Scam targets unemployed looking to Craigslist for work

DENVER - If there had ever been a time in Sarah Johnson's life when "too good to be true" stared at her in the face, surely the job posting she found on Craigslist was it.

"I know sometimes gullible is written on the ceiling for me, but not this time," Johnson said.

Johnson, who has been unemployed after a disagreement with her manager two weeks ago, is currently house sitting for a friend of her family in Brighton to stay afloat. Rather than commute to Denver, Johnson devotes three to four hours a day to looking for work online.

Out of all of the online job search databases, Johnson believed Craigslist to be the best.

"With Craigslist, it's constantly updating with the newest availabilities. You can literally be on top of a job post within seconds and be the first applicant at the top of the stack," she said. 

While looking for a job, Johnson spotted a post in which the successful applicant would be paid to do simple and charitable tasks, like shopping for orphaned children during the holidays or running errands for senior citizens. She heard back about her application within a day.

"It was a very personable e-mail, and it sounded so incredibly professional," Johnson said.

However, she spotted several oddities about the e-mail after taking a closer look. The apparent employer never provided a name and asked Johnson to only talk to them via e-mail, claiming to be hard of hearing and very busy while traveling out of the country.

After Johnson replied, she received a second e-mail, which was "far less professional" than the first.

"The second e-mail I got was, 'Please take this check, send it immediately in the bank, cash it, take a cut, and wire the rest via Western Union to the United Kingdom.' And I'm like, 'What?'" she said. 

Johnson did not respond to the e-mail, but she did receive a check for $1,950 in the mail a few days later. She did not cash it, knowing that it was probably associated with a scam.

According to the Colorado Office of the Attorney General, the scam is in line with a growing number of online job hoaxes targeting a growing number of recession jobseekers who are turning to the Internet. As more jobseekers look for work, more are vulnerable or even desperate to take a risk on a fishy job if there's even the slightest of possibilities that may yield a return.

"Certainly this job scam has been around for a very long time," Mike Saccone, communications director with the Colorado Office of the Attorney General, said. "We say this with every type of scam, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

Saccone suggests online jobseekers perform due diligence on any online job by checking for an employer's name, references, and to require an in-person interview instead of one done over the phone or by e-mail. Further, jobseekers should steer clear of job postings requiring someone to send money to get money.

"In this kind of scam, it's usually a foreign person who wants you to wire money after cashing a check that will likely bounce a few days later," Saccone said. "The person who cashes the check will then be liable for the bounced check. It's very difficult, extremely difficult, to get that money back."

Saccone suggests anyone spotting these kinds of scams to file a report by sending an e-mail to stop.fraud@state.co.us. If you believe you have been the victim or target of a scam, contact the FBI.