Lori Melton has been looking for a job ever since being laid off from a Lakewood Ranch construction company in November.
She thought she had found something a couple of days ago when she stumbled across an administrative secretarial position in the local area that paid $52,000, posted on the Web site Craigslist.com.
“It looked really promising,” the Bradenton resident said. “The pay rate was probably about $15,000 more than I had been making. I sent them off a resume and they sent me back an e-mail right away saying, ‘Wow. You’re the type of person we’ve been looking for and we have people ready to interview you now.’ ”
Not so.
Instead, what the company called Careerexperts.org set out to do is sell Melton a redesigned resume for $100.
Such bait-and-switch exchanges are increasingly turning up on the Web as more and more people lose jobs and become desperate to find work.
Experts say that if the promise of a job through such a service sounds too good, it probably is.
“At the moment, your resume is creating a negative effect according to some of the employers,” a company representative from Careerexperts.org calling herself Sister Mary Joseph e-mailed Melton. “We do not want to see your resume being rejected yet again for these top level jobs ... These jobs are not public so you have no competition, but we must act quickly or someone else will surely take the jobs that were meant for you.”
On a hunch, Melton Googled the company’s name and came up with countless hits labeling the job site a scam.
She sent a sampling of those comments to Sister Mary Joseph.
The reply?
“My dear, i have all your personal info. we will see how you like it when employers read about you!”
Melton took it as a threat.
She said she reported the incident to the FBI.
FBI officials said they do not confirm or deny ongoing investigations.
An e-mail submitted to the Vancouver-based Careerexperts.org by the Bradenton Herald seeking comment was not immediately answered.
Jim Buckmaster, chief executive officer of Craigslist, said the company makes every effort to weed out scammers.
“Through technical and other means, we prevent the vast majority of scam attempts from reaching our users,” Buckmaster said by e-mail. “Those that do reach the site are usually removed quickly through our flagging system.”
The CEO said Craigslist also offers tips to avoid scams at www.craigslist.org/about/scams.
“Beyond these measures, we assist law enforcement agencies in their efforts to shut down scam rings,” Buckmaster said.
Last year, the Federal Trade Commission received 17,294 complaints of possible fraudulent employment agencies, job counselors and opportunities to work at home or overseas. That number comprised about 6 percent of the overall 258,427 complaints in 20 different categories.
But that figure does not reflect 2008, a year that has brought nearly 2 million lost jobs in the midst of a downward-spiraling economy. This year’s figures won’t be released until February, an FTC spokeswoman said.
Email Story
Printer Friendly 
Quick Job Search
@Nyx.replyAnswerText@