Scammers these days know exactly how to manipulate and steal! Proliferating fraud cases in India is an example of this. Apart from internet banking and financial fraud cases, online frauds in employment sector are becoming rampant.

These fraudsters easily manipulate and deceive the innocents. The ultimate goal of a scammer is to obtain your hard earned money and in most of the cases, steal your personal information to conduct identity theft.

How does employment fraud happen?

Scammers generally follow more or less similar modus operandi to commit this type of a fraud. At first, they source the email IDs and phone numbers of candidates in bulk. After which they create a fake email ID in the name of reputed companies. Using this email ID fraudsters send job offering emails to target people.

Yet again their email draft follows the same manner. It usually begins with ‘Hi, your resume has been shortlisted. Please contact on so and so number to schedule an interview’.

Once you co-ordinate with them, they put forward the job offer with attractive package. Since in many cases applicant is in need of a job, he / she easily falls prey to the proposed ‘attractive package’.

Fraudster, who poses as an employer or recruiter, and quite often a placement agency, then schedules an interview. These interviews are conducted at very basic level. After just few formal question and answer round a job is offered!

Sooner or later, when you accept the offer, you are asked to pay certain amount as a deposit. And this is where you are trapped! Scammers collect money for ‘employee training cost’ or ‘travel expense deposit’ or ‘work visa expenses’ and for many more such reasons. Meanwhile when you are waiting to join the ‘reputed’ company, these scammers just abscond and you are left with neither a job nor cash! And since you have already provided your valuable personal information during interview, your identity also becomes vulnerable.

Now if you wonder how much money these fraudsters would be making by betraying you, then remember, even the smallest amount of money becomes a huge amount, when collected from large number of people.

According to an analysis by Hindustan Times, from September 2016 to September 2017, nearly 140 employment frauds were reported from 35 cities across India! The scamming victims paid as little as ₹ 200 and as much as ₹ 30 lakh to get the jobs which were not really offered to them!

How to identify fake job offer?

When you are ask to pay, to get paid. The very clear reason to be skeptical is when a company asks you to make payment. This is not how an employment sector works. No one is required to pay, to actually get paid. Companies never collect money for any purpose. So before transferring money and sharing your valuable documents, make sure you verify from all the aspects.

Offer from highly reputed company. Scammers are more likely to use the names of reputed firms like large multinational companies or government departments like Indian railway, ministry of external affairs, etc.

Also in many cases, corporate email IDs of high level employees and executives are hacked through keyloggers and phishing attacks and are misused to conduct the fraud. Remember prestigious companies never approach candidates in disorganized manner.

In case of vacancies, appropriate advertisement is made by companies through newspapers or authorized job portals or educational placement cells or on company website. Also, the message is well drafted with every aspect like company details, required employee qualification, experience and skills, brief about position etc.

Also one must cross check the IP address of email. IP address of authenticate email and scam email is significantly different. One should always authenticate an offer considering these sides as well.

Salary offered is too good to be true. First of all salary is never openly displayed at any platform. It is supposed to be a confidential discussion. Moreover a legitimate company never offers high range of salary package without evaluating your skills and experience. As a result when salary is offered with no consideration of work experience and qualification background then one must give a second thought about it.

You are asked to share your financial details. Scammers steal your personal and financial information by giving convincing reasons, like ‘opening of salary account’. Once they obtain your information they get multiple options to misuse it like apply for credit cards in your name or ruin your credit score or commit identity theft and so on. So before sharing your confidential personal and financial details, always verify your employer.

Scammers are going to discover new fraud techniques every time and hence the only way to protect yourself is to have protective approach and bit of vigilance.