job hunters: beware of scams

Those of you looking for aid work: beware! There are several scammers about targeting you specifically.

Many victims may have been contacted by scammers as a result of them putting up a CV at sites like Monster.com, Totaljobs.com and Careerbuilder.com. The scammers often use the titles of genuine companies in their scam mailings, but often, they recycle a real-sounding name again and again.

If you were to apply for one of these "jobs", you would probably receive an email that:
-- notifies you that, surprise, you are a finalist for this job!
-- you will need to pay a sizable fee in order to continue in the recruitment process
-- if you pay, you will continue to be hit up for fees to pay for the recruitment process

I already knew that UN agencies were posting warnings to their employment pages, telling potential applicants that UN agencies do NOT charge "recruitment fees" or "application fees" or anything else, and to ignore such requests if received. But I just found out about a new scam, because a friend forwarded an email to me about development jobs -- she was trying to be helpful. The forwarded email begins:

"The International Institute for Research and Growth(IRGI) is an
autonomous world wide and new agency engaging in multidisciplinary
research on the social dimensions of contemporary problems affecting
development and growth.Through its research, IRGI stimulates dialogue
and contributes to policy
debates on key issues of social development within and outside all
national and international systems."

It goes on, extolling the virtures of this "development organization", and then has a long list of VERY well-paying development jobs.

It was something about the occasional extra spaces between words, and a lack of space between others, that first made me suspicious. Reading the email with a critical eye made me further suspicious, because of:
-- the incredibly high salaries
-- some of the salaries for different jobs were the same ($113,120)
-- no physical address listed for this company, just a phone number and an email address.
-- the email used two different names: "International Institute for Research and Growth" and "International Research and Growth Institute"

Using the email address, I looked up the URL, and was greeted with a web site with a list of links about Russian brides, inter-racial dating, Islamic Banking, older women, Christian singles, and on and on, plus annoying popups for casinos and what not.

Googling a bit with the different company names generated a page on Data Wales, a site mostly devoted to promoting Wales; the individual who runs this site also has a section called "The Internet Fraud Advisory," and within this section, a page on fak job offers and a sizable list of company names attached to job offer frauds (including IRGI). You can use the "find" function on your web browser to look for a specific name of other companies on the page.
http://www.data-wales.co.uk/ni_fake_jobs.htm

So, job hunters, be alert, and give any emails listing jobs a very careful read! If you are feeling suspicious, use google to check out company names or individual names further!