Security/Scam Alert
SCMP: Con artists swindled nearly HK$100 million from Hong Kong jobseekers in first 4 months of year:
Labour Market and Job Scams: what to look out for, and how to avoid them:
One of the top IT Recruitment Agencies in Hong Kong, Dubai, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Singapore, and Japan, SVA Recruitment is an IT and employment agency that provides jobs, executive search, and recruitment services.
Silicon Valley Associates Recruitment would like to continue to raise awareness with our community and public at large of the potential risks of being scammed should you be active in the labor market.
Due to our growing reputation, our team has received increasing notifications lately from job seekers within our community who have received WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, Text and other messages, emails, or calls from Scam Artists who are deceptively masquerading as employees of SVA Recruitment as well as many other recruitment firms in Hong Kong and Asia, and offering potential ‘lucrative’ job opportunities, both fulltime, parttime and freelance.
Potential fraudsters may
- change their WhatsApp photos with a recruitment firm’s company logo or image,
- or an image and name of one of our real employees,
- create fake virtual business cards
- or fake social media accounts.
These fake recruiters may swiftly introduce you to another contact, the 'employer' within the same day of engaging with you. The new contact will then explain to you how you can start earning money, by using trading platforms such as StockX and proceed to push you to sign up to a provided link and follow instructions.
Examples of scam messages:
How to verify if a message is really from us:
1. Silicon Valley Associates Recruitment's team intentionally uses only ONE local WhatsApp Number for any business conducted in Hong Kong and the three other countries we operate in at the time of writing this (May 2022). These numbers are:
- Hong Kong: +852 6700 6472
- Singapore: +65 9806 8116
- Dubai, United Arab Emirates: +971 58 586 4016
- Shanghai, China: +86 1951 871 5905
If it is not from a WhatsApp number mentioned above, it's not from us!
2. Additionally, Silicon Valley Associates Recruitment uses only ONE WeChat account (ID: SVARecruitment), and DOES NOT use any Telegram account.
If the WeChat account is not ID 'SVARecruitment', or any Telegram account, it is not from us!
3. Furthermore, all Silicon Valley Associates Recruitment business is always conducted using ONLY our company email domain: @svarecruitment.com.
If the email domain is not '@svarecruitment.com', it is not from us!
4. Lastly, Silicon Valley Associates Recruitment never asks, demands or requests for any payment from job seekers as part of ANY recruitment process.
We advise you to please do NOT respond, avoid any communication with such individuals and or whoever else they introduce to you on the same day, and do NOT click on any links or attachments within messages.
Staying Vigilant
We finally wanted to share several general tips that will help you protect yourself against potential scammers who may also claim to be any other recruitment firms:
- Professional recruiters will never ask for any form of payment as part of the recruitment process.
- Professional recruiters will never use emails from personal domains such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, or any other free online mail services to communicate with jobseekers
Always verify the authenticity of requests for confidential information
- Take extra precautions, especially when receiving unsolicited messages from unverified individuals
To verify the authenticity of a message, email or phone call that you receive from an individual claiming to be an employee of a certain company, go online to their corporate website and send a WhatsApp message or call their advertised number (do NOT rely on social media which can be falsified)
- Professional recruiters should not ask for confidential personal information during the very initial stage of the recruitment process.
Other steps you can take:
If you do receive what you suspect are scam calls or messages from fraudulent individuals claiming to represent any recruitment firm, you can file a report with the Hong Kong Anti-Deception Coordination Centre, and share the details of that individual's account, phone number etc.
Yours Sincerely,
Vahid Haghzare
Managing Director
25 / 10/ 2022