Employment scam targets would-be workers online

Find out how hopeful employees are being targeted in the latest cruel online scam sweeping digital platforms.

In early May last year, IDCARE’s National Case Management Centre received a call for help from a young Brisbane resident.

He thought he was applying for a job with Queensland Rail, instead he ended up being scammed and compromising his identity.

The job looked so official because the person who was advertising the position was a very real person and he had worked with Queensland Rail.

The scammer even created an email which started with the man’s business name.

The Brisbane man applied for the job and submitted his driver‘s licence, workplace certificates and other documents as requested. He also paid the several hundred of dollars for a “Queensland Rail induction course”.

The first he realised it might be a scam was when he turned up for the induction course, outside a tertiary training institute building in Brisbane, on a Saturday morning and it was closed.

He waited for a couple of hours, hopeful he had the time wrong, but no one turned up.

He tried to contact his “employer” without success.

He found out for sure it was a scam when he turned up at the Brisbane rail station on the Monday morning, ready for work, and no one knew anything about it.

He then went searching for his “employer” on other forums, like LinkedIn, and gave him a call.

Kathy Sundstrom. Picture: Patrick Woods.

This employer apologised profusely and said he was a sole contractor, he never employed others and he had been impersonated by a scammer.

He had been receiving several other calls from people asking about the job that work which had been advertised on employment platforms.

I phoned this employer after hearing our client’s story as he was also a victim in this employment scam.

He shared his anxiety that scammers were impersonating him, and his business and he felt powerless to stop it.

We provided both clients with advice on what steps they could take to protect their identity going forward and they assumed it was case closed.

But here is the thing about cybercrime. It is very rarely case closed.

I received a text from the “employer” again this week. “Hi Kathy, looks like that scammer is active using my name again,” he said.

He had received a couple more inquiries for a job that didn’t exist from people who had searched him up on LinkedIn.

“Must be an annual event on their (the scammer’s) calendar,” the man wrote.

Protecting yourself against cybercrime is an ongoing exercise. Sadly, just because it happened to you once doesn’t guarantee it won’t happen again.

If scammers know something has worked once, they are more likely to try it again.

We need to be aware of what is happening and have an understanding of the steps that we can take to be resilient.

Steps like always double-checking employment advertisements by contacting the company advertising the position directly before sharing valuable credentials.

Steps like attending following social media pages like IDCARE, Scamwatch and others to be aware of what scammers are doing and searching for advice on how to protect yourself.

There is one more step you can take. Attend one of IDCARE’s free Cyber Resilience Outreach Clinics if they are coming to your community.

Thanks to sponsorship from Westpac, Meta and the nbn, our team is holds this clinics across the country.

You can find out where the next clinic will be by searching for the CROC tab on our website, IDCARE.org or by following our Facebook page.

Kathy Sundstrom is a former Sunshine Coast Daily journalist who now works at identity and cyber support service IDCARE.

Originally published as Employment scam targets would-be workers online