake Jobs: Scammers impersonate firms to target victims - BBC News
→ Recruitment scams typically involve criminals luring victims with the promise of extra work or income, before conning them out of sensitive personal information. ←
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SUMMARY:
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Fraudsters are posting vacancies online of genuine companies and sending WhatsApp messages to entice people into handing over their details. BBC South East first became aware of this type of scam when a journalist from the team received a WhatsApp message claiming to be from Nolan Recruitment, offering job opportunities. But when they contacted the engineering recruitment agency in Knutsford, Cheshire, they informed them that scammers had been using their company name for nearly 18 months and they had been inundated with calls from worried jobseekers. Agency owner Sean Neary said the scams started in September 2022. He said: “The scammers have even been using the names of people who work for my business.”
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2i Recruit in Surrey, an Independent Commercial Recruit Agency, said it had received calls from 25 victims of scammers who had been asked to hand over their personal details. Jenny Jamieson, recruitment director and founder of 2i Recruit in Godalming, Surrey said scammers posed as being from her company last October. Also, Jennifer Gaster, managing director of HR Heads in Southampton, said her firm had been targeted for about six months in 2022, with scammers using the name of a former employee to contact candidates.
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Mike Andrews, national coordinator for the National Trading Standards eCrime team, said job scams used different techniques to exploit the victims and The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), which represents the recruitment industry, said its members would never ask job seekers for payment to find them work whereas a Home Office spokesperson claimed there had been an estimated 3.2 million fraud offences in the year ending September 2023 - down just 13% from the previous year.
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The Home Office have also launched a national fraud squad, rolled-out enhanced support available to victims across England and Wales and begun the national Stop! Think Fraud public awareness campaign to help the public stay alert to the signs of fraud." however this is proving ineffective as the number of recruitment scams reported to ACTION FRAUD UK is rising. Scammers have been exploiting a number of reputable jobs websites to target their victims, including but not limited to and presently in particular Indeed.com!
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It is not just recruitment agencies that fraudsters are impersonating however. In some rare cases they are also directly posing as the employer. Last year for example, the Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara in Gravesend, Kent, issued a warning about fraudsters impersonating them in social media posts which made false promises of visas and jobs.
