Last Updated on June 15, 2024 by Satish Mishra
The main aim of education is to make a person a good human being and the ultimate goal of the long process of education is to earn a livelihood. Due to a heavy increase in population, there is less avenues for a person which makes him worried and disheartened. This gives an opportunity to the employer to fool employees.
Job Fraud refers to a fraudulent or deceptive activity or representation on the part of an employer towards an employee. There are several types of job frauds that employers commit against employees. While some may be illegal under jurisdictional laws, others do not violate the law but may be held by the employees or applicant against the employer.
Modus Operandi of Job fraud
- Three arrested for job fraud
The City police busted a fake placement agency operating at Koradakanta within Saheed Nagar police limits and arrested three persons on Sunday. BHUBANESWAR: The City police busted a fake placement agency operating at Koradakanta within Saheed Nagar police limits and arrested three persons on Sunday. The arrested trio was identified as Subhaprakash Tripathy of Cuttack, Santosh Kumar Biswal of Berhampur and Swaroop Kumar Mishra of Salepur.
b)Fake job racket busted in Hyderabad, five arrested
A fake job racket was busted by the Hyderabad Task Force on Tuesday. The five-member gang swindled about Rs 50 lakh by cheating job aspirants promising jobs in multinational companies such as Wipro, Amazon, and Cognizant.
Fake appointment letters of Wipro, Amazon and other firms were seized by the police who arrested all the accused and remanded them to judicial custody.
c)3 held for duping over 20,000 job aspirants with fake Telangana govt site
HYDERABAD: Cyber Crime sleuths of Hyderabad police commissioner arrested three people for duping job seekers across the country to the tune of R3 crore by creating fake websites with employment notifications.
Major Types of Job Search Scams
1. E-mail Supposedly From an Employer, Recruiter, or Job Board.
Maybe the email claims they found one’s resume on Monster or CareerBuilder or their company website, etc. The message says they think you are the perfect candidate for this new opportunity.
You might not remember ever applying (and, if it’s a scam, you didn’t). You may not remember seeing the employer’s name before. Or, perhaps the employer name is a famous employer you would love to work for. And, they are very interested in hiring you — now! All you need to do to is send them personal information for a pre-employment credit check, complete your application, or give them the information they need to complete the process so they can bring you on board as a new employee.
They want you to give them sensitive information like a copy of your driver’s license (which tells them your birthdate), your Social Security Number (to complete the paperwork to hire you), and/or your bank account number (for depositing those paychecks).
2. Fake Jobs on Social Media
This is the newest venue for job scams, and no social network is immune or perfectly safe. Be cautious of jobs and recruiters you find on social media.
Fake Facebook pages exist with many “opportunities” shared and promoted. Bogus jobs may also be posted on legitimate Facebook pages, too.
Fake LinkedIn Profiles are created, and they are used to post “opportunities” in LinkedIn Groups. Of course, sometimes real LinkedIn Profiles share fake jobs, too. LinkedIn does try to eliminate the fake Profiles and limit access (or remove the accounts) when someone with a real Profile spreads junk inside of LinkedIn.
Scams can be sent out in Twitter where the link is a shortened URL (bit.ly or ow.ly) from real or fake accounts. Those shortened links could lead anywhere, so keep your shields up on Twitter, too.
Verify that the recruiter or employer social media account is genuine before one click and apply. Google the employer or recruiter name. If a Twitter account has fewer than 500 followers, be cautious, especially if the employer name claimed is well-known.
3. Fake Jobs Apparently from Legitimate Employers
The job posting or the website claim to be a real employer, perhaps from a well-known company like Google or Apple or often from an employer not as well known as Google or Apple. But, although the employer name is legitimate, the jobs are NOT legitimate and not even actually for that employer.
In this scam, the real employer doesn’t have anything to do with the posting. This scam abuses a legitimate employer’s identity. The scammers are pretending to be the real employer advertising bogus jobs that are completely unrelated to the legitimate employer named in the posting or on the site.
4. Bogus Jobs on Legitimate Job Boards
The job board may be a well-known brand name like Monster or CareerBuilder, Craigslist, or a favorite professional association’s “career center.” But, while the job board is legitimate, the job may be a scam.
A person shouldn’t trust all of the jobs posted on any website completely, with the exception of USAJOBS.gov, and then double-check to be sure that he is truly viewing a page of USAJOBS.gov by checking the URL in my browser.
The fact that an employer, or a scammer, must first pay a job board in order to post jobs does NOT guarantee that the job is legitimate. The scammers may make enough money off their scam to cover the cost of the posting. Or they may be scamming the job board, too, by using a stolen credit card to pay for the posting.
These days, the people running websites which have job postings must work hard to make sure that they don’t allow fake jobs to be posted on their sites. Unfortunately, not all of the job boards do a great job of vetting employers, and sometimes they are fooled by the scammers, too.
