The job offer practically jumped off Ron Bouchard’s computer screen with key buzz words -- “fill multiple positions … immediate consideration … paid training” -- prompting the expected Pavlovian response from the Conyers man desperate for work.
And then there was the kicker: up to $18.55 an hour for warehouse work in east Atlanta.
“That’s pretty good wages for that job,” Bouchard said earlier this week. “They had all the proper hooks up front.”
A few mouse clicks later, though, Bouchard realized it was just another job scam like millions of others targeting Americans hungry for work. A link directed him to a website where he was compelled to take an IQ test -- where prizes would be awarded. He was also asked for his cell phone number.
“In small print, it indicated I’d be billed monthly automatically for taking these tests,” said Bouchard, who gets by with part-time heavy equipment jobs after losing a full-time position two years ago. “It was a really clever scheme, much less obvious than scams I’ve seen the last few years.”
Ten percent unemployment in Georgia, coupled with a slow climb from the recessionary trough, creates a ripe environment for fraudulent job schemes. The jobless, like Bouchard, hope that the online offer, the claims of telemarketing riches and the work-at-home scheme offer legitimate paths toward a financially secure future.
Too often they don’t.
Meanwhile, the con artists grow savvier.
“The scammers are predators, like sharks trolling the troubled waters we’re in right now,” said Karen Hobbs, an attorney with the Federal Trade Commission, which tracks job scams.
Tallying job fraud is an imprecise science. But the FTC, independent watchdogs and anecdotal evidence prove that fraudulent come-ons accelerated as the recession and unemployment worsened.
In boom-time 2006, when unemployment stood at 4.6 percent, the FTC received 7,460 complaints from consumers who felt they had been wronged by online scammers, less-than-truthful employment agencies and work-at-home wizards.
Two years later, with unemployment at 5.8 percent, the FTC reported 20,495 complaints. The feds got 24,123 complaints last year, when the annual unemployment rate hit 9.6 percent.
Christine Durst, who co-founded RatRaceRebellion.com, which vets work-at-home jobs, screens up to 5,000 leads weekly. Three years ago, 1 in every 30 postings was legitimate; now the rate is 1 in every 62, she said.
After exhausting traditional outlets for employment, many job seekers are trying other sources, Durst said. “Unfortunately," she said, "a lot of them are landing in shark tanks.”
Peggy Brooks almost landed in California earlier this year to train for a credit-card processing job before realizing the big-dollar promises -- “an opportunity for unlimited income earning potential” and a $5,000 start-up bonus -- seemed too good to be true.
Another job, as an independent financial adviser, also intrigued Jonesboro’s Brooks, who has been without full-time work for two years. It promised “unlimited income and wealth for a lifetime.”
A wary Brooks declined both opportunities. She had researched the companies and their promises and was turned off by the recruitment tactics, the hidden expenses and the unrealistic financial rewards.
“They try to do the hard sell on you, and if you’re unemployed, you’re already under pressure,” Brooks said. “You’ve just got to be leery of that stuff.”
Last month, the FTC unveiled more than 90 criminal and civil “enforcement actions” against companies the agency alleges falsely promised guaranteed jobs, ran get-rich-quick telemarketing schemes and operated fraudulent work-at-home scams. The feds say Utah-based Ivy Capital, for example, charged clients up to $20,000 to build Internet businesses that rarely succeeded. Another company, the National Sales Group, said it could hook up the jobless with Fortune 1000 employers, the FTC says.
The FTC has also investigated offers that included jobs as movie extras, mystery shoppers, envelope stuffers and ornament assemblers.
Last year, the FTC brought a case against a Norcross company promising jobs with the U.S. Postal Service. A minimum $120 would buy the material needed to pass the postal exam. And, two years ago, a Marietta man was found guilty of wire fraud by claiming customers would become millionaires tending to Medicaid patients.
The FTC's Hobbs warns that “fraudsters are always looking for new and improved ways to rip off consumers.”
Resumes posted on Monster, Craigslist and CareerBuilder provide a handy target. Select Staffing Services Inc. sent Bouchard an e-mail March 13 congratulating him for “being invited to join our company!” It told him to move quickly (“positions are limited”) and steered Bouchard to a website for the IQ test and cell phone request “to set up a time to complete your new hire paperwork.”
Bouchard, a former AT&T manager, balked at the request for a phone number. With good reason. The company website and the IQ test link no longer work. And the real Select Staffing company, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., with a dozen offices in Georgia, asked Craigslist to pull the ad after receiving similarly questionable reports from Arizona, California and Colorado. (The ad no longer runs.)
“We are trying to find out who is doing this so we can issue a cease-and-desist order,” said Lori Weathers, marketing director for Select Staffing.
Bouchard has become proficient at spotting scams. One time, for example, he applied for a job as a chauffeur and was told he would receive a $4,000 check to cover initial expenses. After cashing the check, Bouchard was to give $2,000 to the “university student” he would be chauffeuring. The check, of course, would have bounced and Bouchard would have been out $2,000.
“There are a lot of ruthless people out there who are willing to step on anyone just to make a few bucks,” Bouchard said. “They don’t care if your family doesn’t get fed or your credit goes down the tubes.”
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