Businesses are being warned that scammers are posing as legitimate recruitment agencies and posting fake jobs in an attempt to obtain personal information.
Fraudsters are using WhatsApp messages and online job postings to trick people into giving up their personal information.
According to 2i Recruit in Surrey, it has been contacted by 25 people who have fallen victim to scammers requesting personal information.
Action Fraud is receiving more reports of recruitment scams than ever before.
Recruitment scams usually entail con artists enticing victims with the prospect of additional work or money in exchange for their personal information.
Many trustworthy employment websites have been used by scammers as a means of targeting their victims.
Scammers impersonated Jenny Jamieson, the founder and director of recruitment at 2i Recruit in Godalming, in October, she said.
We were receiving calls from applicants who claimed a man had gotten in touch with them regarding a position we were advertising, but I was informing them that it wasn’t a position I had on file.
“They were very, very upset and basically implying that people from my business were trying to get their personal information.”
“We discovered scammers were posting a job advertisement in our company name on Indeed.com,” Ms. Jamieson stated. It was highly alluring because it was well written and offered a good salary.
“I was only hoping that they weren’t sending them all of their information, but many applicants did and later realised this after speaking with us.
“They sent their passport and their bank details.”
Fake job advert
A con artist contacted Libby after she saw the online advertisement.
“They requested my passport to verify my identity for an interview,” the woman stated. I had no suspicions at all because of how convincingly they imitated a real recruitment agency.
“I realised it was a scam when after a few days of not hearing anything there was a hard credit check on my report, so I phoned the real recruitment company and told them my concerns and they confirmed it was a fake job advert.”
“We remove tens of millions of job listings each month that do not meet our quality guidelines,” an Indeed.com spokesperson stated. We urge prospective employees to report any questionable job postings to us or, if they feel it’s necessary, to the police.”
When one of the team’s journalists received a WhatsApp message purporting to be from Nolan Recruitment and offering employment opportunities, BBC South East first learned about this kind of scam.
However, the engineering recruitment agency in Knutsford, Cheshire, told us that they had received a tonne of calls from anxious job seekers and that con artists had been using their company name for almost eighteen months.
According to agency owner Sean Neary, the con games began in September of 2022.
He stated: “The scammers have even been using the names of people who work for my business.”
Mr. Neary stated: “Our reputation is being harmed by the extremely negative reviews that people have been leaving.”
“I feel bad for the individuals it has been affecting. Other than spreading awareness, there is nothing we can do.
“A network of disparate phone numbers is utilised by the con artists. It’s quite difficult to find them.
According to Jennifer Gaster, managing director of HR Heads in Southampton, her company was the target of scammers contacting potential hires using a former employee’s name for roughly six months in 2022.
“You have to verify someone to work in the UK and the typical way of doing that is through national insurance and passport information and that is what the scammers were doing,” she stated.
Bella Betterton felt “attacked” and “distraught” after falling for another recruitment scam and having £3,000 stolen.
The 18-year-old admitted to being contacted by con artists via phone calls and WhatsApp messages on Radio 4’s Money Box.
The con artists fooled her into divulging her credit card information under the false pretences of conducting a legitimate job interview, and then they took her money.
Fraudsters are impersonating more than just recruitment agencies. They are impersonating the employer in certain instances.
The Guru Nanak Darbar Gurdwara in Gravesend, Kent, released a warning last year about con artists posing as them on social media and making fictitious claims of employment and visas.
‘Turned away’
According to Mike Andrews, national coordinator of the National Trading Standards eCrime team, victims of job scams are taken advantage of through a variety of means.
“We’ve had incidences where they’ve believed they’ve had a job lined up,” he stated.
“It’s possible that they paid in advance for a phoney online course or a criminal background check.
“After giving their notice and quitting their job, they show up at their new place of employment, only to be told there isn’t such a place.
“Where we identify issues on social media platforms or fraudulent or misleading websites, we will take the appropriate action to try and get those websites taken down or the websites disrupted.”
The recruitment industry’s trade association, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), declared that none of its members would ever charge job seekers for finding them employment.
Chief standards officer Lorraine Laryea of REC declared: “This is not allowed. Over the past year, we have become aware of scammers taking advantage of some job seekers’ eagerness to find employment by sending unsolicited messages posing as recruiters.
“Be wary of calls, WhatsApp messages, texts and the like that appear to have come out of the blue.”
According to a Home Office spokesman, there were approximately 3.2 million fraud offences in the fiscal year that concluded in September 2023, a 13% decrease from the year prior.
They stated: “We have 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.”
