Interview scammers uncovered: Fraud ring steals millions from companies, dozens arrested

Guan Yue was arrested during a job interview in Hangzhou. At the time of her arrest, police found that she was holding a staggering 16 jobs simultaneously.

Guan is a professional interview scammer who pretends to be an experienced professional with impressive resumes and connections to high-quality clients.

However, in reality, she never actually worked. Guan would be hired simultaneously by multiple companies and collect salaries from all of them without doing any real work.

To remember all her employees, Guan has to keep a sheet of paper recording the companies' names, time of her arrival, her positions in the companies, and bank card numbers to receive her salaries.

Further police investigation shows there are more than 100 professional interview scammers in Shanghai, and hundreds around the country, Xinmin Evening News reported on Thursday.

Guan and her husband Chen Qiang have worked their way up to the top of the illegal trade. When there are more jobs than they could manage to interview, they would sell the opportunities to their fellow scammers and take a commission.

A photo sent to tech company Wechat group gives away the scammers

In January, Liu Jian, an official with an online tech company in Pudong New Area, reported to the police after finding out that eight former employees were working for another company during their employment with his company, the newspaper reported.

Liu's company was looking for experienced salespersons for promoting a new product to the market and hired Yang Hong and seven others, who had impressive resumes and work experience with big companies.

The company offered a base salary of 20,000 yuan to Yang and 8,000 Yuan plus commissions to the other team members.

However, after three months of probation, the team didn't deliver a single sale. After their release, the eight employees insisted on getting their base salaries and got the company to compromise.

Shortly after Yang left the company, he sent a photo of his employment separation certificate from another company to their WeChat group, indicating an overlap in his employment with Liu's company.

This meant that the sales team were receiving salaries from two companies at the same time.

Police traced Yang Hong's multiple bank accounts and found money transfers from different companies, the amount ranging from thousands to ten thousands over the span of three years, involving more than a hundred companies.

Blacklist among HRs to keep away the scammers

This became the breakthrough point of the case. A task force was quickly established, and after conducting interviews and obtaining files from dozens of employers, the police were able to preliminarily identify the first batch of suspects.

On March 8th, the police in Pudong New Area arrested 53 suspects in Shanghai and other cities and provinces for interview scamming.

The suspects were found to have scammed companies out of over 50 million yuan (US$6.81million).

These scammers have been active across different industries for quite some time, the report said. However, they typically don't leave any solid proof, which can make it difficult to pursue legal action against them.

Even when reported to the police, the scammers' actions may only be treated as a labor dispute between employers and employees. The scammers often position themselves as the disadvantaged party in such disputes, the report said.

Guan's husband, Chen Qiang, had won 13 labor disputes without losing once.

To prevent the hiring of scammers, human resources departments in the same industry must keep each other informed about scammers and create a blacklist to avoid hiring them.

In another case in 2021 revealed by the police, a privately offered fund company from Hong Kong planned to market a fund in Shanghai, but the first 80 employees they hired were, unforturnately, all interview scammers, which caused the company to lose more than a million yuan and three precious months.

When the company realized what was happening, the window for the fund had already passed, forcing them to give up the market in Shanghai.

Shanghai police found that many interview scammers come from the peer-to-peer lending industry, which requires them to have eloquence and extensive knowledge in finance and related industries.

At least 700 to 800 scammers are active in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, the Yangtze River Delta region, and the Pearl River Delta Region.

On a daily basis, these scammers collect information from recruitment apps and websites and then tailor their resumes to showcase themselves as industry elites, on top of their previous experience in hundreds of interviews.

This gives them a huge advantage over average job applicants. It's common for them to hold more than 10 positions in different companies simultaneously, which makes it even harder for other applicants to land a job.

To avoid being scammed, Shanghai police suggest that companies, especially small and medium ones, should run a thorough background check before hiring anyone and recruitment apps and websites should ensure the job-seekers' information is verified and real.