By Andrew Green, Staff Reporter
"I WANT my money or I want my job," the angry Kingston woman shouted in front of the Half Way Tree Resident's Magistrate's Court last year.
Inside the Court, Patricia Coke and Allan Robinson explained how they had charged $5,000 per person to register people for job interviews through their employment agency. They had told many of their clients that Tiger Woods was flying to Jamaica on his personal jet to recruit people for his domestic staff.
More than 50 paid the registration fee, but Tiger never showed up. The desperate job seekers were victims of one of the many scams now current in the island.
Job scams are one of the main swindles now being perpetrated, said Consumer Affairs Commission director of field operations, Maxine Ellis. These scams come in a wide variety.
"Some tell you that you can work from home and earn a lot of money," Miss Ellis said. But they charge "horrendous" fees for you to start.
"Others offer work abroad," she said. Here again you pay some non-refundable processing fees that "leave you gasping for breath."
JOB OFFERS
Young Charmaine was overjoyed when she received a letter offering her employment in the United States from an agency she had never approached or heard from before. It took older, more experienced relatives to make her understand how illogical the offer was, and the likelihood of her losing the US$50 processing fee.
There are genuine companies offering placement services, so the question is how to tell the good ones from the bad.
"If someone is offering you a job abroad, clear it with the Ministry of Labour," Miss Ellis said. "If the Ministry does not know about it, forget about it."
Research is important and there should be an agency or government ministry with oversight of the person or business you are dealing with. As well, a registered business should have some documentation proving they are authorised to carry out their function.
Frank Lee's experience was with a small graphics company on Washington Boulevard that was supposed to print designs on some mugs for him. They demanded full payment up front, but kept delaying delivery of the mugs for some logical sounding reasons.
He eventually turned up at their premises one day and found the company gone. He had thought they were just displaying the normal level of inefficiency.
"Some people, when they run into problems, just shut the business down and open somewhere else," Miss Ellis said.
Of course you might not be checking for trouble if you yourself are participating in an illegal activity. People who participate in pyramid moneymaking schemes should already know the risks involved, but there may be a higher level of ignorance in the case of visa fraud, another of the top scams.
"People will find $100,000 to pay a guy who comes up to them and says he has a contact at the US embassy," one source familiar with visa fraud, told Wednesday Business. These conmen carry no identification or proof that they can accomplish what they offer to do.
Job scams affect mostly the poor but visa and passport fraud catch people at all levels, Miss Ellis said. Prosperous people get turned down for foreign visas just like anyone else, but they can better afford to make illegal payments.
Desperation and anxiety are what the conmen depend on. Unwillingness to question authority is also a useful character trait to prey on.
"If you go to the Registrar General's Department to transact business and a man comes up to you and says, 'Okay lady, gimme your documents,' why would you give it to him?"
If you ask questions and seek identification, the scammers will usually back off to avoid a paper trail. Yet people do offer their documents and then are forced to pay off the scammers, she said.
Unwillingness to question authority also looms large in the school scams. One type of school scam involves con artists establishing schools that offer courses supposedly in conjunction with major foreign universities.
"I am likely to enrol faster and to pay more for one of these prestige courses," Miss Ellis said. Cases have occurred where no link exists with the big foreign universities and the fraud squad has been brought in to investigate.
"At least check with the Ministry of Education, to make sure your certification is worth the paper it is written on," he said. If your school has no accreditation, then the course offered would not be recognised anywhere.
QUESTION AUTHORITY
Unwillingness to question authority may also be to your detriment when it comes to property transactions. Several lawyers have been convicted of fraud in the last three years, for not paying over the proceeds of the sale of property to their clients.
The Fraud Squad reports a rising trend in commercial fraud. Their reports show forgery being the most widespread offence in numbers and with an increase in reports of fraudulent wills, visas, and transfers of land. In 1997, for example, of 508 fraud cases reported to the police, 255 related to forgery.
A critical problem the Fraud Squad has found, reports Deputy Superintendent Hall-Roberts, is that some offenders are caught, convicted, go to prison and return to the streets to commit the same offence. Repeat offenders are not receiving stiffer penalties to slow their progress in crime.
But citizens also need to be more cautious in their business dealings, Miss Ellis said. In this, greed and fear can be your biggest enemies.
