Employment Scam You've Been Scammed

Con men, fraudsters, scam artists, call them what you want,

the fact is they're after our money

and last year they took an estimated £3.5 billion off the British public.

Coming up...

how looking for work could put you at the mercy of the con men...

When you look back and think about it, it's obvious that it's a scam.

I was just too pleased to have a job to realise it at the time.

..and the million pound scam

that targeted people selling their car...

I was ringing this phone number and it just rang and rang and rang

and I got no joy, so I started thinking, "Is this right?"

I'm here to tell you what the con men don't want you to know -

how to stay ahead of the game and not get scammed.

Most of us need a job.

It's no surprise, therefore, that there's a range of scams

which are based around employment.

They target people who want to work.

In other words, people who are trying to do the decent thing

and provide for their families.

The sort of people who really can't afford to lose money to a scam.

So with hundreds of thousands out looking for work,

employment scams are a serious concern

to organisations like the National Fraud Authority.

The fraudster is playing on the fact

that you've been out of work for a time,

you're desperate to get a job,

you want to work, you need to pay the bills.

There are a variety of employment scams

and some of the jobs on offer sound quite attractive,

as young mum Kara has found out to her cost.

She lives just outside London with her three-year-old son Toby.

Sadly, looking for work has brought Kara into contact

with some devious con men.

-Hello, Kara. I'm Matt. How are you doing?

-Hello.

Kara, what's your situation right now?

I'm a single parent.

I have got a little three-year-old boy.

I'm on benefits, although I would really like to work.

Since Toby was born, Kara's had to survive on income support.

As well as finding it hard to make ends meet,

she misses the independence of having her own job.

Kara decided to start looking for work in November 2010

and she had no idea that she would end up on the radar of the scammer.

The first stage obviously is recruitment.

The fraudster has to recruit you.

They can advertise in legitimate publications

or they can advertise in job centres.

Where do you go looking for jobs at the moment?

I always look on Directgov, which is the link to the Jobcentre website.

I always really only stuck to that and the local paper.

The Jobcentre section of the Directgov website

features thousands of adverts for work,

and in March 2011, a job appeared there which caught Kara's eye.

It was for an online auction assistant working on eBay.

And I used to be obsessed with eBay, I would buy and sell on it,

so I thought, "This is really good."

The company offering the job said they were an electrical retailer

and wanted someone to sell items for them on the internet

using the auction website eBay.

It was perfect for single mum Kara

because it was work she could do from home.

You saw the advert,

-you got in your application.

-Yeah.

-What next?

An out-of-office reply came back

saying they'd received so many applications.

It sounded as if the job was oversubscribed

and Kara thought she'd missed the boat,

but there was one glimmer of hope.

They sent a form asking more about the feedback you had on eBay.

What Kara didn't know was that this was all part of a clever process

to convince her she was applying for a normal job.

It was pretty much the same as every other application

apart from the questions regarding eBay -

"What's your feedback? How have you used eBay before?

"What type of things have you sold on eBay?"

Kara felt she was well qualified for the position,

but having applied for numerous jobs

and heard nothing back, she didn't want to get her hopes up.

PHONE RINGS

But two days later, the company called to offer her the job.

-How did that feel?

-I was over the moon. I was absolutely over the moon.

What she didn't know

was that she was now in the clutches of the con man.

You've just got a job. You want to work.

You've got to get that money in

and you're not going to question what they ask you to do.

What was it you were doing?

Just listing their products on eBay and answering questions buyers have,

taking the money from the buyers and then sending it to the company.

So you are a middle person?

-Yeah.

-You never see the products?

-No.

Did you get any contract or did you get anything that said,

"These are your terms and conditions of employment."

I received one e-mail

saying what the money would be, 10% commission,

and what the hourly rate would be,

but it was on a week's trial.

She said, "We'll receive all the information after that week."

The trial period gave the con men a window

in which to carry out their scam

and in another clever move, they told Kara that during this trial,

she would need to use her own personal eBay account.

Although warning signs were starting to appear,

Kara had no reason to question what she was being told.

I was just too pleased to have a job

and the only person that did say something was my stepdad.

-What did he say to you?

-He said, "This sounds too good.

"This is definitely a scam."

I said, "No, it's not because it's advertised on Directgov,

"it can't be a scam."

-And you've ignored him?

-Yeah.

What happened next? You've got to start doing your job.

Yeah. I said to her on the Friday I can start today

and she said, "I'll send you over some listings

"put them on eBay, and then e-mail me back with the listing numbers."

Kara was asked to sell a variety of items

including hands-free mobile phone kits for about 100 quid.

She got back to me on the Saturday and said, "That's all great,"

and she asked me every day to give her feedback

on how many people were watching the product,

has anyone bid on it and has anyone won it?

