CAUTION - Careerbuilder - Donna Steward

[panjkraz]

This is to inform of a potential threat to those who send information to a
specific email address, to wit, as advertised on Careerbuilder and was received by me about 1 month ago. The extent of this is unknows so please be careful.

BACKGROUND:
I applied to an email through a Careerbuilder notification for an Executive
Protectional Professional, with the company name of Donna Steward! (unable to verify the aforemntioned company/DBA) who worked for this unknown company and they needed a short term professional. The pay was advertised at $250.00 an hour, which sounded exorbitant even when compared to a PSD assignment so I sent my CV to said individual. At that time, it sounded way off but I decided to take off much of my usual information and sent a basic CV and if they needed more information, they would contact me.

FEEDBACK:
At end of same day I received a response stating that the reason for the need of an Executive Protection Professional was that this Donna Steward was doing an audit/inspection interviewing managers and due to the managers' lack of control, this Donna Steward would be a target for said managers. At the end of the email response, a main requirement for the position was for one to open an account at Wells Fargo Or Bank of America, which sounded odd to me.
This was suspicious to me so I responded that in order to do an advance, I
needed the address, location, time, etc to get my part of the work done. No
response to date!
I did notice that the Chicago Tribune (Sunday Edition, 1Nov09-) under 'Security' had the same Donna Steward with a yahoo adddress, which is strange (but not out of order) since most companies utilizing such services have their name@company.com

It appears that the CVs may be data mined for the information provided by this individual(s) and it sounded similar to those email from a WestAfrican nation targeting potential victoms/courses of identity theft.

I have no solid information on this but something smells!
Practice PERSEC and OPSEC to the highest order so please be careful!

semper fi

[Local Talent]

Thanks for the intel and good job on your cautious approach. I say if they're legit, they shouldn't have a pb giving out some business info to be checked out themselves. If they fall silent or deny my request, I'd rather miss out than get scammed.

Yours very much sounds like the employment scam I saw exposed on TV once: picture a well payed "personal assistant" position, for example (where no clear qualifications are required). Once you respond, they immediately send you an advance check to cover your first expenses, or because the gig is "delayed" due to a traveling employer but they still want to retain your services.
If it sounds too good to be true, it's because it is: before you have a chance to cash that big check, they inform you that the "accounting dept" made an error and overpaid you. In order to secure that cushy job, some people will be naive enough to send back some of the funds right away. Your money ends up overseas, their check bounces, and you never hear from them again.

I'm sure there's also scams where they hope to glean enough info from CV & resume to attempt ID theft.

This is why I created that thread: http://www.socalbodyguards.com/forum/showthread.php?t=230.
Even if you've been in the biz a while, it's sometimes hard to figure out whether they're legit or not. Some outfits operate out of maildrops, but are totally good to go, yet may smell fishy at first. And others are obvious crooks, whose email addy usually turns up on a Google search.

Again, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
As you said $250/hr is enormous. The going rate for real deal pros is more like $500-1,000/DAY. Often times, crooks have no real idea what the industry pays, so they make up huge salaries to draw in the newbs and the greedy. And that's another clue that something's not right.

Unfortunately, and you guys have probably heard me "pitch my bitch" before, the world is changing fast... and our industry with it.
Used to be that they would ID themselves in the ad and request resume & cover. If interested, they'd contact you for phone and/or personal interview. Then if, and only IF, hired, they'd create a file and ask for your docs and creds for employment and verification purposes.
But we live in a rushed and impatient world where prospective employers don't have time to read resumes anymore, and prefer to make snap decisions and avoid "wasting time" by actually meeting people. So they think nothing of requesting photos, copies of licenses and ID, and even SSN (!!!) right away, and via email (faster, right?), without even having the decency to ID themselves.

There's a company advertising here on yahoo hotjobs (on and off). Ad says "make $18-22/hr to guard a warehouse" in what is not even a fancy location. If you Google the terms of the ad, it shows up throughout the U.S. and is actually from a school peddling its online degrees. There's NO job, and guarding warehouses NEVER paid that much. Not a scammer, but false advertising nonetheless.

I see a lot of that and feel for folks who want to get started and have no idea what's out there. Due diligence is a MUST!

[Lone Wolf]

Those things have been happening here for months like that.. The latest scheme here is to advertise for a position and then require you to pay for your background check... Although it isnt that much money the point is that it doesnt take long for the money to add up... So as I always tell my friends keep it cool if you see an add with an email addy other that something that should be professional then be very very cautious... My real name was brought up during a conversation between a scam artist and one of my clients.. I asked my client if he knew how my name got brought up in the conversation... He said that the BG brought it up I questioned him more indepth about it and he assured me he had not mentioned my real name... So you have to be very very cautious when you respond to job adds anywhere.. ESPECIALLY on places like Career Builder, Monster, and even some of the websites that are for actual bodyguard jobs...

As my dad used to say if it walks like a duck it talks like a duck... ITS PROBABLY A FREAKING DUCK.. BE CAREFUL OUT THERE...