Watch out for email frauds. Unknown senders emailing you unsolicited job offers and requesting that you cash large checks on their behalf are likely scams.
Watch out for the following in fraud emails:
- The sender of the message is not the person offering the job.
- The jobs being promoted are too good to be true, like a personal assistant position who works from home with few responsibilities and large payouts.
- The email address is from a free email service when the job is for a prestigious international organization. Those organizations have their own email address that official emails will be sent from.
- The email will ask that you use a free email service as a “reading test” or a “test of your attentiveness.” This helps them bypass fraud monitoring tools.
- An insistence that conversations are only conducted via email or text, with statements around the inability to meet in person or speak over the phone due to “being busy” or “on travel.”
- A request to cash checks they mailed to you, and a request of you to send them the money back via a cash app like Venmo or PayPal.
- There is no job application or other job paperwork alongside the email.
Never cash checks received from an unknown source. With fake checks, once the bank finds out, they will take the money out of the account.
Suspicious emails that are likely frauds can be emailed to spamreport@wichita.edu.
