Online job scams grow amid sinking economy

Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — A Middle Eastern man was looking to hire an English tutor for his teenage daughter who’d be attending school in Chicago this year. The pay? $40 an hour. One day a week for two months.

Under better circumstances, Denise Misrac, 34, would not have given the ad a second thought. But she needed money and was desperate to find a teaching job, even if it was temporary. She responded to the post on Craigslist by e-mailing her credentials to the man. Soon after, she received notice she’d landed the job.

Weeks later, after depositing a bogus check, Misrac is thousands of dollars in debt as she untangles herself from one of countless online scams preying on the unemployed at a time when joblessness has reached its highest level in decades.

“The whole experience has been a disaster,” Misrac said.

Anyone who regularly shops or banks online knows to be wary of scams. But a feeble economy is forcing job-seekers to take risks they wouldn’t normally take, experts say, making them vulnerable to online scams offering to help find a job, start one at home, pay off bills, avoid foreclosure or repair their credit.

In this toxic environment, with an increasing reliance on Internet job boards and social-networking sites to find work, thousands of Americans have been bilked out of millions of dollars by con artists exploiting the country’s economic woes, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

“When people are in a desperate situation, there’s a greater propensity for them to fall victim to these kinds of crimes,” said Ross Rice, spokesman for the Chicago chapter of the FBI. “All it takes is one mistake to become a victim.”

As the number of victims grows, the Federal Trade Commission and local authorities have begun cracking down on alleged scam artists and phony businesses targeting the unemployed and people with money troubles. As of July, officials in 13 states had filed civil charges against 72 companies or individuals accused of ripping off consumers.

Organizations such as the Better Business Bureau of Chicago and Northern Illinois have stepped up efforts to highlight job-placement companies that make false or exaggerated claims, or have long lists of complaints. One company, Benchmark Professional Careers of Villa Park, received five complaints from customers who’d paid thousands of dollars up front to the firm but did not find work, said Better Business Bureau spokesman Tom Joyce.

“Be careful of the guy who promises the world and delivers nothing,” said West Chicago resident Edward Bockman, an unemployed information technology manager who paid Benchmark Professional Careers $5,000 to find him a job.

Benchmark Professional Careers is no longer operating at its Villa Park address, Joyce said, and a woman who answered its phone said the company had moved. She did not provide a new number, and the company’s Web site is not in operation.

Bockman, whose money woes forced him to file for bankruptcy, has adopted a new philosophy when job hunting: “If it costs you money, it’s probably not worth it.”

Misrac knew she was taking a risk inquiring about the part-time teaching job on Craigslist. If the post had asked her to send banking information, a Social Security number or personal information, she would have walked away, she said. But he wanted none of that, so she sent him her teaching biography.

Two days later, Misrac was told she had the job. She eagerly began designing lesson plans for the student, who had yet to arrive. She was to be paid $300 for two months’ work, and the man insisted on paying her in full up front. Days later, a cashier’s check for $2,800 arrived in her mail box with instructions to deposit the full amount, deduct the $300 she was owed, and wire the remaining portion back to an account in London.

Misrac’s bank informed her she had deposited a fraudulent check.

, froze her lone account and demanded repayment of the $2,500. When she told bank officials she didn’t have the money, they referred her case to a collection agency.