Scammers can target UT students through RocketJobs

It’s simple — take a check, usually from outside the country, and deposit it in your bank account. Then, withdraw the cash and wire it to your “employer” after you’ve taken a cut.

But the trick is that the check you just deposited is either fake or stolen. That cut you received for such easy work has made you a criminal.

You’ve just become a money mule. And you’re one of thousands of people this happens to every day — including on the University of Toledo’s campus.

It might sound easy to recognize, but a UT student who wished to remain anonymous was almost taken in while looking for a part-time job on RocketJobs.

She said she received several emails with job offers that just did not sound quite right, so she ignored them. But after an employment dry spell, she went back through her Rocket email account and reached out to the least fishy offer she could find.

“He had gotten my résumé from RocketJobs, and so that seemed like the most legit out of all of them,” she said.
The scammer’s responding email claimed he was overseas on a business trip, and wanted the student to run some errands for him while he was away, including shopping and bill payments.

Immediately, alarm bells went off in her head.

“You’re not going to send money to someone that you’ve never met without a background check or anything like that,” she said. “But again I’m going, ‘Well, okay he offered basically $15 an hour to do his stuff. And again, it’s really good money and came through the school.’”

The scammer sent her a check and told her to put it in her own account, and said there would be directions on what to do with the money later. She received a $2,200 check and some texts that asked her to deposit the money immediately.

Instead of throwing in the towel, she decided to be extra careful. She went to a bank, told the manger her story, and opened a separate account for the transaction.

“I need a separate account so I can be meticulous, saying this is where every penny of what you gave me went,” she said, “and then if it turns out not to be legit, it’s also not mixed in with my account.”

She put the check in the newly-opened account on the Saturday she received it, knowing it would not be processed until Monday.

“That weekend, Sunday, he kept texting me asking for updates, and I was like, ‘Dude, it’s a Sunday. There’s no update. There’s nothing to do on a Sunday. There’s no banking, no anything,’” the student said.

Because she knew her bank would put a hold on such a large check, the student used the extra time and a photo she’d taken of the check to call the bank from which the check supposedly came.

“They got back to me and they said ‘Yeah, we have no record of this check,’” the student said.

She called RocketJobs and left a message about her experience, and has since filled out an online report with the FBI.

Sergeant Brian Boerst from UT’s police department said multiple students have come to UTPD after encounters with scammers. Though he didn’t work with the student who came forward, he said he’s worked with several students at UT, at least one of whom fell victim to the scam.

“[The scammers] can look up anyone with a UT email,” Boerst said, “and send them a fishy email saying work from home, record your hours and we’ll send you a check for X amount of money.”

And when it comes on RocketJobs, Boerst said students should still be careful of the business opportunities they go after.

“Anyone can join RocketJobs to be an employer,” Boerst said.

According to Matthew Junod, information security officer and manager, “it’s a matter of registration.” An employer is usually a representative of a company, and they apply to be able to post jobs.

“The submission is reviewed by the Career Services folks down in the Student Union before it is posted,” Junod said.
But Junod said prevention is an uphill battle — IT blocks over a million spam messages per day, but “the scammers are working constantly to make messages look like legitimate messages to evade our filters.”

Junod said marking messages as spam will help the system better filter them out in the future.

Boerst said when UTPD gets checks from money muling scams, they “are either involved in taking the check and doing a police report and putting it in as evidence,” or they destroy the check.

“People can solicit anyone on email so there’s nothing that can usually be done about it,” Boerst said.

To prevent getting scammed, Dean for the Student Experience Tamika Mitchell said to watch for unusual payment requests.

“I would err on the side of caution any time a student is looking for any type of service or job where the request is to pay money up front,” she said. “I’ve never in all of my years of working had the request where you need to pay before you have the opportunity to work this job.”

Mitchell also recommended looking at the email address to see if it is from a UT email.

“We’ve had scammers come across our portal and look legitimate saying they’re from our IT department … but when you look closely, it may not be from a UT email address,” Mitchell said.

She stated that UT’s IT department will never send an email out asking to verify information.

Junod suggested sending questions about suspicious emails to the IT helpdesk.

“If a student suspects that a job offer posted on the RocketJobs site is fraudulent or suspicious,” Junod said, “the student should let Career Services know so that the fake posting can be taken down.”

But despite precautions, students are still getting scammed. And in that case, Junod recommended filing a report with UTPD.

“The more that are reported, the more attention and resources the police and federal law enforcement put into investigating the incident,” he said.

How do they steal your money?

Real check

• Scammer sends the check
• You take your percentage out
• Either you mail the rest, or you buy products and ship them overseas, where they are sold on sites like Ebay
• Usually used when laundering dirty money

Artificial check

• Scammer sends the check
• You take your percentage out
• You mail the rest where you are told to
• The check bounces, but the bank has cashed it through your account, so someone else gets your money

Signs of a scam

There are several signs a job offer could be a scam, according to Junod. These include:

•Demands for payment prior to starting work

•Use of webmail like gmail.com or Yahoo Mail (This is not always bad, but can be one more thing to look out for)

•Work-from-home jobs (not always fraud, but one more thing to look out for)

•The company requests you to install software on your computer to get a job

•Requests for personal details, like SSN or bank account number via phone or email

•Suspicious job titles, like “Payment processing agent”, or “Funds transfer agent”

•Fake or misspelled business names, addresses and phone numbers

•Any job that requires the person to wire (wire transfer) money, especially when the student gets to keep a “commission” for themself

•Anything that sounds too good to be true