General – Page 119

Yet Another Job Scammer

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Feb 262010

They must be catching all the newbies, because a week or two of scouring the job boards is enough to spot the scammers:

I was suspicious (hardly any reputable companies use throwaway Hotmail addresses these days, it just doesn’t look professional), but I responded anyway.

Their reply:

Thank you for your interest in the position we have listed on Craigslist – Accounting Asst. Please go to

http://career-network-rockymount.com/ and you can complete the application process. You can do it! Sincerely Gail P pls note – I have 2 other positions open, billing associate and Administrative Accounting Aide. If you are interested pls send me a separate email for each with job title in the subject line thanks, this facilitates a faster reply GailP good luck. Also consider looking into some additional training/education as there are funds available.

Yeah. One of the first things you learn is that if they send you to another web site to “complete the application process,” there is no job. They’re just harvesting your data, or trying to generate clickthroughs, or both.

I did a search on the domain name, and discovered it’s one of literally thousands being used by one guy for these fake job ads—what he’s really pitching is continuing education. (Check out the list at the bottom, of only some of the domains he’s used.)

Job scammers like this will be going to that very special level of hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.

Killer Pothole

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Feb 242010

It’s been an unusually cold winter here in North Carolina. We’ve actually had almost a week of snow, and the temperatures remained around freezing until just recently.

As a result, we’ve got a lot of potholes in the roads. Some of them are real axle-busters—one just up the road from us had cones and warning lights around it until the city could get it filled in.

Monday night, driving The Artist home from his evening class, I encountered one of these vicious road hazards. It was dark, it was raining, and I didn’t see the hole in time to avoid it. My little Nanovan banged through it, and immediately my tire pressure warning light came on.

“Uh oh,” I remarked, and babied her into the nearest parking lot. I sought out a streetlight with plenty of open parking spaces around it, and we got out to inspect the damage.

“Yep, definitely flat,” observed The Artist.

I was reflecting on an interesting fact: although I’ve had two or three flat tires before this, I’ve never actually changed one myself. A helpful male always swoops in and takes care of it for me. This works out well for everyone, because he gets to feel good about himself for helping, and I don’t have to change the tire.

In this case, though, the helpful male available had never changed a tire, either. But I can read a manual with the best of them, so I got out the trusty owner’s manual (mainly I wanted to make sure I was bracing the jack in the right place) and together we got the spare on.

So yesterday instead of helping out at the homeless shelter, I was sitting in the lounge of NTB waiting for them to put a new tire on. I called the shelter to let them know I wasn’t coming in, feeling like a total slacker because I won’t be coming in for the next couple of weeks either (starting a temp job next week).

I figure that temp job should just about cover the cost of the tire. I feel like a financial Sisyphus.

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Van Saga Continues

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Feb 202010

Last April I heard from the lady who had bought my old, dead van from the people that bought it from me, and we determined that the intermediary couple had tried to pass the van off as a working vehicle—and signed my name to the transfer.

She’s been working on the issue since then. It’s a bit difficult as the perpetrators live in another county, but she’s irate and she’s determined. She called last week to let me know how things are progressing, and see if I want to get in on the court action with her.

Someone has committed fraud in my name. You bet your ass I want in on the court action.

We’re going to meet next week to exchange information and sketch out our game plan. She’s got the information about the couple who sold her the van: name, address, etc. I’ve got a copy of the estimate I got from the repair shop, detailing the problem with the van and how much it would cost to get it fixed (seems that one particular paper mysteriously disappeared from the folder of papers I turned over with the van).

She’s also been talking to the sheriff’s office in the other county; apparently these people have pulled this particular trick a number of times, and the sheriff’s department was very helpful and forthcoming with all the information she could need to press charges. Sounds like they’d like to do something about these folks, too.

Should be an interesting experience. You know, as in the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

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