Over the next few days,

Kara was suddenly bombarded with calls from the company.

Every time my phone rung, it was her saying, "How they doing?"

At one point I said, "I thought I only had to give you a daily update."

She just said, "I'm just checking everything's all right.

And then on the Tuesday, I think it was, um,

five of the products had sold.

She said, "If you can now transfer the money into our bank account."

Kara collected a total of £400 from her customers

and transferred this money straightaway to the company.

All she had to do now was to wait for them to confirm

they posted the hands-free kits to her buyers.

You think the goods have been dispatched.

The dispatchers will give you an invoice number.

She promised me she would give me the tracking numbers

to give to the buyers, and suddenly,

when I gave them the money, then no contact at all.

Kara tried calling, but the company didn't answer their phone

and the penny was slowly starting to drop.

With a lot of these scams, there's a tipping point for people

when they suddenly realise

and they understand what's going on,

-or most of what is going on.

-Yeah.

-When was that moment for you?

It was probably when she sent me that e-mail and I said,

"No, I'm not having anything until I get the tracking numbers."

When I got no response to that,

I thought, "God, you're so stupid, this is a scam."

OK, what happened after that, then? You said no to her.

I was ringing her every ten minutes.

I know that sounds excessive, but I had the buyers on my back saying,

"I'm going to go to the police about you.

"I want my money back." I was getting threats from them.

And I just thought,

"There's nothing I can do apart from just constantly ring."

The company refused to answer Kara's calls or e-mails

and she now realised she had to face the music from the innocent buyers

she'd unwittingly drawn into the scam.

There are two victims here -

there's you that hasn't got the job that you thought you had

and also the innocent buyer at the end of the line

who hasn't got their goods.

I was honest with them, I said, "Look, I've been part of a scam

"and unfortunately, you've been caught up in it.

"Please raise a case against me on eBay so you can get your money back."

One of the guys was fine. He said, "Thank you for letting me know.

"I'm sorry this happened to you."

Um, the three other guys were extremely mad,

saying they want their money now.

And the money... I didn't have the money.

I couldn't return the money, even if I wa... Well, I did want to,

but I couldn't return the money

so eBay returned the money to the four people

and eBay are now chasing me for the money, which I don't have.

Because Kara listed the items using her account,

she was liable and eBay were entitled to ask her

for the £400 that had been lost.

That is a lot of money to me.

That's a massive amount of money. I can't pay that back.

I should have listened to my stepdad, really.

I just think, "God, I'm just so stupid

"for actually not piecing it all together and realising."

But you're not stupid, you know,

that's really important to understand

and you're not gullible and you're not greedy

or any of those things that people say about scams.

This is a scam that works very, very cleverly.

They've had thousands of applicants for that job, and do you know what?

They've all got the job. OK?

They've all got the job. Loads of buyers all send their money,

the money gets passed on. Suddenly, the company's disappeared.

It's not down to your gullibility, stupidity, greed,

any of those things.

The scammers who targeted Kara knew exactly what they were doing

and perhaps their smartest move was to advertise the job

on the official Jobcentre website.

In Kara's eyes, this gave the company instant credibility

and is something the Department For Work And Pensions take seriously.

This is what they had to say...

So what do you need to know

to make sure the job you're applying for is safe and legitimate?

Look at the job you're actually doing and just think,

"Is this really what I expected I would be doing?"

And if you are being asked to move money through your account

or sell goods you've never seen, alarm bells should start ringing.

If they are asking to you complete an application form,

be very careful about the details that you provide.

When you apply for a job,

you should never give out your National Insurance number

or date of birth or bank account details.

They could be used by a fraudster to steal your identity

as well as your money.

Find out as much as you can about the company offering the job,

how long have they been trading,

are they registered with Companies House,

are there any horror stories about them on the internet?

Sadly, this is too late for Kara

and in the future, she will be much more cautious about finding a job.

Trying to sell your car can be a right pain in the Bugatti.

The last time I tried - two weeks, not a sniff.

If you're more successful,

you have a string of jokers coming down your drive, kicking your tyres,

drinking your tea, sucking air back through their teeth at the price.

Wouldn't it be wonderful

if there was a service which just for £100

lined you up with serious buyers?

Guess what, there is. It's called car matching, and for a fee,

companies promise to find buyers for you,

making selling your car as easy as pie.

and over the last few years, a succession of car matching scams

have hit innocent motorists where it hurts most.

It's not unreasonable to estimate that the loss to the public

from those activities was probably about £10 million.

Around 6 million used cars are sold every year in the UK

and scam artists have wasted no time trying to exploit this demand.

Over the last five years, car-matching scams

have been a serious concern for those in the motoring industry.

Unfortunately, we've heard many tales from our readers

who have been caught up in these car-matching scams.

