Who knew job hunting can ruin your credit?

I confess it, I am a rabid job hunter. I work for an employment agency that is diligently searching for a new position for me, but it is impossible for me to just sit around waiting for my future to be decided. I start getting all twitchy (ok, more twitchy than usual) and the free time to think too much is bad for my health. I have interviewed and registered with several other agencies in the city and I also surf all the usual job sites religiously. I have learned that I am not the biggest kook out there, which is a little disturbing when I think about it. I am a pretty odd duck. The scariest and most infuriating things I have come across are the scams. Some of these are doozies and could potentially do some real harm to an unsuspecting, well-meaning person who just needs a job or some extra cash. A friend of mine suggested I post some of them so here you go:

The Administrative Assistant Scam:

This one usually involves someone posting an advertisement for an administrative assistant with few details and a request for people to submit resumes for consideration. After a few days, you will get an email detailing one of a few different scenarios:

a) I am an executive living in an international country who sells items on the internet. I don't want to open a bank account in the U.S. because of the taxes I will have to pay, so I need a representative who can receive checks or money orders on my behalf, cash them in a personal checking account, and forward the funds to a third party through Western Union. For your trustworthiness and help you will be paid a percentage of the total amount of each check or money order up to $500 per week.

b) I am an international businessman/woman who solicits donations for various orphanages and I need representatives in the different countries to collect the checks/money orders, cash them in a personal checking account, purchase toys for the children and send them to the orphanages. To reward you for your diligence and honesty, you will be paid a flat rate of $200 per transaction not to exceed $2500 per month.

Not bad, huh? You will also be requested to send the following information:

Full Names:

Full Contact Address:

City:

State:

Zipcode:

Phone Number:

Occupation (if any):

Sex:

Marital Status:

Age:

I can't quite understand why my gender, marital status, and age can possibly be of interest to someone who is foolish enough to trust a perfect stranger with money and how either of these situations in any way constitute an administrative assistant position. Also, why can't customers just wire money directly to the seller through Western Union? People send money this way all over the world every day. Here is my take on these 'jobs' - I think it is all a scam. I think that these people are creating fake checks and money orders, sending them to unsuspecting people who just want to earn some extra cash or like me, are just looking for an honest job. These poor people cash a bad check or money order, withdraw the cash immediately (minus their fee of course), and either forward the money to the third party or buy whatever items were requested, etc. I would then imagine that a few days later the bank discovers that the check or money order was a fake and have no way to recover the funds except to take them from the person who cashed the check in the first place, which would be me or whomever else was innocent enough to get involved in this.

In an effort to find out if this was just another crazy idea from my suspicious mind or if I was on to something, I did a little research on the internet and also spoke to someone from my bank and discovered some surprising things. I learned that MoneyGram is currently dealing with an epidemic of forged money orders. The money orders look exactly like the real thing - they have all the right strings of identification numbers in all the right places, the logos are perfect, and even the security seal looks accurate. Basically, the only way for the average person to tell if a money order is real or fake is to call MoneyGram, read them the numbers on the order, and have them verify that someone actually paid cash for it.

As for the forged checks, I contacted someone in the fraud department for my bank and asked what my recourse would be if I unknowingly cashed a fake check. The bank said there wasn't a lot that could be done unless I could prove who did it. Yes, I may have an email address or a name but who is to say that isn't all fake information? The bank would do whatever was necessary to recover the funds, meaning it would take the money from me because I was the person who cashed it. If I try to prevent the bank from recovering the money or if that recovery of funds put my account into overdraft and I did not cover it, they could close my account and report me to the FBI as a suspected check forger. The bank would put me into check systems, the national credit reporting system that banks use to determine if you regularly overdraw and then abandon accounts, which would also post negatively on my credit report. So basically, I could potentially ruin my credit, lose my bank account, and be investigated by the FBI as some sort of check forging fiend. Who knew job hunting could be so dangerous to my reputation and credit?

The Secret Shopper Scam:

This scam is pretty tricky because I actually know people who really do earn extra cash as secret shoppers. Basically, a business will hire a company to send out people to their stores, restaurants, etc. to act as 'difficult' customers and test the level of customer service they receive. It is a legitimate resource for many businesses and can provide valuable feedback. The secret shopper is given money to purchase items and eat in restaurants as well as a few hundred dollars per session for the work they do. A good secret shopper can do this a few times a month and earn some nice cash, eat out, and keep a lot of what is bought. A pretty nice setup, if you ask me.

I recently came across an ad for secret shoppers and was very excited - I have always wanted to try this out because it seemed like fun. So I sent an email to the contact address listed in the job posting and then forgot about it. A few weeks later, I received an email asking if I was still interested in the secret shopper position and if so, to send my yahoo online chat name so I could have a real-time conversation with one of the managers. I willingly sent my username and a few minutes later, got a ping requesting a conversation. Boy, did this turn out to be an interesting chat! I won't mention names, I will just call this guy Bob. Bob started out by calling me "Ma". At first, I thought he had confused me with someone else and asked him if he meant to speak to me or someone else. Bob said he was trying to be respectful and since he thought the name Lisa was female, it would have been rude to call me "sir." By this, I came to understand that he meant to call me "ma'am". Ok, a little odd but friendly enough.

