Young job seekers fall prey to scam on Facebook
By EUNICE KILONZO, @eunicekkilonzo Ekilonzo@ke.nationmedia.comAbout 100 people were on Monday duped into travelling to a non-existent office in Nairobi for “job interviews”.
The young smartly dressed and eager job seekers had been told they had been shortlisted to be interviewed for administrative and clerical openings at Jade Financier Consultants at “Geomaps Centre, fifth floor, southern wing at 10am”.
An email to the applicants from one Laura S. Mshindi said before coming for the interview, each one should send Sh200 to a number, 5173 3500 0016 8020, to pay for their credit rating because “the financial consulting company never employs people who have been in default in their financial dealings before.”
The number does not exist as Nation found out after sending Sh10.
SCAM
However, Nation spoke to an official of Metropol Credit Reference Bureau, a business information and credit management company, who said the whole thing looked like a “scam”.
On Monday, the desperate job seekers, some from as far as Lamu and Kisii counties, were turned away by guards at the Upper Hill building.
One of them, a young woman from Nairobi who identified herself as Getrude, said she had seen the job offer on Facebook.
She said it was posted by Ms Laura Mshindi and stated, among other things, that applicants should not be older than 35 and would begin their new jobs on January 4 at a salary of Sh24,000.
She, however, said she had not sent the Sh200 as she “opted to pay it in person”.
“I sent my CV to mshindi999@gmail.com and mshindi@financier.com and got a reply that I had been shortlisted for an interview on December 28 only to come here and find it was a scam,” she said.
SENSITIVE DATA
“The email even asked us to bring a Certificate of Good Conduct as the financial institution deals with very sensitive and confidential data on behalf of banks and other financial institutions,” she said.
A guard at the Geomaps Centre told Nation: “People started streaming here as early as 6am for interviews at an office that does not exist in this building. Some were crying that they had come with the hope of new jobs, having slept on the road. I think they have been duped.”
Efforts to contact Ms Laura Mshindi both on email and on the Facebook page were futile.
This comes barely three months after nearly 20,000 people were promised jobs by East Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Safe Promotion International (SSASP International) that offered two or three appointments with curious titles such as Assistant Single Parent Manager and Assistant Widowed/Widower Manager.
The company’s top officials were arrested in Nairobi on September 2 after they were unable to prove the authenticity of their organisation.
They were handed over to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.