Scammers mine online recruiter for patsies in package reship scheme

Enlarge / That sketchy speedy delivery gig you were offered by that company that you applied to work for? It's probably a scam.

If you're using a Web-based third-party recruiter site to look for and apply for jobs, you may want to keep a close eye on the e-mails you get in response. As Steve Ragan of CSO reports, scammers are harvesting information from recruiter sites to offer "flexible" jobs that are in fact criminal undertakings-often posing as executives from the companies where applicants have applied for jobs.

One woman who applied for a job at the paint manufacturer Sherwin-Williams through the site of ZipRecruiter received an e-mail shortly afterward from someone posing as the CEO of the company. The person claimed that the position she had applied for was filled but offered another job as a "personal assistant" for the CEO himself for $500 a week.

"If you accept my offer, I will need you to take charge of my mails pick up and drop off as well as errand running during your spare time outside of work," the e-mail read. "The job is flexible so you can do it wherever you are as long as there is a post office in the area. I will pay for the first week in advance to run errands, and will also have my mails/packages forwarded to a nearby post office where you can pick them from at your convenience."

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