Employment Scams are designed to recruit unsuspecting individuals to launder money for criminal organisations. These scams are typified by job advertisements posted online, or emails sent to random addresses, promising quick commissions in return for work completed from the comfort of your own home. Eventually the ‘job’ will turn into receiving and transferring money or goods elsewhere.
These criminals often use online chat rooms, social networking sites, hoax websites and fake profiles to furnish the scam to convince the recruit. New recruits are usually found using resumes published by hopeful job-seekers to job websites. The recruitment process is usually quick, with little to no training required. Most ‘jobs’ offered are work-from-home situations and relatively easy, but promise high-return commissions. Often it is not until the victim is alerted by their bank or money transfer service that they will leave the scam. This scam will also typically gain access to victims’ passports, driver licence and tax information under the ruse that they are applying for a legitimate job.
If you believe you may be involved in an employment scam, keep track of the following warning signs:
If you believe you have been a victim of an employment scam, there are a few steps you can take to limit the damage:
Identity Care Australia & New Zealand Ltd (IDCARE) provides identity and cyber security incident response services (the Services) in accordance with the following disclaimer of service:
IDCARE is Australia and New Zealand’s national identity and cyber incident community support service. We are a not-for-profit charity.
While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this alert, IDCARE disclaims any liability to any person in respect to any actions performed or not performed as a result of the contents of the the Services or any accompanying data provided. Wider dissemination may be permitted by authority in writing from IDCARE’s Managing Director. If you would like to provide feedback please use our Feedback Form.
Have you received a cold call or automated voice message recently?
view fact sheet
A data breach is the unauthorised disclosure or loss of personally identifiable information.
view fact sheet
Instagram is a social networking app made for sharing photos and videos from a smartphone.
view fact sheet
Mon - Fri: 8am - 5pm AEST
QLD: 07 3555 5900
ACT & NSW: 02 8999 3356
VIC: 03 7018 2366
NT, SA & WA : 08 7078 7741
Mon - Fri: 10am - 7pm NZST
AKL: 09 884 4440
IDCARE has access to the Department of Social Services’ Free Interpreting Service, delivered by the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National). Access to the Free Interpreting Service is provided to assist you to communicate with non-English speaking people who hold a Medicare card. Please note that the service does not extend to New Zealand citizens or residents who do not hold an Australian Medicare card, or to tourists, overseas students or people on temporary work visas.
New Zealand Relay provides the following services to help Deaf, hearing impaired, speech impaired, Deafblind and standard phone users communicate with their peers.
A TTY user connects to New Zealand Relay via a toll-free number and types their conversation to a Relay Assistant (RA) who then reads out the typed message to a standard phone user (hearing person).
The RA relays the hearing person's spoken words by typing them back to the Textphone (TTY) User.
The National Relay Service (NRS) is a government initiative that allows people who are deaf, hard of hearing and/or have a speech impairment to make and receive phone calls.
The NRS is available 24 hours a day, every day and relays more than a million calls each year throughout Australia.
Ask our Case managers for more information on how this service will help you.
IDCARE as a registered charity does not ask individuals to donate or pay for our front line services. We are not a charity that can receive tax deductible donations.
We rely on organisations that care enough about you to care about us to keep our charitable service going. Proudly these organisations are displayed above and on our Subscriber Organisations page. If you are asked for payment you are encouraged to report this to IDCARE via our Report Phishing page.
