A woman from Concord, CA looking for a work-from-home job falls victim to a scammer that promises a job and then scams her shortly after the interview.
Image by Rubaitul Azad on Unsplash (modified)
Scammers continue to stoop to new lows as they target those seeking out honest jobs.
Job seekers should be very wary of potential scams posing as remote and work-from-home jobs, as one East Bay (San Francisco) area woman found out the hard way.
One California Woman Thought She Landed a Real Job Interview
ABC7 News reported on 1 June 2022 that Tammy Geyerman got excited when she thought that she landed a real work-from-home job interview after posting her resume online.
This is because she needed the job for income to take care of her elderly parents.
A scammer named Joseph contacts Tammy by email, informing her that he found her resume online, and wanted to give her an interview for a position with his company.
Joseph unconventionally interviews Tammy over a messaging app and types out the interview questions. They went through the questions and it was easy enough. She was hired.
The scammer tells Tammy, “Oh! Yeah, we’re gonna hire you.”
So she got excited. So excited she told her elderly parents the good news.
“I was really excited. I went and told my father and my mother, ‘Hey I got a job, we don’t have to worry, we’re gonna have money, everything’s gonna be great.” -Tammy Geyerman, scam victim (Source: ABC7 News)
The Scam: A $1,900 Check to Cover Her Home Office Equipment
Joseph explains to her that she would need to buy a new computer and software, and his company would send her a check for $1,900. She would “need to print it out and sign it.”
So she deposits the $1,900 check into her bank account. She didn’t even consider that the check might be fake.
So next, he asks Tammy to do something. Joseph asks her to add a person she doesn’t know as a contact in her Zelle banking app. She does this as he instructs.
He then asks Tammy to send $900 to that person. Since she deposited the $1,900 check, she thought she had the money to cover it. So she did, sending out $900 from her personal bank account to a stranger.
“Next, he wanted me to use Zelle again, and send him the $1,000.” -Tammy Geyerman, scam victim (Source: ABC7 News)
Tammy tried to send Joseph an additional $1,000 using Zelle, but her bank would not let her transfer it. So he had something else in mind.
The Scammer Wants the Rest of Tammy’s Money in Bitcoin or Gift Cards
So Joseph tries another method of extracting the money from her account. He wants her to buy bitcoin, but she was not familiar with it. He then moves on to gift cards. He asks her to go to CVS and buy Visa gift cards.
Tammy — the “new employee of an unknown company” — does as she is told. She goes to CVS and buys gift cards, despite seeing a scam warning about the ‘job seeker scam’ clearly displayed at CVS. She ignored the warning because she was so excited about having a job.
“I was so excited about this job that I didn’t listen to that voice inside my head. Now the bank was emptying my bank account and I had nothing else to live on.” -Tammy Geyerman, scam victim (Source: ABC7 News)
She purchases the gift cards anyway and sends them on as her new employer instructs.
ABC7 News reported that Tammy’s bank did not deposit the $1,900 check into her account. It was not a real check, so her account was overdrawn by $800 after her Zelle transaction and the Visa gift cards were purchased.
In the end, Tammy loses what little money she had in her bank account, and learns a tough lesson about the job-seeker scam.
Real Companies Don’t Ask Employees to Send Money or Buy Gift Cards
It’s important to remember that no legitimate company will ever ask a person to send money out of their bank account using Zelle or even purchase gift cards at a store.
These are the trademark methods of modern-day scams. If anyone asks you to send money out of their bank account using Zelle or even purchase gift cards at a store, contact your local police immediately.
Help inform friends and family about this scam by sharing this information. It’s important to stay up-to-date on the latest scams, so we can prevent them from happening to others.
Source
Finney, Michael and Renee Koury. “Bay Area woman’s new job turns out to be Zelle, gift card scam.” ABC 7 News. 1 June 2022.
