Every year, students at UC Berkeley are scammed out of thousands of dollars via fake employment offers. Beware of unsolicited emails, phone calls, texts or even facebook messages offering internship or employment opportunities. If you receive a job offer, don’t trust it without verifying – contact the person offering the job via their contact info in the campus directory(link is external) or via a berkeley.edu departmental website.
Paid campus opportunities always require employment paperwork, and new hires are not asked to pay out of pocket for anything. To be safe, do not click on links within any email that you did not expect, and never fill out any unsolicited forms that ask for your personal or financial information.
If you have been the victim of a scam, please file a report with UCPD(link is external) and report suspicious email to phishing@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail) or 510-664-9000 (option 4).
If you receive one of these fraudulent messages, you can help others by reporting it as a phish
What is the impact on victims?
In this year alone, victims have lost more than $35,000, at an average loss of $2,515 each, and these numbers only account for what has been reported to the Information Security Office. In addition to losing money, fraud victims face consequences to class participation, grades, mental health and wellbeing.
How do students lose money?
These fraudulent job offers appear to come from professors, using either spoofed email addresses or non-berkeley emails accounts. The email will contain a subject line like “Berkeley Students Part-time Job Position,” “STUDENT INTERNSHIP,“ or “VIRTUAL JOB OPPORTUNITIES.” Once you reply, the criminals move the conversation away from email, asking to be texted on a mobile number or having the student share a non-campus email or mobile number (which makes it harder for our security team to track).
Victims are asked to order equipment or other items and are told they will receive a check to cover the cost. The check turns out to be fake, the victim loses the money they paid, and may also incur overdraft, late fees, or have their bank account closed. These scammers will often put a lot of pressure on the victim to get this done quickly.
See Employment Scam Examples below for some actual examples of fraudulent emails and social media posts.
