GREENSBORO, N.C. — Everywhere you look, businesses are hiring.
You can apply at a job fair, right at the business or online. While online job boards are the norm, it doesn’t mean they’re all for real.
“First thing I saw matched my qualifications. Oh this is great,” said Teresa.
She then got this text asking her for an interview. That interview was all done online through a chat, it lasted three hours.
“Everything was by the book. Nothing seemed odd to me,” Teresa said.
She got an acceptance letter and started setting up employment, including giving the company her social security number, driver’s license, and banking info for her paycheck direct deposit. As it turns out, there was no job. Teresa was taken by online scammers. And those scammers made an unemployment claim using her identity.
“Get this, they put the last date of employment 2020. So, they wanted 15 months of back pay,” said Teresa.
She’s not alone in this nightmare, according to a study by the identity verification website SocialCatfish.com, the age group with the biggest losses to online scammers is 18 to 39-year-olds.
Usually, you hear about older folks being scammed, but just because younger consumers know how to work with technology, doesn’t mean they know how to guard themselves on it.
“They’re using websites they shouldn’t use, and they are giving out information because their friends do it and they don’t think there is anything wrong with it,” said David McClellan, Socialcatfish.com CEO.
How do you know if this online job offer is for real or not? Experts say one of the best things to do is to ask for a face-to-face meeting even if it’s over zoom or facetime. It can’t be a still picture, it has to be a real person on the other end.