Philip Guarino, a career coach at the Boston College Career Center, picked up his phone on March 1 to answer what he assumed would be a normal call.
“I introduced myself on the phone, expecting it to be a typical call from a college student to the Career Center,” he said. “And then the student asked, ‘Have we met before?’ And I said ‘No, we have not met before.’”
According to Guarino, the student said she received an email inviting her to apply for a job at BC from someone using his name. Later, as the student waited in line to buy four $100 gift cards for the job, she began to question its legitimacy, Guarino said. She then decided to call Guarino’s desk phone.
“At that moment … the student who realized that she had been scammed was able to confirm she had been scammed, and I then realized why she was calling,” Guarino said.
This unexpected phone call is just one example of a larger pattern at BC. David Escalante, BC’s director of computer policy and security, said that online scammers have been targeting BC email addresses, promising students jobs that pay upward of $350 per week.
“Many students who fell for this lost hundreds of dollars, and several students lost thousands of dollars,” Escalante said.
Escalante said the University first noticed this particular scam last summer. BC’s Information Technology Services later sent two warning emails to students about the scam, one on Sept. 8 and another on Feb. 4.
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