Scammers are posing as real companies to steal from job applicants

When applying for a job, under no circumstances should a company ask you to send them money or devices such as a phone or laptop. If they do, there’s a good chance you’re being scammed.

At least three job seekers have been sucked into such a scam — to varying degrees — by a group posing to be hiring managers at Mashable after luring in applicants from sites like Indeed.

The scammers, who through our reporting have been linked to an address in Nigeria, are preying on people who applied to listings or uploaded their resumes to job search sites. The racket comes as U.S. businesses ramp up hiring following a nearly two-year pandemic that saw high rates of unemployment. Desperate to get back to work, some applicants turn a blind eye to strange hiring practices.

“But for $45 an hour, fuck it, I’ll risk it.”

“My antennas were up, things were giving me red flags…but for $45 an hour, fuck it, I’ll risk it,” Michael Kunz, a 31-year-old filmmaker who fell for the scam told Mashable, noting that the desirable rate and the chance at a dream job pushed him to let his guard down.

After getting “hired,” the fake employer asks the new employee to purchase equipment such as phones or iPads that they’ll use for work, promising that they’ll be reimbursed for the steep costs. The employee is then asked to send the devices to a subcontractor in Queens, New York who will outfit them with necessary software and provide other hardware needed for the job. Kunz said he was told he’d also get a laptop and Sony camera.

“So the idea is like, OK, we’re gonna set you up with this, and all you have to do is this one part,” Kunz said, rationalizing his decision to send a new iPad and iPhone to a strange subcontractor.

In reality, his devices were never going to an IT rep in Queens. Instead, he was tricked into sending them to a shipping center near JFK Airport that had been instructed to send the gear to Nigeria.

The scammers even take it a step further and ask new employees like Kunz to send an installation fee for this software via Zelle, a payment network many of the big banks utilize that allows you to send money instantly to someone’s checking account. They’ll also ask the new employee to provide personal information, like one’s Social Security and bank account numbers, just like any job offering direct deposit and a W-2 tax form, opening the applicant up to potential identity theft.

It’s unclear how many companies and applicants have been defrauded by this ploy. The duped applicants Mashable spoke to said they uploaded their resumes or applied to the fake job via Indeed.

In a statement, Indeed, which removes tens of millions of job listings each month, said it has “a dedicated search quality team who goes to extraordinary lengths deploying a variety of techniques to assess the suitability and validity of job listings.”

A fake job post sent to applicants by scammers posing as Mashable hiring managers.
Credit: Provided to Mashable

Job seekers are contacted via email from an address that resembles the real company’s URL. In this case, applicants were sent emails from the addresses [email protected] and [email protected] Then the scammers got even sneakier. The website joinmashable.com, which was registered earlier this month, according to who.is records, forwards to Mashable’s actual website. So someone checking if this was a real domain owned by Mashable could easily be tricked.

After a potential job applicant is contacted by email about an enticing role, they are asked to set up an account on the encrypted chat app Wire. Everything seems plausible at first. But it gets fishy after a selected applicant joins the Wire app and adds the supposed HR manager, as directed by the email.

After getting tipped off about the scam, I set up a dummy account on Wire and added the fake HR manager, Harry C. Longman. A few minutes after adding Harry, he messaged me saying he’d be conducting my online job interview.

Harry C. Longman went through a full interview with me.
Credit: Screenshot: Wire

After introducing myself and informing Harry of the video editor job I’d be interviewing for, Harry explained that I would need some equipment to perform this job, but that the company would cover the costs. I would also need to purchase a phone, either through my own carrier or through their “partnership” with Verizon. Harry assured me the phone would be reimbursed eventually.

Later on in the process, I was asked to purchase a new iPad Pro ($799+) and iPhone 13 Pro Max ($999+).

My conversation with the fake HR manager.
Credit: Screenshot: WIRE

Though it was all over chat, the job interview was pretty thorough — I was asked a variety of questions ranging from why I’d be a good fit at the company to what type of equipment I use to shoot video.