I won't bore everyone with a detailed replay of the entire conversation, I'll just give you the juicy bits. After the end of a slightly confusing and rambling conversation where I guess I asked too many questions, Bob told me he felt sorry for my husband because I was obviously difficult to deal with. Now, I will be the first to admit that I can be opinionated and headstrong at times and understandably, that can give even the most patient person a headache. But I really don't understand why asking questions is a bad thing, especially for an employer. When I was hiring people and then managing them, I WANTED people to ask me questions. I never wanted an employee to just wander off and waste time performing a task incorrectly because of a lack of understanding. I would rather take a little extra time and find a better way to explain what I needed done, confirm that everyone was on the same page, and then feel confident that the task(s) would be done correctly the first time. So who is this unprofessional guy commenting on my marital status and the life of my poor (non-existent) husband?

After basically ignoring his comments about my personal life and trying to direct the conversation back to the secret shopper position, I was slightly irritated to find out that it had been filled and he had no need for any more secret shoppers. By this point, I was starting to wonder if maybe Bob had a few screws loose. I asked if this online chat was an interview for employment and if not, then I said that I needed to get back to job hunting and to please have a nice day. Bob said that he had a different position available for me and that he was emailing me a document to read. I was now starting to read all sorts of alternative meanings into the word 'position' and was wondering if I was going to find some sort of adult content in my inbox that would demolish my laptop with some super-virus if I opened it.

Needless to say, I opened the email. No naked people were pictured anywhere inflagrante, no laptop eating viruses attacked my computer, no FBI came banging on my door for committing some sort of cyber crime that I don't even know about. So far, so good, until I read the content. Essentially, I was being asked to set up a home office with a computer, color laser printer, and DHL, UPS, or FedEx account and I would miraculously become their new payroll accountant who would issue paychecks to various employees around the U.S.

I know that I am a very capable person and I can do just about anything I set my mind to, but I can't even begin to imagine what sort of skills and education go into being a payroll accountant. Every accountant I know has gone to school and taken numerous additional classes in order to be employed as one. I think they might even require a license of some sort. Also, don't most companies outsource their payroll to firms who specialize in it? And don't most employees prefer to have their paychecks electronically deposited into personal accounts these days? The whole thing seemed suspect to me - I was being asked to print out payroll checks on my home printer by a guy who had no problem labeling me a fishwife.

I asked Bob to be a little more specific with the details - I wanted to be sure I completely understood what he was asking me to do. By this point, I was definitely not considering him a viable employer, it was more that I was just very curious about this whole surreal setup. Uh oh, I had asked another question. Oops, sorry Bob, I know how you hate that.

In the end, I didn't really get many more details, but I was able to confirm my opinion that Bob was running some sort of scam. Maybe he really did employ secret shoppers in a legal fashion, but the whole payroll check printing setup was definitely not kosher. When I asked him if he would send me the blank checks to print out, he said I could just purchase good quality paper at the local Kinko's and with the right software (which he would send me), I could print out the checks that way. What about watermarks? Security seals? Account numbers? All the other little gadgets that are used to create legitimate checks? No answer.

The conversation limped along a little bit longer as I tried to confirm that I truly understood what he was asking of me, then I told him I didn't think I could work for him. I explained my concerns about the legitimacy of what I would be doing on his behalf and told him a little about some of the scams I had come across in my search for employment. Bob took the opportunity to lecture me on how overly suspicious I was and how that was unhealthy for my aura and my emotional life. He felt that if I would let go of all my negative concerns and just go with the opportunity he was presenting to me, I would be a much happier person. I thanked him for his (unsolicited) advice and mentioned that there was always the possibility he was correct about me, a perfect stranger, but that I was more concerned about becoming a much poorer person behind bars. There wasn't really anything left to discuss so I wished him a good day ( I didn't think wishing him luck was a good idea) and blocked him from my chat list.

After thinking about it for a while, I have to wonder if perhaps Bob was running something that was actually part of a bigger, more complex scam. If I printed out those checks, would they actually be sent to someone who was being scammed in the Administrative Assistant scam I outlined earlier? That would mean that something I did actually hurt another person, a stranger just trying to make a little money.

I have come across a few other suspicious things in my search for a job, but those two are the most potentially harmful ones I have seen. In a way, they have helped me put this whole job search thing into a different perspective - yes, I must have a job, but no, I will not do something I am even remotely suspicious about just to get off unemployment. Living on the dole for a few months, no matter how much it puts my life into total limbo, is infinitely better than going down a darker path that can have serious repercussions for strangers who might not be as suspicious minded as I am. I do not see myself as better than anyone else, but I try very hard not to be worse, either.