**update**
www.jobsindubai.com is "FAKE" according to:
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/CityHome.as ... mber46.xml§ion=citytimes&col=
Luckily I got my money back..but I came across this and other articles..so if you've put money into this, get it refunded!..
-BlueShadez
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RE: I don't believe so.. Fri, 7 Jan 9:31am BlueShadez
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GETTING WISE TO THE TECHNO-SAVVY SCAM ON THE NET
BY SUSHIL KUTTY (Staff Reporter)
13 November 2004
Audrey and Arlette. The Fonseca-sisters. Now also the scam-busters. The two Internet-savvy siblings stumbled upon the 'Jobs In Dubai' web site and did not get carried away like so many others must have.
The small print didn't fool them. Neither did the plum jobs on offer, nor the big paychecks promised. The two read between the lines, and found the hidden note! This was not the road to riches or even to a well-paid job. This was taking the shortest route to making a dent in the bank account. This was fraud.
Born and brought up in Dubai, 28-year-old Audrey and 24-year-old Arlette now want residents of the UAE and the world around to be wary of this scam — "an on-line fraud using the name of Dubai and claiming to have a base in Dubai".
"They call themselves Jobs In Dubai (JID Network) and state thet they have been established since 1984 in Dubai, as a leading and reliable provider of professional specialists in the world of skilled and unskilled workers. Their key focus is manpower distribution to corporations in the UAE, Saudi, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait," Arlette tells the City Times.
But it was Audrey who got the first whiff. "I was looking to find some candidates for jobs in my company."
Audrey is office manager for the Lawand Group, and Arlette is sales and reservations executive with the Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruisers.
What she saw made Audrey take a second look — too good to be true. The jobs on offer were out of the here-and-now — in fact well beyond the there-and-then:
* Resumes would reach employers within 24 hours!
* Guaranteed job placement, or the money back!
* Assistance in visa and residence documentation.
"Candidates had to apply online, e-mail their resume or send a hard copy of the resume to a Canada address."
So far so good. What next? "The applications would be reviewed, and if selected, the candidate would be notified by phone or email that he/she has been 'shortlisted'. Apparently, they shortlist three candidates for every position available," says Audrey.
An application processing fee of $74 "payable by draft or money" is a pre-requisite.
Then, wait for an interview call from an employer. The candidate will have to "make arrangements for an interview at desired destination".
That sounded odd. But odder still, was the peremptory statement that the candidate would have to agree to shell out 50 per cent of the first month's salary as a fee for job placement. That is, if the process ever reached that stage!
"That struck me ...there was something wrong there. In the UAE, the law is pretty clear — recruitment agencies are not allowed to charge a single dirham from people who they get jobs," says Audrey.
"This Internet-based web site is excellent, with lots of information, professionally done adverts for job vacancies... However, on closer look we noted that salaries are higher than in the industry/market and in some cases substantially higher. That gave us enough reason to try and investigate," smiles Arlette, who was by then part of operation unearth-scam.
The investigations led to discoveries galore:
* All the 45 client employer list links found on
http://www.jobsindubai.com/employerlist.html were found to be non-existent.
* Another giveaway: The links try to take you to the web site of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ADCCI) and a couple to
www.uaemall.com!
* Only a postal address in Abu Dhabi was given — no contact numbers, physical address or anything else that will pass muster.
* Attempts to trace the postal address led to a brick wall.
* The webmaster link on the bottom took Arlette and Audrey to the homepage of the web-designer 'Marqsoft Systems', which was "nothing but a cleverly designed logo", no links whatsoever.
* The web site 'design' too had been provided by a 'company' with no web site. ("The only difference between this one and their webmaster is that this site opens to a flash design!" says Arlette.)
* The testimonials page had (almost) no company names mentioned, just names of people with designations. The only two company names mentioned were in the words of praise from the VP of Telecertix CRM Solutions. No search engine was able to find such a company name.
The sisters sought the help of a friend in Canada, who called the toll free number, which went on answer phone — at 09:35 in the morning, on a working day!
Next, Audrey and Arlette started asking around amongst friends and found that many people had paid ($74)-up and, of course, none of them were called for an interview. So the two of them put an on-line posting warning people about the site and the fraud being played on them. The answer was a spate of emails, from dozens of people who had become just that — victims of a fraud.
"They were asking us if we could assist in recovering their money. We can't but this shows how many people have been duped. One Association in Ghana told us that its members have paid up over $2000 and not a single one of them got even a call."
Dubai, says Audrey and Arlette, is making a name for itself on the global scene and other countries have started looking up to it. "A lot of people abroad are looking at being employed in Dubai and many of them are falling for scams like this one. I've found several people in Dubai itself who have paid the site. People who are not as Internet savvy or simply don't have the time to do their own investigations could easily get conned, given that the frauds(ters) have done their jobs really well. And that includes taking several paid adverts that direct you to their site. A search in Google for 'Dubai Jobs' will first show you this site," says Arlette.
"The fact that people may not recognise scams off the bat doesn't mean they are naive or stupid. It just means that they haven't been in an environment where this sort of stuff came their way before now and the scammers know this. This is not anything like the 'Nigerian scam' which most people would read into even the first time they saw it. This scam seems to have intelligent, techno-savvy bunch of people working on it," says Audrey.
But then, so are the Fonseca sisters — techno-savvy, and intelligent, with an enquiring mind to boot!