Like all the best scams, it is deceptively simple

and lots of people, unfortunately, have been taken in by it.

The scam works just like this - you want to sell your car,

so you put an advert in the newspaper or magazine

and then you receive a phone call from a company that claims

to have lots of buyers lined up for your car, and of course,

that's appealing and they say,

"We've got buyers for your car.

"If you give us a sum of money," it is usually around £100,

"we'll put you in touch with them and sell your car, effectively."

It is a familiar sounding story for Paula

who lives near Bath with her husband, Richard.

In 2008, a sudden change in circumstances

left them needing to sell their car.

My husband had some bad news at beginning of 2008

when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease

so obviously, he couldn't drive anymore, so we put it up for sale.

Paula advertised their carefully driven five-door hatchback

for a very reasonable £2,500.

The advert was placed in a local magazine, but the phone didn't ring.

Then one day, a man phoned up who said he could sell the car for her.

He said that he had a buyer for the car.

He could guarantee us a minimum of £2,650,

which was great because we'd only advertised it for £2,500.

So we thought, "That's good."

The man was calling from a car-matching company

called Vehicle Seller UK Ltd

and he had a slick sales pitch.

He said they had a database of buyers

who were looking for cars such as this

and it was going to cost me £89.99.

Paula was told the car would also be advertised

on Vehicle Seller's website

and £90 was starting to sound like very good value.

So you're then to pay £90, but the process will be cut short

and you will have achieved your sale.

Sandy's story is almost identical.

She'd been trying to sell a sporty convertible

which she'd bought as a treat to herself.

I enjoyed it for just over a year.

Then I thought, "OK." I paid for it and I thought, "Time to sell it."

That's the reason. It just wasn't big enough for the family, really.

Sandy advertised her smart low-mileage convertible

for the bargain price of £7,000.

After three weeks, no-one had rung about the car,

but then Vehicle Seller UK got in touch.

The guy that rang me up,

he said there was a lot of people waiting for cars like mine.

There was actually people queuing for cars like mine

and it would be gone, like, within a week and I would have no problems.

Sandy was sceptical at first,

so the salesman suggested she go away and look at their website.

I spoke to my husband and said, "What do you think?"

We looked at the website,

there was cars actually on there like mine, so a proper website.

So we thought, "OK, it seems legit, it seems all OK,

"maybe if he does ring me back, we'll go for it."

The salesman phoned back and Sandy found herself parting with £200.

The longer you leave it, the less money you're going to get for it.

It was a good deal, really.

But as soon as Sandy and Paula handed over their cash,

the salesman at Vehicle Seller UK went mysteriously quiet.

I mean, the thing that worried me,

that he had phoned me twice or three times in one day

and then the next day when I was having qualms,

I couldn't get hold of him.

I didn't hear nothing, so I wanted to know what went on,

so I was ringing this phone number

and it just rang and rang.

Desperate to find out what was going on,

Sandy got in touch with someone else whose car was being advertised

on Vehicle Seller's website.

I rang him and I said to him about selling his car

and he told me he had been with this company a year

and he has not had one phone call.

So in my head, I was thinking, "This ain't right.

"This has got to be a scam."

And Sandy was right.

She and Paula had become the latest people

to be duped by Vehicle Seller UK,

a company who had conned thousands of others in a similar fashion,

but not for much longer.

Sandy, Paula and scores of unhappy customers

complained to Trading Standards.

Trading Standards called in the Insolvency Service,

a government agency which has the power to shut companies down

if they're up to no good.

Paul Titherington is an official receiver for the Insolvency Service

and was one of the men charged with investigating Vehicle Seller UK.

It wasn't capable of providing the service

that it purported to customers it would provide, and therefore,

customers were not receiving a service that they paid for.

The challenge for the Insolvency Service was to prove

that Vehicle Seller UK Ltd had never intended

to provide a real car-matching service

and that the company was set up to scam people like Paula and Sandy.

To do this, they needed to know

what Vehicle Seller UK had been promising,

whether they had any car buyers on their books

and whether they'd helped anyone sell their car.

Step one was to look at all the complaints

and see if there were any common threads.

When initially looking at how Vehicle Seller had run its business,

we were looking at what it was telling customers

about the service it was to provide.

That it had numbers of customers

waiting to buy that particular vehicle.

If they paid now, it's likely they would be round that night, the customer, to buy the vehicle.

It was also saying that the likelihood was

that the seller would get more from the customer

than they would do by selling it elsewhere,

It was starting to become clear that Vehicle Seller UK Ltd

had a very good reason for only charging a relatively small amount.

The customer's unlikely to do too much about it,

they'll just chalk it up to, "Unfortunately, I've lost £100,"

The Insolvency Service now knew the tactics

Vehicle Seller UK Ltd were using to get people to part with their cash.

