Job Scam Impersonation Email “UMBC Student Job”

The Division of Information Technology (DoIT) has been notified that a scammer is sending out phishing emails claiming to offer a part-time job as an Administrative Assistant the UMBC’s Academic Success Center.  The offer is a fake. 

Here is an example of the scam:

In the example above the email is sent from <owens0101@gmail.com> . This is not a UMBC address.  UMBC addresses end in “@umbc.edu”. The phishing email itself is claiming to offer students a job as an administrative assistant. The scammer asks the victim to use text messaging which leaves no record of the communications in UMBC systems.
If you receive this email or anything similar, do not respond.

The Money

Scams like this operate by having the victim make purchases with their own funds while promising to reimburse them later. The reimbursement will generally be in the form of a check or a money order. When you attempt to deposit the check or money order into your bank account, your bank will notify you that it is not valid. It will bounce. You will have lost whatever money you have spent to that point. In many cases, this loss has exceeded $1000.00

The names and job titles appearing in this correspondence do belong to actual UMBC staff, but this information is readily available from the UMBC web site and can be used to make the scam seem more realistic.

Recently, a fake payment was made through an image of a check sent in email. The victim was instructed to print it, cut the image out in the shape of a check, sign it, and deposit it using a mobile banking app. (See below.)

What to do now?

If you do receive this or a similar scam, please DO NOT respond any further or click on any URLs. If you have provided any banking or financial information, please notify your bank or financial institution immediately. If you have been sent a check, you should not attempt to cash or deposit it. If you have deposited a check already, please contact your bank and tell them that it may be part of a scam.

Whether or not you responded to the scam or not, please forward the message (with the email headers) to security@umbc.edu. We will also keep track of any other information you submit about the scammers, such as their phone numbers. If you were sent a check or other materials, please send pictures of it and the envelope they came in.

How do I forward full email headers?

https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970 

To read more articles published by DoIT Security please visit: 

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?tag=notice.  

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/home/covid-19-news/?tag=covid19 

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