5. Fake Job Boards, Fake Employer Websites, and Fake Recruiter Websites
These can be hard to spot. The website may look very professional, but their only goal is to collect as much personal information from one as possible. The websites look great, but the employer or job board don’t really exist. Fake jobs are posted for job seekers to apply for.
Usually, they require one’s personal information, particularly Social Security Number for “pre-screening.” They usually also need personal bank account number so they can begin depositing paychecks (because they are ready to hire one immediately). The fake job boards usually require him to “register” before he can see the job postings, but they may allow him to select the “job” he wants first and then collect his information. There may — or may not — be any jobs (bogus or legitimate) posted on these sites.
There is a website that looks like it’s from Google (Google’s logo is on the site and the name Google is widely used on the site), but it definitely was not Google because, although Google’s name was in the URL, it was in the wrong place in the URL, and the site most definitely was not google.com.
And the “jobs” unfortunately weren’t with Google either. Just another scammer site.
Employment and Career Scams
In addition to job-related scams, there are other scams related to employment. Whether it’s trying to sell services or paid training or offering to file for unemployment for a person, there are many different types of scams to avoid. Here are some of them:
Bait and Switch Scams
With this scam, he applies for a job and is selected for an interview. During the interview, he discovers that the job he applied for doesn’t exist and the company tries to interest you in completely different position.
Career Consulting Scams
He may be contacted by “career consultants” who are impressed with his resume and would like to represent him. In addition, he may be interested in their marketing, resume writing, resume reviews, or other career-related services.
Credit Report Scams
This scam occurs when an “employer” asks to see one’s credit report as part of the hiring process and end up paying a fee for obtaining a credit report or for other services. In addition, the scammer can collect his personal information and steal one’s identity.
Direct Deposit Scams
Direct deposit scams involve getting job applicants to give out their bank account information. These scams, which are often posted on Craigslist and other job boards or sent via email, often offer a position that seems too good to be true – high salary, minimal hours, no in-person interview required
Money Laundering Job Scams
Money laundering scams are some of the most common online job scams. Money launderers post jobs online or simply send out emails saying they are hiring employees to help process payments or theft.
Recruiting Scams
Recruiters may contact one saying that have clients with positions that you could be qualified for, though they don’t have current openings. However, they also offer training sessions one should purchase to enhance your candidacy and transfer funds.
How to fight with job frauds
Submit an Online Job Fraud Complaint to Cyber Cell police
There is a number of things a person need to note before he sends one’s complaints. Here some of the points-
- Before you submit your complaint to cyber cell police, he must confirm that the website he has paid to is a fake website.
- Most of the Indian sites who demand money for registration for work from home job are fake. So if he paid to an Indian site, there are great chances that site is fake.
- A genuine site displays the name of the website owner who is selling the work from home package. Otherwise, he can know the name & photo of the owner on the contact us page. If he can’t the name of & photo of the site owner on the website, then it’s fake.
- Don’t trust contact numbers, office address or registration number on the website because any fake company can get a phone number, rent an office or even get a registration number.
- If the website provides the work of online surveys, get paid to click ads or read ads, form filling etc. then it’s a fake site.
- Check Google for their complaints about the site from other customers.
So you are in a better position to submit the complaints if any of the above points are applicable
So how & where to submit the complaint?
If a person is from Bangalore and duped from a Mumbai company then send his complaint to cyber police of Mumbai and not in Bangalore.
There are 2 reasons for this-
- Different cyber cell dept will receive individual complaints and if there are not many complaints in an individual cyber cell police department, it may get ignored. If all people send to the police in the same city where the website is operating from then they will receive a good number of complaints & the police will definitely act on this.
- Because the office of the website is in the same city, it will be easy for cyber police to take action.
So what to write in the complaint?
A person can send the complaint either through email or a letter
In the subject line, you can write like
- “Website Name” Fraud Complaint Example- XYZ.com fraud complaint
- OR “Website Name” Cheated Me Example- XYZ.com Cheated Me
- Or I was duped by XYZ.com website etc.
Laws given in IPC against Job Fraud or Scam
Section 420 of IPC
According to the IPC, Section 420 states that whoever cheats and thereby dishonestly induces the person deceived to deliver any property to any person, or to make, alter or destroy the whole or any part of a valuable security, or anything which is signed or sealed, and which is capable of being converted into a valuable security, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine.
Section 415. Cheating:
Whoever, by deceiving any person, fraudulently or dishonestly induces the person so deceived to deliver any property to any person, or to consent that any person shall retain any property, or intentionally induces the person so deceived to do or omit to do anything which he would not do or omit if he were not so deceived, and which act or omission causes or is likely to cause damage or harm to that person in body, mind, reputation or property, is said to “cheat”.
Explanation- A dishonest concealment of facts is a deception within the meaning of this section.
Section 417: Punishment for cheating
Whoever cheats shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.
For any any subject specific advice please call 99888-17966 for LegalSeva.
This post is written by Aishwarya Pal, a pass out of New Law College, Bharati Vidyapeeth University 2014-2017 batch.
