University Teaching Hospital — University Teaching Hospital Barcelona "Fake Job Offer"

I had placed my CV on the monster jobs website. I was then contacted by the University Tecahing Hospital in Barcelona Spain informing me that they had liked what they'd seen and asked me to forward my latest CV to them by return email. I did as they asked, I then received an email asking me to fill in an interview questionnaire. Some days later I received an email from monster jobs informing me that they were not absolutely certain about the credentials of the company that were advertising the posts and they advised anyone who was in contact with this company to cease immediately, they also advised contacting local law enforcement to fid out how they would be covered in the event that they lost money. I decided not to send the Interview questionaire. A couple of days later I received an email from the University Teaching Hospital informing me that my qualifications and experience were at the level required to be offered the job, which, I thought was strange because I hadn't sent in my Interview questionnaire, nor did they ask me to take part in a telephone interview or send a photograph or submit any references. Being very dubious about the company I was open minded about anything they had to send me. A couple of days later I received the job offer. The salary and package were unbelievablely high which again raised my suspicions even more than they were already at. The offer included a 3 bedroomed villa and a company car which is unusual for a teacher to receive. Being highly suspicious I asked a friend of mine who is in the police to check to see if there had been any scams similar to this and also asked if they could get me some information on how to report this to the spanish authorities.

My friend and I searched various websites for frauds such as this, and before long we found a company advert for Texaco and somone who had been duped in a similar way, however just with a different line of work. Upon checking closer we found that the telephone numbers were the same for the TEXACO advert as they were for the University Teaching Hospital Barcelona. I checked the University website which was extremely poor, however, they did advertise as a new University so the website was still growing. But the huge mistake was that they had no information about how to apply to become a student, no faculty information, infact virtually no information. The company used a gmail account which no good company uses.

All in all a very plausible job offer initially but the further in it went the more and more the things just didn't add up.

The scam is based on Residency, Visa, and certain other costs which total €1250 euros. As a European citizen, I would require a visa however I would be required to pay for residency fees, which apparently get taken out of your first months salary. I have no doubt the company will state that they pay the fees but when you go through the process you will be asked to pay the fees in advance in the blind hope that you get your money back. I also feel that there may be another side to ths scam, which is personal information gathering, details such as your passport number and national insurance, all of which could be used for other scams by people such as this.

I hope someone else who has suspicions gets the chance to read this before falling into a very expensive trap. Thankfully I didn''t fall for it, although I did want to believe it was a true and honest Job offer. Well done indeed to Monster jobs website team for being very good at what they do, they were the first alarm to ring and dispensed the right advice when it was needed. Many thanks to them.