Job scams take toll on the desperate

Work at home! Earn cash using the Internet! Be your own boss!

Out of work since November, Linda Wilson, 50, of Sandy Springs was particularly susceptible to such claims as she scrambled to make ends meet.

Wilson paid $1.97 for shipping and handling in April for a free CD after receiving an unsolicited e-mail from a company called Google Treasure Chest. The program promised that “anyone with basic typing skills can earn cash,” as seen on ABC, CNBC, CNN and USA Today.

“I thought that was a reputable company and maybe I could just out of curiosity see what they were offering,” Wilson said.

A few days after making the purchase, a second, unexpected charge of $72.21 was billed to Wilson. Dozens of calls to the phone number listed for customer service were met with a recorded message, she said. E-mails to the company were returned as undeliverable. Wilson says she was scammed.

Experts say such schemes targeting the unemployed are flourishing in the wilting economy, with thieves preying upon people who can least afford to get ripped off. Since 9.3 percent of Georgians and 8.9 percent of Americans are currently out of work, the pool of potential victims is at a 25-year high.

“With the economy the way it is, there is more opportunity out there to try and deceive people,” said Leslie Hoppey, a supervisory special agent with the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. “Especially work-at-home scams, they come across as you can make a lot of fast money.”

Neither the Better Business Bureau, the Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs nor the Federal Trade Commission compiles statistics specifically on job scams, which can include credit card fraud, multilevel marketing schemes and identity theft.

The number of complaints about online crime in general hit a record high of 275,284 in 2008, up from 206,884 the previous year, according to IC3. Those complaints amounted to a total loss of $265 million.

In February, the Better Business Bureau warned job seekers to steer clear of job scams involving rebate processing, which charge upfront fees of $40 to $500 for a starter kit to process rebates from home. The fraudsters claim to be affiliated with 11,000 companies with household names such as Hewlett-Packard and Home Depot.

Once purchased, the programs showed users how to send e-mails, post blogs and buy ads to sell products with rebates, for which they were supposed to get a cut. The program failed to deliver on promised earnings of thousands of dollars a day, according to the Better Business Bureau’s Web site.

Sean Conroy is a spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs, the state agency that investigates consumer complaints alleging fraud. He said ploys that tempt people with easy money by working from home or secret shopping have long been popular.

“The same types of scams have been happening in different forms for years and years,” Conroy said. “… Whenever there are difficult financial times, there is going to be an increase in the attempt to scam people out of their money.”

Job seekers should be wary when asked to cash checks, wire money or receive items in the mail and repackage them for unknown third parties. Such requests are usually a red flag that someone is trying to transfer stolen money or goods bought with it, security experts say.

Monster.com, an employment Web site, advises users to be wary of potential employers who ask for sensitive personal information such as Social Security numbers or bank account or credit card numbers. That information can easily be used to commit identity fraud.

Not all job scams are perpetrated online. A swindle busted up by Gwinnett police in April asked job candidates who applied in person to pay $260 for bartender training before they could work at a phony nightclub in Duluth. Three people were arrested in connection with the scheme, which targeted illegal immigrants through radio and Internet advertisements.

Scams can net thousands of dollars, but even a small loss can feel like a big hit to someone with no income. Just ask Wilson, who is still fighting to get her money back from Google Treasure Chest.

Wilson says the old proverb still holds true: “If it sounds too good to be true, most of the time it is.”