Generally speaking it is not a good idea to even mention a competitor.  Even bad PR is still PR.  But it is hard to stand by and watch job seekers get taken to the proverbial cleaners by people in the industry who profess to help them.  A few days ago, JT O’Donnell had @TobyDayton and me on a webinar talking about How To Use a Job Board.  There were lots of questions, mostly about the bad practices of some of the job boards.  It was sad to hear the experiences of these job seekers who are frustrated and angry.

After the session I received a call from a CEO in our industry, who runs a legit operation, thanking me for how we had the nerve to go after the bad apples in our ‘space.’  I appreciated the call.

Toby does a much better job of addressing some of these issues than me.  His post yesterday on Diggings explained the Money Mules concept running rampant on typical job boards.  All I can say is:  Pass It On.  Please.  Here is part of his post, but jump over and read the entire article if you have a moment.

Lest anyone accuse us of hyperbole, I thought I’d write a post about ‘Money Mules.’

Money mules are people that unwittingly use their bank accounts to help criminals launder money. Money mules are recruited through work-at home job postings on Monster and Careerbuilder with titles such as ‘Financial Manager’ and a job description that involves ‘moving money for an international company.’ These new recruits then provide their bank account information to their ‘employer’ and are told to withdraw cash that has been deposited into their account at a specific time and wire it abroad via Western Union or Moneygram.

Brian Krebs, a reporter at The Washington Post from 1994 to 2009 has written extensively on this issue and has exposed hundreds of these scams. I would strongly recommend that anyone looking for a job online as well as those offering advice for job seekers take some time to read his outstanding work highlighting this fraudulent activity. A few of his blog posts can be found here and here and here. I’ve also included portions of those posts below that relate to the scam listings on Monster and Careerbuilder:

“…Money mules are recruited through work-at-home job offers that arrive via e-mail, usually claiming that the prospective employer found the recipient’s resume’ on careerbuilder.com, monster.com, or some other job search site. Recruits are told they will be helping to move money for international companies, and are asked to provide their bank account and routing numbers so that they can receive incoming transfers.”

“…The Sanford mule — who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals by the hacked company and perhaps by the hackers themselves — said the Scope Group approached her via e-mail, saying it had found her resume on Careerbuilder.com, and would she be interested in a work-at-home job acting as a “financial manager”? Having worked as a payroll manager in a previous job, the mule said she thought it was a perfect fit. Besides, she said, she’d been out of work since March.”

“…This type of crime is impossible without the cooperation of so-called “money mules,” willing or unwitting individuals typically hired via Internet job search Web sites to act as “local agents” or “financial agents” responsible for moving money on behalf of a generic-sounding international corporation, legal experts say.The mules are then instructed to withdraw the cash and wire it via Western Union or Moneygram to fraud gangs overseas, typically in Eastern Europe. It is not uncommon for a single cyber robbery to depend on the help of dozens of money mules…”

Fraudulent job listings on traditional pay-to-post job sites are a serious risk, and the industry has to be more vocal about educating the public about using sites such as Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed, and Simplyhired.