The next stage was to start gathering hard evidence

so Chris Mayhew, the company's investigation supervisor,

set his team to work.

We appointed an investigator to exercise statutory powers

and go out to the trading address and carry out an investigation.

The investigator was armed with a warrant

allowing him to search Vehicle Seller's offices

and seize any relevant documents, but when he got there,

he found the company had virtually no records,

either on computer or paper.

If a company is acting legitimately,

you would expect accounting records,

co-operative staff, co-operative officers behind the company.

With limited company records,

the investigator had to painstakingly piece together evidence

from what little paperwork there was

but as he did, the full scale of the scam began to emerge.

Vehicle Seller had boasted they had 3,000 clients on their books,

but it seemed most of them

were people like Sandy and Paula who had been scammed.

Our investigator was able to ascertain

that there were over 2,700 complaints.

It's probably fair to say in this instance

that of all the alleged 3,000 people on their books,

not one person actually sold a car through this company.

The Insolvency Service now had the evidence they needed

to take Vehicle Seller UK to court.

The team prepared their case

and put together a winding-up petition,

a recommendation that Vehicle Seller UK Limited be forced to close down.

That letter came before the High Court

who agreed with the findings and ordered the company into liquidation

on grounds of public interest.

So in April 2009, six months after their investigation had begun,

the Insolvency Service closed down Vehicle Seller UK for good.

But the Insolvency Service weren't done yet.

They wanted to make sure the men behind the company

didn't just go off and start all over again.

So in came Paul Titherington.

On the winding up of a company,

the job falls to me to investigate its affairs,

to identify its cause of failure

and to decide whether there is misconduct

on behalf of the directors that warrants action

under the directors disqualification provisions.

Paul needed to interview the two directors of Vehicle Seller UK Ltd

to see if they could explain

why they hadn't provided the service they promised

and why there was such huge blanks in the company's records.

A significant amount of money had been withdrawn in cash

and there was no explanation where that had been, where that had gone.

There was also a significant amount of payment by way of cheques.

Again, no evidence to where that money had gone

and whether it was a legitimate expenditure

on behalf of the company.

The directors were called in for interview

but nothing they said could legitimately explain the goings-on

at Vehicle Seller UK Ltd.

It seemed certain that the company had been set up purely

to con people out of their cash.

The courts decided to disqualify both men

from being a company director for 11 years.

So, thanks to the hard work of Paul, Chris

and the Insolvency Service team,

Vehicle Seller UK Ltd and its directors

could no longer pose a threat to innocent people

like Paula and Sandy.

And there' been more good news for anyone selling a car,

Along with Vehicle Seller UK Ltd, the Insolvency Service

have investigated another ten car-matching firms

and taken action against the con men behind them.

There have been eight directors banned for ten years or more

and another eight have been banned from five to ten years.

This seems to have put the brakes on car-matching scams for now.

But if you're selling a car, you should still be on your guard.

Here's what you need to know to avoid the con men...

You shouldn't be put off trying to sell your used car yourself

because there's lots of good websites out there.

There's lots of good magazines. Lots are household names.

Sell your car there. Describe your car well.

Get your car nice and clean and tidy.

Offer it a fair price and you'll sell it through legitimate means.

For further advice on how to protect yourself against scams, go to...

Now, before we go,

there's just time to tell you about some of the latest scams out there.

I've come to meet an expert at the National Fraud Authority

to get the low-down on what you should be looking out for.

Today, we're looking at scams that target our health.

I'll be honest with you, Mike. I've put a few pounds on recently.

If you're a scam artist, what are you going to do for me?

Well, I've got latest miracle slimming pill, Matt.

In fact, you can carry on eating as much as like, you can have cakes,

chocolate, anything, take these pills four times a day

-and I'll guarantee you'll lose weight.

-Really?

Absolutely. Just send me £19.95 a month for the next six months,

you'll get your pills.

-What am I actually getting?

-Who knows what you're getting.

What we know, it's something that won't work.

Yes, this news just in -

there are no miracle cures when it comes to losing weight

and if you order pills from the internet,

who knows what you'll get through your door.

But weight-loss pills aren't the only health scam out there.

In fact, there are more harmful types of scams

where the scammers will actually promise

that they've cures for incurable diseases

or can stop your arthritis, for example, or cancer

and this robs people of their hope

as well as robbing them of their money.

It's just someone in a grubby office sending out these types of pills

which won't do you any good at all.

No matter how desperate you are for a cure,

don't take anything without seeking medical advice first.

Speak to your GP before trusting claims made in an e-mail or website.

So there you go - it doesn't matter how clever the scam is,

if you recognise the warning signs,

you can stay one step ahead of the con men.

Stay safe. See you next time.

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