Employment Fraud

There has been an increase in fraudulent job emails being sent to our Ohio State students. Often these emails are sent from a compromised Ohio State University email account and can appear legitimate. Students need to be vigilant when looking at any emails sent from a prospective employer. Below are some common characteristics that can be found in fraudulent employment emails:

• They ask you to send money, or ask to send money to you – Scammers will often try to get your bank account and routing numbers by offering to send you money prematurely, or for menial tasks. Some scams will also ask that you purchase a gift card or money order to send them.
• Unprofessional email – Often the grammar will be incorrect and the language used is informal and choppy.
• “Too Good to be True” jobs – Scam jobs will often offer high salaries for shopping or low effort work. If the offer seems too good to be true, it is probably a phishing email.
• Asks immediately for personal information – Scam job postings will often ask immediately for your personal email, number, address and phone. Often they will try to pay you in advance for certain tasks, which is a red flag for gaining someone’s bank information.
• Fake Ohio State Offices – “Job Placement and Student Services” and “Student Employment Office” are two offices that do not exist at Ohio State. If you get an email from someone claiming to be working at an office at Ohio State, do a quick search to see if the office is real and email careerquestions@osu.edu or your career services office to double check.
• Sent from an Ohio State Student Buckeyemail account – Often these types of emails are being sent from a compromised Ohio State Student account. Staff do not have Buckeyemail email accounts and any email offering a job position from a student account should be checked first with your career services office or careerquestions@osu.edu.
• “Click Here for More Information” – Be wary of emails that have very little information and request you to click a link to learn more. These should be forwarded to your career services office or careerquestions@osu.edu to make sure they are not scam emails.

If you see any of these characteristics in an email, or are just unsure if an opportunity is real or not, please contact your career services office or careerquestions@osu.edu to double check. We are more than happy to help you check the validity of job postings!

If you believe you have been affected by an employment scam, please first contact your career services office. We encourage students affected by these scams to contact Student Legal Services either by phone at 614-247-5853, by their website appointment system or by email at studentlegal@osu.edu. They are best able to help with next steps. We also encourage these students to contact their banks/financial institutions and let them know what has happened, in order to protect themselves further.