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Police warn of fraudulent job offers on Ebay classifieds

2022-08-17T15:53:29.808Z


If a job advertisement seems too lucrative, scammers are often behind it. The police are now investigating and are placing supposed job advertisements themselves.


Enlarge image

Woman writing an application (symbolic image): Fraudsters take advantage of the hope of finding a new job

Photo: Christin Klose / dpa-tmn

Huge reward for little effort: Fraudsters keep using bogus job advertisements to get hold of personal data.

The police crime prevention of the federal states and the federal government warns of this in a current information campaign.

The scammers' scam: Anyone interested in the supposedly lucrative offer is asked to open a bank account for "test purposes" or to "verify their own information".

The scammers then use this for their machinations.

In some cases, interested parties should also make an existing bank account available for transactions.

The job applicants then often receive payments that they are supposed to forward to other accounts – the money often disappears abroad.

With this form of identity theft, job seekers not only become victims themselves, there is also the threat of criminal charges for fraud or suspected money laundering.

According to the investigators, there are also cases in which scammers impersonate victims and offer goods on the Internet that they do not deliver.

Here, too, job seekers are initially threatened with investigations if the fraud is discovered.

Fight ads with ads

In order to put a stop to the rampant advertising fraud, the authorities are relying on an unusual method.

In cooperation with Ebay classified ads, they placed their own lure offers, which initially looked confusingly similar to the ads by scammers.

However, the description warns of the dangers of such offers.

Crime Prevention recommends carefully checking every advertisement – ​​whether on job exchanges, Internet portals or by e-mail.

It is usually easy to research whether the company that published an ad actually exists.

The question of whether the work assignment is serious, meaningful and logical can also be a clue.

The police crime prevention also advises to pay attention to whether the job is conspicuously generously remunerated.

The more tempting the offer sounds, the more mistrust is warranted.

As a general rule, sensitive information should not be shared lightly.

As a rule, reputable companies would not only communicate via e-mail or messenger services.

Also, accounts should never be opened on behalf of a third party.

Anyone who suspects that they have been the victim of fraud should contact the local police station.

tmk/dpa

Source: spiegel

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