Job scams wreak havoc on Leboncoin, Facebook and other classified ad sites

Undoubtedly one of the worst scams from an ethical point of view, job scams target people looking for work. Cleaning lady scams, baby-sitter scams... They are numerous and costly to people who are often already in a difficult financial situation.

Leboncoin, Facebook, Pôle Emploi... They're everywhere

Students and the unemployed are the favourite targets of these crooks. They post fake job adverts on classified ad sites and even go so far as to contact jobseekers on Pôle Emploi! They simply have no scruples and will stop at nothing to pull off their scam.

A finely-honed scam

Scammers will therefore have two methods of approach:

• Reply to an advertisement from someone looking for a job
• Post a job advert

They will then suggest to their prey that they continue the discussion by email, so that they can operate out of sight.

The jobs most frequently offered are

• Maintenance and cleaning of commercial premises or homes
• Collection of rent on behalf of a third party
• Childcare
• Salesperson

In general, these are jobs that require no training or qualifications. Note that this list is far from exhaustive and that many other professions can be exploited by crooks.

Contact email

Here is an extract from an email that could be received, for example, for a fake rent collection job:

The scammer will always claim to be abroad and unable to have a telephone conversation in the first instance. They will claim to trust you, with the sole aim of duping you. They will then ask the jobseeker for all their personal details: identity, address, telephone number... sometimes even bank details! Once the victim seems to trust them, the scam moves on to the next phase.

Telephone calls

Some organised networks go even further with telephone calls, involving several people who will contact you: the so-called lawyer of the person who contacted you about the job. This person does not, of course, practise the profession and is part of the network of crooks. He will tell you about the various methods of action and payment in order to put your mind at rest. The person offering the fake job who sent the e-mail will also contact you if you are too late, asking whether you have followed the procedures given by the lawyer.

The first point to note is that the network of crooks involves many people, often based in Africa. So pay attention to accents. Secondly, the people contacting you may vary! For example, the lawyer may call you several times, pretending to be the same person, when in fact the voices change depending on the calls!

The final phase of the scam

For the moment, the victim has suffered no significant damage, apart from a few phone calls. But things are about to take a whole new turn:

Receipt of a cheque

The swindlers will send a cheque to the victim. There may be various reasons for this:

• Salary advance for future employment
• Advance payment for the purchase of equipment to maintain a property
• Payment of rent that the victim is supposed to receive

There may be a variety of reasons for this, but don't be fooled: a stranger will never send you a cheque, let alone one that's covered by funds!

In all cases, it is of course a stolen cheque. But crooks, even from abroad, know how to manipulate their victims. The cheque received is usually sent from France by recorded delivery. How is this possible? Quite simply because they have accomplices on the spot. In some cases, the person whose cheque has supposedly been stolen is also an accomplice! They report their chequebook as stolen and then go and provide it to the crooks. Simple but terribly effective.

Completion of the scam and loss of the victim's money

To recover existing money in exchange for forged cheques, fraudsters have a simple technique. Depending on the type of job, the arguments differ but the aim remains the same: they will ask for payments by PCS Mastercard, Toneo, Neosurf... or Western Union money orders. You can find full details of scams involving these payment methods in our articles on the subject in the Avoid scams section(PCS scam, Western Union scam).

For a cleaning job, they will send a cheque to buy the equipment and ask to be reimbursed for the difference. For rent, they will also ask the victim to keep the cheque and return an equivalent amount. In all cases, whether it's the whole amount or just part of it, the crooks will ask for the money back.

The only problem is that stolen cheques can be used to manipulate banking deadlines: the victim will not realise for at least three days that the funds in the cheque simply do not exist. However, the victim will have repaid the sum to the crooks by the means of payment they request before this period has elapsed, as the crooks will be inundated with requests by email, text message or telephone.

Victims are therefore left with expenses that will be for nothing, and will also have lost money, sometimes a lot of it. In addition to the financial damage, there is also the moral damage that is very important.

Protect all your service transactions with Obvy

To avoid these bogus "odd jobs", simply ask to be paid by Obvy. You have a guarantee that the funds are available, you can ask for the seller's identity and you can even define secure periods covering the entire duration of the service. As well as making all transactions between private individuals secure, Obvy also makes services secure!