Gone Scamming

I've been on the job hunt for about a month and a half now. Unfortunately, I was the victim of a downsizing at the law firm where I had worked since the bar.

That said, I've got my resume out umpteen different directions and to several different leads. I've made use of the job sites Careerbuilder and Monster, among others. Knowing that the job boards like Careerbuilder and Monster are where ID thieves and other predators like to try to score quick hits, I've been fairly vigilant about my correspondence with responders from those two places.

Yesterday, I received a letter addressed to "Dear (My Name)." It was from a Susan Davidson who works for a company referring to itself as "New City" building company and had a position for a "Customer Manager" position. The qualifications they'd listed were a bit below my level of education and experience, but, whatever. The e-mail tells me that they regarded my resume and consider me qualified for the customer manager job... and that I could click on the PDF for more information about job responsibilities and whatnot.

The job is really no different than other scams out there. My "job" would be to set up a bank account to receive payments, checks that would come every week at values between $1000 and $10,000 (How great that they would trust me with this money and not abscond with it!), hold it for a couple days, then transfer the amount less my $500 commission. This is the scam. The checks are not valid - they are written specifically to bounce. The thing is, they are supposed to bounce AFTER you've withdrawn the amounts deposited. The check you write will then be cashed and you'll be on the hook for the overdraft that incurs when the check bounces. It's not a very clever scam, but it apparently is effective enough to have people continue to try it.

Readers of my blog might be familiar with another scam that I'd posted about 9 months ago that is similar, but slightly different.

What I would emplore my readers, and people who come by after googling "new city building company" is to recognize that this is a scam. The name I received was "Susan Davidson" and the contact telephone number, an unlisted landline in Norman OK, is 405-253-5557. Others who come across similar scams involving this company, please let readers know of other names to be on the watch for.