“pile of hooey!”
I don’t see that your references support that conclusion.

“Both groups tend to have high levels of education.”
First, the groups you mention, financial and information, were not the only groups which lost jobs.
Second, within these groups there are many jobs which do not require higher education.

“Although the unemployment rate is much higher for people with less education, that has always been the case, and hasn’t changed over the last year.”
If the unemployment rate is much higher for people with less education and the employment rate has risen over the last few years, then it follows the number, not the percentage, of unemployed with less education has risen as well.

Like or Dislike: 4  1

You make a good point. Although there will be some that suspect this is an illegal activity I would bet the majority don’t.

Anyone who has stayed up late working with the TV on will have seen many advertisements for easy ways to make a fortune in just a few hours a day by just following a few steps in someone’s new money making scheme. You don’t need any special skills or knowledge, just follow a few easy steps in you spare time. This is accompanied with success stories, average joes standing by their new car, in front of their new house, who made x thousand dollars in the first week.

And these are advertised on all the major cable channels, usually with a quick disclaimer at the beginning that the station is not endorsing it. There have to be many people falling for these “get rich quick” schemes to justify the advertising. So I don’t find it that unusual that people would fall for the more sophisticated job scams on the internet.

Frankly, I feel anytime you can make a lot of money in a few hours a day with no special skills, even if it’s legal, someone is getting ripped off. The lure of making more money than your neighbor, having a fancier car or a bigger house seems to suspend moral judgement with a lot of people. This is what the ‘money mule’ recruiters rely on. And it will make no difference how many ‘mules’ you arrest or how severe the punishment, there will always be more standing in line for the job.

The solution is in reducing the number of bots installed. This can be done by requiring registrars and web hosting sites to respond more quickly to reported abuse. These are the people who should be fined and or arrested for blatantly disregarding the criminal activity in which they played an important role.

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 8  1

People who fall for the Nigerian scams may well get into it knowing they are doing something illegal, but they believe they will get away with it. In contrast, if money mules understood they were doing something illegal, they would also know they had no hope of getting away with the crime, since the bank accounts are in their names.

And as far as personal evidence, I do know people who have nearly been sucked into these schemes and who asked me to advise them. They did the best they could to figure out if there was a catch, but they would have been taken in if no one had been available to explain it to them.

Like or Dislike: 4  2

What evidence do you have that the loss of jobs in a recession correlates to the response rate to scams? Or that falling for scams is related to education, reading skills, and intelligence?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, financial activities shed 21,000 jobs, with the largest losses occurring in insurance carriers and related activities in March 2010. Employment in the information industry decreased by 12,000. Both groups tend to have high levels of education.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Although the unemployment rate is much higher for people with less education, that has always been the case, and hasn’t changed over the last year.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm

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And you have to accept that some people’s education and reading skills are really not adequate. If someone can’t spell or use correct grammar himself, he does not have the ability to spot one of the most obvious signs of a scam, poor English style.

Don’t assume these sorts of judgments are as easy for everyone as they are for you. If you’re reading this blog, most likely you went to schools where students were expected to do a significant amount of reading, and you probably had parents who made a point of correcting poor grammar and spelling when you were small. You probably have even added words to your vocabulary from reading rather than hearing them. If you see a long section of text, you have the choice of reading it carefully or skimming it. For someone with a low reading level, who may have attended one of the famous “failing schools,” it’s like reading a foreign language, decoding one word at a time while trying to develop a sense of the whole. It’s just harder for some people than for others.

Like or Dislike: 4  3

Identifying the money mules before they receive the money will give the authorities two avenues to attack. At a minimum, the authorities will be able to identify the attacked company at or before the money goes overseas. Secondly, the authorites can take and further develop the e-mail thread with the bogus employers to hopefully close in on, or at least close down, the people operating a particular bogus employer site.

Money mules are the key to the whole scam. The bad guys can’t move the funds in sufficient quantity without a number of mules.

The financial institutions should be using their Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-money laundering training to target the money mules at or shortly after account opening.

Like or Dislike: 2  3

A real international finance outfit would purchase such a questionnaire from a psychological testing outfit. This one is totally amateurish — no human resources department would have anything to do with it. Most professionals would be put off by it and proceed no further. Who wants to work for Dilbert’s boss?

Like or Dislike: 1  0