Snappy newsletters. Simple Facebook sharing. Spirited comments. Sweet features are waiting… GET THEM NOW!

Hot on Facebook

Uproar After NC State Agent 'Fixes' Girl's Lunch Preschooler has to eat chicken nuggets instead of mom's meal »

Scammers Target Panicky Job Hunters

Experts warn work-from-home frauds are mushrooming as unemployment rises

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted May 26, 2009 2:10 AM CDT

(Newser) – Scammers are taking advantage of the recession to con people desperately seeking work out of what little cash they have left, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Watchdog groups warn that phony work-from-home offers promising quick cash in return for an initial outlay of money are proliferating, and that some fraudsters are also using job applications to harvest personal information for identity theft.

Some scams take place online, like one operation busted in Georgia recently that charged people $260 to train as bartenders for a nonexistent nightclub. Experts strongly advise jobseekers to be on their guard. "If it sounds too good to be true, most of the time it is," said one woman. She is still fighting to get her money back from a firm that charged her $75 after she ordered a $1.97 CD on how to earn money online.

[Images (2)]

[Quotes (1)]

Experts warn that scams taking advantage of job seekers are mushrooming as the unemployment rate rises. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Experts advise jobseekers to be wary of work-from-home offers, especially when the work involves paying initial fees for training or registration. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

« Prev« Prev | Next »Next » Slideshow

With the economy the way it is, there is more opportunity out there to try and deceive people. Especially work-at-home scams, they come across as you can make a lot of fast money. - Leslie Hoppey, a special agent with the Internet Crime Complaint Center

« Prev« Prev | Next »Next » Slideshow

To report an error on this story, notify our editors.

More Newser Stories

Google, Yahoo, 13 Others Declare War on Phishing

New set of standards could make email more trustworthy

(NEWSER) - A new anti-phishing effort, backed by the big email service providers as well as banks, PayPal, social networks, and other companies, could dramatically reduce the number of scam emails you get in your inbox. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL are backing the new plan; 15 companies in total have come together to create DMARC.org, which officially launches today and will promote standard technologies to authenticate email. The hoped-for end result? If you get an email that claims to be from paypal.com, you could trust that it is actually from paypal.com. If it works, companies would be able to communicate with customers in new ways, the Wall Street Journal reports. More»

Fake Death Scam Surfaces in Cruise Ship Case

Ship sinks, can rats be far behind?

(NEWSER) - The first scam has emerged in an apparent bid for compensation from the operators of crippled cruise liner Costa Concordia. A woman and her boyfriend were arrested in Hungary after falsely reporting two people missing on the ship, according to officials. The scheme was spotted by a New York lawyer who is representing six Hungarian survivors from the wreck. He became suspicious when he was contacted by the woman, who asked how much money she could expect for her missing daughter and granddaughter—and kept modifying her story, reports ABC News . More»

Gift Card Scam Warning Issued

Fraudsters are recording activation codes, Schumer warns

(NEWSER) - People buying gift cards for friends and family this Christmas should make sure that the concealing measures haven't been removed, Chuck Schumer warns. The senator from New York says fraudsters have been visiting stores where the cards are on the shelves and recording access codes in order to drain the card's balance as soon as it is activated, the New York Daily News reports. More»

America's Worst Job-Hunting Cities

Miami tops the latest list

(NEWSER) - Miami and LA might be beautiful places to live—but they’re really terrible places to find work. Those two cities top the list in a new Indeed.com analysis of the worst cities to find employment. Indeed, a job hunting site, compared federal unemployment records with its own job listings to arrive at this list, finding that in Miami there were more than four job seekers per listing, while LA had 3.48. More»

Fed Sees High Unemployment All Next Year

Forecast sees it at 8.6% at end of 2012

(NEWSER) - If President Obama were hoping for a quick election-year turnaround in the jobless rate, the Federal Reserve burst his bubble today. The Fed projected unemployment will be at 8.6% at the end of 2012, not much better than the 9.1% registered in September of this year, reports the Wall Street Journal . The projections don't get remarkably better after that: The Fed sees the rate at 8% by the end of 2013 and 7.7% the following year. More»

NEWS FROM OUR PARTNERS

What is Newser?

Face it: there's too much news. At Newser, we choose the most thought-provoking and entertaining stories from hundreds of US and international sources and reduce them to a headline, picture, and two paragraphs. And we do it 24/7—you can come back morning, noon, night (and in between) for something new that matters. Read less, know more.

Learn more »

Partnering with: Slate

View Newser on the mobile website

Scammers Target Panicky Job Hunters