I encountered a few more red flags that could be overlooked by someone excited about a job. Harry kept spelling Mashable as “Marshable” and gave me some bogus stats, such as, “We have a wide reach of over 80% of Americans in their 20s every month.”

After going through the interview, the HR manager tells applicants to expect a call, email, or message. Then they’re set up with a faux “director of operations and head of brand and marketing.” Eventually, the new hire is connected with a so-called team lead, who will lure them into sending devices and money.

Folks, I’m happy to say I got the job!

I got a job at Mashable!
Credit: Screenshot:Wire

Kunz, who reached out to Mashable to share his story and warn others, had been applying for jobs like a lot of people recently, looking to settle down after dealing with a draining gig-work lifestyle.

After going through the interview process and getting the job, Kunz was asked to purchase an iPhone and iPad, which an IT specialist would update with software that his new employer could use to track his hours while working in the field. More companies have been adding tracking software to employees’ devices to track their work as employees have shifted to working from home during the pandemic.

How the scammers explain away the tracking software they want applicants to pay for.
Credit: Screenshot: Wire

“If you rationalize it — OK, if I’m going to be videoing, that’s a clever way to track hours. In hindsight it’s one of those, no, I shouldn’t go forward,” Kunz said.

A fake job offer letter the scammers sent.
Credit: mashable

In addition to his chats on Wire, Kunz said he also received a phone call from someone claiming to work at Mashable, seemingly in an attempt to further legitimize the fraud attempt. The fake rep used a real person’s name, although that person didn’t currently work at Mashable or its parent company, Ziff Davis. Rather, the scammers pretended to be others who work in the media and tech industries.

In addition to duping him into sending the iPhone and iPad, the scammers wasted a bunch of Kunz’s time, perhaps to distract him so that the items he sent would be gone before he realized what happened. They asked him to submit a 30-minute video in 72 hours as his first task on the job, which he did.

“This I thought was a little unreasonable, but I’m like OK, I’m good at what I do. I can pull this off,” Kunz told Mashable.

It gets worse. The scammers then asked him to send $500 for the software installation; again he was promised he’d be paid back. This is when the alarm bells went off for Kunz. But he still sent the money “partially to see where it was going.” In order to send money on Zelle, you need a phone number or email address. The email address he was given turned out to be connected to someone living in the U.S.

Ultimately, Kunz sent the scammers an iPhone, iPad, and $500 via Zelle. According to Zelle’s support page on scams, you can’t get refunded if you get duped into sending someone money, but Kunz said the company is processing his case.

After a few phone calls and emails to the shipping center near JFK, Mashable was able to track down the package Kunz sent before it left the country for Nigeria.

“Your package is here!!! Good thing you called me when you did – shipment was going out tomorrow. TO NIGERIA!!” an employee at the shipping center told Mashable via email. We connected the two, and the shipping company plans to return the package to Kunz. He said he didn’t attempt to track the package himself because he was in “a state of shock.”

Nigeria has long been entangled in cyber crime, with scammers commanding respect in a country struck by underemployment. Emails sent by fake princes continue to scam Americans out of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually and now fake job postings are convincing eager applicants to fork over pricey devices and cash.

“The Nigerian prince is now your Nigerian boss,” Kunz quipped.

You can protect yourself from these scams by being on alert for red flags (interviews over encrypted chats, being asked to ship devices to a random subcontractor, emails not matching what’s on company websites). Indeed recommends applicants ask for in-person or video interviews and cautions against sending money to a potential employer. It also suggests users report shady job listings to Indeed and that scam victims contact their local police if necessary.

Employers pay employees, not the other way around. If you come across a situation where an employer is asking you for money, it’s just a shitty job. And Americans are currently striking against shitty jobs across the country.

If you’d actually like to hire filmmaker Michael Kunz, take a look at his portfolio.