A FAKE Scottish firm set up to con desperate unemployed people out of cash is part of an elaborate international scam.
The National revealed earlier this week that Waterland Warehousing, which claimed to have an office in Glasgow city centre, had been targeting jobless Scots, offering applicants non-existent contacts while charging them a fee of up to £200 for a crim- inal record background check.
Our investigation has revealed that similar websites to that of Waterland Warehousing have cropped up all over the world from Shetland and Glasgow to England, Australia and New Zealand, using the same information and bogus bosses.
Now a non-profit organisation called Saferjobs is working with employment agencies across Scotland, including myjobscotland.com and My World of Work, police, trade associations and industry to share intelligence, remove scams and offer free advice to jobseekers.
Saferjobs chairman Keith Rosser said more than 700,000 people had visited its website over the past year, reporting £500,000 in fraud.
He said: “Being headhunted for a career promotion is usually a real ego-booster, and hearing that an employer wants to make that job offer is normally great news.
“Yet sadly job scams are on the rise, both via out of the blue contact by a ‘head-hunter’ or a reply to a job application made online.
“With two-thirds of jobseekers looking to find their next job online, and an estimated one in three looking to move job each year, job scams are only likely to increase.
“Scams take a number of forms. Equally, job scams can range from asking for money in advance for bogus background checks, paying for training prior to employment, requesting a job seeker to call a number for a telephone interview that turns out to be a premium rate number, identity theft, or even money laundering through work from home scams.
“According to Action Fraud figures, the average cost of a job scam to an individual is £4,000 and in the last 12 months Saferjobs has received almost 700,000 visitors to the site for help and advice, with job seekers reporting more than £500,000 in suspected job fraud.
“There are other costs too, for example, some cases where individ- uals have resigned from genuine employment and been left out of work. Job seekers have also lost out through identity theft, with their details used to set up bogus companies or items bought under finance in their name.”
The National found another seven websites for fake firms all claiming to be leading logistics suppliers to the clothing and textile industry.
The scammers’ modus operandi is to set up under the names of firms which have gone bust, using their company registration numbers and their directors, as a front.
The firms claim to have the same founder called Ben Bayer pictured on their websites.
However, the real Ben Bayer is a director of a reputable family food business in Dorset and looks nothing like the man pictured on the dodgy websites.
Bayer’s father David has previously been reported as saying: “I must have had a dozen or more people calling me about these jobs.
“Some people have paid £300 for a fake criminal background check. It’s shocking.”
One of the victims of the Scottish Waterland Warehousing scam spoke to The National earlier this week about his experience, with the aim of preventing others from being duped by these scammers. Mark Wallis, 37, from Glasgow, was given a fake contact and told he would have to pay £130 for a background check but didn’t fall for the trick.
He became suspicious and did not part with any money telling the “recruiters” he already had a disclosure form.
This firm claimed to have offices in Glasgow but the company which occupies that address, and has done for years, said scores of people had turned up expecting to start work with Waterland Warehousing only to find it did not exist after paying out money.
Wallis said the fake firm found his contact details and CV on jobseeking sites. He was sent an email from Waterland Warehousing claiming an applicant had pulled out of a job at the last minute and asking if would he be willing to undergo an interview.
He was offered the job within days but was told he had to pay for a background check.
Wallis said: “I want to highlight this because it is pretty bad that they are targeting people who are desperately looking for work.”
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