As we reported in a blog, earlier this week, MeloTel is a recent victim of fraud. A scammer who goes by the name of “Angel” placed a fraudulent job posting on Indeed.com, purporting to be hiring for a position at our company. In that blog, we described the steps we took to have the job posting removed. However, we also detailed that this “Angel” person was continuing to communicate with unsuspecting job seekers via email.
MeloTel’s Founder and CEO, John Meloche takes this situation very seriously. He is not content with having both his name and his company name used for fraudulent means. So, although he has had the posting deleted and has also alerted the authorities about this matter, he is taking things one step further.
John has set up a petition and he needs you to sign it!
Sign the petition HERE! On behalf of the entire MeloTel team, we’d like to request your help by supporting our quest to have Indeed notify all applicants of job postings that were removed for reports of fraud. Even though Indeed has been used by fraudsters to target innocent job seekers, they have no policy to inform potential victims of crime that they may possibly still be at risk.
It is hard to determine all of the various ways that scam artists approach the defrauding of job seekers using Indeed. However, we’d like to remind you of the way in which both John and MeloTel were victimized this month.
“Angel” presented himself as a legitimate member of our company.
He posted a fake job posting for a Customer Service Representative on Indeed.com. The posting led job seekers to apply for the job and they were instructed to communicate with the company through email instead of on the Indeed platform.
Through email, it was communicated that a “trial” was necessary in order for the candidate to be considered for the job. The supposed trial involved the following: A cheque, in the amount of $3,800.45, would be sent to the unsuspecting victim through FedEx with a tracking number. The cheque would contain legitimate signatures from members of a Vancouver-based law office who were also victimized by this scam.
The scammer then asks the victim to deposit the cheque and keep his/her pay of $500.00, but then use the rest of the money to pay past due bills for the company. Now, even though Indeed did take down the fake job posting, it was still active for two days – enough time to attract a large number of applicants.
To date, no official notice has been sent from Indeed to possible victims who applied for the job through this fraudulent posting. These individuals are still at risk of further victimization and are potentially dealing with the scammers even now. This means that anyone who has applied for the position may still be communicating with the scammer, totally unaware they are ongoing victims of crime.
We’re calling for Indeed to enact a new policy.
With this petition, we are calling for Indeed to enact a policy which will inform job seekers if applications containing their personal data were submitted to job opportunities that were later discovered to be fraudulent or reported for being a scam.
Indeed knows who has applied to every job. Enacting this policy should be easy for them. But, sadly, at present, anyone who applies for a job on Indeed.com will never know if their data was compromised in the event their applications were sent to fraudulent recruiters. Too many people are at risk of being unknowing victims!
Job seekers deserve to be informed by the provider they are trusting with their data. If Indeed knows that a job posting was attempting to rip off job seekers, it has a corporate responsibility to inform job seekers of this so they are not defrauded. As of yet, Indeed has still not informed applicants to the fraudulent posting, and we think they should.
You can help be a voice for these job seekers by signing this petition! Thank you!