DOUGLAS COUNTY, Ga. — A metro Atlanta woman thought she found the perfect job on LinkedIn only to learn it was all a scam.
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The first thing Leigh Lawrence did after being contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn was look up the company interested in hiring her.
“I just wanted to make sure that this was a credible company and that the person that I was dealing with was also credible,” Lawrence told Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray.
When she googled Pear Deck Learning she found that it is a legitimate company working in distance learning.
Lawrence has been an English as a second language (ESL) teacher for 16 years and spent many of those years teaching students around the world from her Douglas County home.
So, when she was offered a work-from-home ESL teaching job by someone, she thought worked for Pear Deck Learning, she was excited.
“When I looked at the job description, I was really interested because the salary or the pay per hour was something usually educators in my field don’t get,” Lawrence said.
That salary was the first warning sign.
Lawrence says she noticed major red flags when she was sent a $4,500 check to purchase a list of supplies for a home office.
“This didn’t seem quite right because I’ve worked at home before for another company in a similar situation. But in that situation, the company provided the equipment to me,” Lawrence said.
So, Lawrence contacted her credit union and the bank on the check and determined it was a fake.
“I would have to say that the scammers are getting more sophisticated. Evidently, they were on my profile to look and see what my specialization was, what my skill set was,” Lawrence said.
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It’s one of the most common job scams. If you cash the check and buy the equipment, the money never goes through and the employee out thousands.
In this case, while Pear Deck Learning is a legitimate employer, the person posing as a recruiter for them on LinkedIn was an imposter.
LinkedIn tells Channel 2 Action News in a statement:
“Our policies are clear - every LinkedIn profile must represent a real person and fraudulent activity, including job scams, is not allowed on our platform. We know these bad actors are becoming more sophisticated, and we will continue to evolve and enhance our defenses.”
LinkedIn says between January and June it blocked 99.7% of fake accounts before a member report and 94.6% of fake accounts through automated defenses.
GoGuardian, the company that owns Pear Deck Learning tells Channel 2 Action News in a statement:
“We can confirm that this is not a legitimate job offer and did not come from our company nor did it come from an official GoGuardian or Pear Deck Learning communication platform. When individuals contact us with any issues, we look into them immediately. Leigh contacted us on December 4th, and we confirmed this information with her the same day. We take this situation seriously and will support efforts from law enforcement to investigate the issue.”
Lawrence says she is both disappointed by the experience and relieved to have caught the fraud before losing money.
“I kept that in the back of my mind, something is off. If something doesn’t feel right, then you go with that,” Lawrence said.
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