The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is an agency based in Mainland British Columbia in Canada which helps job seekers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this Vancouver office confirmed that reports of cryptocurrency-related employment frauds have surged.
We want to share this news with our readers, especially cryptocurrency traders based in British Columbia. We believe it can help them be aware that many local incidents of scams are cryptocurrency-related employment frauds.
Hence, we want them to be very careful. Based on the news posted online by Vancouver-based news outlet CTV News Vancouver, the BBB estimated that 14 million victims lost a combined $2 billion in 2019 because of employment frauds.
The office confirmed that this problem got worse last year, with complaints about such dishonest schemes to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre almost doubling.
Moreover, the local BBB revealed in a news release that plenty of the employment scam reports in British Columbia had involved virtual currency transactions.
The office said that fraudsters had been reaching out to job seekers across British Columbia utilizing fake company websites and names. These malicious entities ask their unemployed victims to perform crypto-asset transactions as a component of their employment duties.
The BBB offered some advice to job seekers to help them avoid becoming victims of cryptocurrency-related employment frauds. The Canadian bureau recommended the people to perform the following six safety measures:
- Research job offers thoroughly.
- On the BBB’s portal, check the business or employer’s website.
- Create a secondary e-mail address to use when responding to job listings or posting a resumé
on job boards.
- Consider opening a separate bank account that will handle the salary paid by employers
who a job seeker has never met in person.
- Be very cautious of vague job descriptions and double-check secret shopper positions or
mystery shopper job posting.
- Be wary of work-from-home job openings that involve receiving and reshipping packages or
receiving and forwarding money because these are possible frauds.
The BBB advised that a job seeker who believes he is a victim of cryptocurrency-related employment fraud should report the incident to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and the BBB scam tracker.
We support the Better Business Bureau in Vancouver in its campaign against cryptocurrency-related employment frauds. We believe it is tremendously helping today’s job seekers, who we understand are already drained because of their plight amid the horrible COVID-19 pandemic.
We hope our readers, especially those based in British Columbia, will stay guided through following the BBB’s advice. In this way, they will help themselves avoid getting victimized by perpetrators of cryptocurrency-related employment frauds.
