Avoiding Online Job Fraud with Michael Majeed Markham Fraud Specialist

Fraud takes many forms, but it always involves someone promising to reward you or pay you for cash or services and you not getting the agreed upon reward. More and more people are finding that online fraud stretches to the job market as well. Michael Majeed Markham fraud investigator sees bad things like this happen to good people all the time.

How Online Job Fraud Occurs

The most common method of job fraud occurs from companies outsourcing their online work. They usually look for workers on freelance websites like Freelancer.com. The scammers post a job, promising specific wages to the workers who are accepted, then get people to do some work for them.

When payday comes around though, the workers are not compensated for their completed work, and the scammers are revealed. They then take the work already finished and move on to the next victim.

Many times there is no recourse the average person can take after being cheated out of their time and effort like this. Because scammers of this nature tend to use fake names and dummy email accounts, they are hard to track and even harder to pursue with legal action.

But Michael Majeed Markham fraud investigator would have experience dealing with online scammers. As a trained professional he knows how to handle cases of this nature.

How to Avoid Being Scammed

 

People who have been scammed once already online may know what to look for, but you want to make sure it does not happen to you in the first place. When you are searching for a job on a freelancing website, one set of red flag keywords is “Only serious inquiries” or any derivation of that. It tends to be a common tagline of job fraud criminals.

A stronger indication that your potential employer could be scamming you is rude behavior. If they insult you or seem to have a very short temper, these can be methods they use to cow you into submission and avoid questions. You should especially be wary if this type of hostile attitude comes up when payment is discussed.

You should also look out for employers who have not completed any jobs. Most freelance websites will tell you how many times employers have paid for jobs. If there are none listed, it could be that they are a new employer, but it could also be because they have scammed all their hires.

The final major indicator you should use to determine the verity of a freelance employer is how closely they stick to the terms of their agreement with you. If they want to change payment dates after you have already submitted work and extend the time you have to work before you are paid, you should immediately question them.

This scamming tactic is simply used to draw you into more work before their scam is revealed. Most honest freelance employers have no problem paying at milestones (such as every week or after a certain amount of work has been completed). Michael Majeed Markham fraud investigator sees scammers take advantage of people all the time. If you ignore the warning signs and end up getting scammed out of your hard work, then you should contact a fraud specialist who can handle your case for you.