This company found my resume online at careerbuiders.com and told of a salaried position that was open servicing their client account. Here's the beginning of their email:
Dear candidate,
Thank you for your interest in the Operations Manager position recently announced by our company at careerbuilder.com. Web Builders International is a web services provider operating in the IT industry since 2006. Our company has been doing quite well in this economy so far, and we are constantly growing and developing our services, which include search engine optimization, Internet marketing and web campaigns. Our head office is located in the suburbs of Los Angeles, California, but as an employer of the 21st century we also hire people located throughout the United States, who work with us remotely, over the Internet. Due to the recent increase of the customer flow, we are looking for new team members, who will be working at home and servicing the pool of our existing US customers.
They go on to describe the position description, everyday duties (logging in to their website and waiting for tasks/projects, etc.), and their compensation (which included "a base salary of $2,850 per month paid in 2 parts every 2 weeks since the actual start date plus bonuses for performance paid immediately upon completing every task"). Progress evaluations would be made every 6 months.
I filled out the paperwork, faxed it back, and waited. A few days go by and I get an email asking me toi register with their intranet so I could login to their servers and get my tasks. I got the first documented project and I began to get suspicious. I did some more digging. I found that as of 7/14/11 on Whois, the website is registered to Gregory Dickens with the address the same as the business. That's not too unusual, but it was only registered on 6/17/11 and the company says it has been in business since 2006! Also, the web content is copied almost word-for-word from the website www.pcdynamix.com!!! That particular website has been registered consecutively since 2003!!
I'm now very suspicious, so I called the number. I talked to a lady named Emily Fahn (who seems to have a slight accent of some sort). As I begin asking about the red flags and inconsistencies, she gets increasingly loud and eventually stops answering my questions by turning around and asking me another question. When I finally tell her that I would like to cease the working relationship, she tried to tell me that I had to work for them at least two weeks because of the contract. I told her that if I found out they were a scam then hat contract was null and void anyway and that I was closing my account connected to them. At this she simply hung up on me and I proceeded QUICKLY to the bank to close my accounts.
Since they said they foundry resume on careerbuilders.com, I recently found this response from them about Web Builders International:
Thank you for contacting CareerBuilder's Trust and Site Security Team.
Upon initial review of your report, we have determined that this is a Payment Processing scam message. This email should be disregarded. Any communication with individuals associated to the email message should be ceased and future correspondence attempts ignored.
INFORMATION REGARDING ONLINE FRAUD
For more information about Online Fraud, we do offer a Fraud Page for Jobseekers:
http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Info/Fraud.aspx
ONGUARDONLINE.GOV
We also recommend visiting http://www.OnGuardOnline.gov, which provides practical tips from the federal government and the technology industry to help you be on guard, secure your computer, and protect your personal information.
REPORT YOUR COMPLAINT
If you need to report a complaint about online or related transactions with foreign companies (cross-border scams), then please visit http://www.econsumer.gov.
Forward suspected fraudulent scam email messages to the FTC at [email protected], as well as to the Abuse Desk of the sender's ISP.
Internet Crime Complaints can also be filed at http://www.ic3.gov.
Regards,
Trust and Site Security Team
CareerBuilder.com | Experience Better
5555-A Peachtree Parkway
www.ic3.gov | FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center