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Fake Job Offers and Common Travel Area Certificates

Last updated 15-Dec-10 15:46

It has come to our attention that job seekers are being sent fake job offers for posts at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital, Jersey. Neither the hospital nor the jobs actually exist.

The scam involves telling people that they are being offered a fantastic job with good pay and accommodation. The only catch is that you have to contact a law firm to arrange a "Common Travel Area Certificate". These certificates do not exist and the law firm's contact details have been falsified.

Jobs at the States of Guernsey Board of Health are normally only offered after an interview.

Job Offers are not sent out at random. If you receive a job offer and want to check that it is genuine please call the hospital switch board and ask for the recruitment department. Please note that none of our staff have "direct dial" numbers and our staff never use mobile numbers for recruitment related work.

We have identified that this scam seems to work as follows:

• 1. A Candidate posts their CV onto a jobs website.

• 2. The scammers pretend that they are recruitment consultants and they download the CVs and select which candidates to target and then email them with oen of several different types of fake job offer letters.
  

This letter is certainly not from the Health and Social Services Department nor from the Jersey Hospital. The Princess Elizabeth Hospital is in fact based in Guernsey and not Jersey as the job offer letter identifies. Candidates would not be offered a job with the Princess Elizabeth Hospital through an email of this type.

• 3. Offer letter advises the candidate that they need to obtain a visa called the Common Travel Area Certification which can be arranged by contacting a solicitors firm based in Jersey (Galsworthy and Stone in this case).

This type of Travel visa does not exist and nor is it required for travel to Jersey. Galsworthy and Stone are a bona fide company but the contact details on the job offer letter are not those of the real company.

• 4. The solicitor will advise the candidate that they will arrange this visa for a given price and that payment can be made by MoneyGram or Western Union Transfer.

Candidates would never be asked to send any type of payment through this route to secure employment with the HSSD.

• 5. Once this payment is made the scammers would collect the money and disappear.

This matter has been reported to the relevant authorities and is being investigated.