Woman loses $9K after being hired by company on Indeed.com

You may have heard of the tax and romance scams, but a single mother in Grimsby has now lost everything due to an employment scam.

Kristen Erb works full-time but lives paycheque-to-paycheque and wanted to earn some extra money for Christmas.

Earlier this November, she applied for an administration job on Indeed.com and after three interviews she was hired.

She did a research project for them and then complied when the company asked her to transfer money they deposited into her bank account into bitcoin. However, the money was later deemed fraudulent by the bank and removed from her account; leaving Erb on the hook for the cash and her account in overdraft.

The company is called Advanced Education Union and purports to run a student exchange program. But the website has no active links and The Advanced Education Union address differs by just one number from Advanced Education-the official Saskatchewan Government Ministry.

The Better Business Bureau listing shows the company is not verified and registered the same day Erb took the job.

We called the number on the website, the same one Erb had been using. A woman told us our information was wrong and hung up. Our number was blocked right after, just like Erb.

Hamilton fraud investigator Greg Doerr says bitcoin itself is a red flag. “There’s warnings right on the machine, don’t be pressured. Often the offenders, the bad guys, will keep you on the phone tell you to ignore that, put your money in and give us a copy of the bitcoin scan code,” said Doerr.

Erb feels betrayed by RBC, which froze her accounts after the money bounced back out. Niagara Police have said they can’t track the missing money.