We have already mentioned about different fraudulent schemes awaiting seafarers looking for a job, as well as how to recognize fraudsters. It should be noted that our seafarers become more attentive to job offers coming from abroad, checking the potential employer and the ship.
The last case, which we would like to share, once again demonstrates that fraudsters no longer stop at primitive schemes, but create quite plausible websites and profiles in various services for seafarers.
A group of seafarers addressed to the Trade Union for advice. They were offered jobs by a company called Seacross Maritime, located, according to the official website, in Estonia. The company's profile is available at the Ukrkrewing website.
Initially, the job offer did not look suspicious, as senior crewing manager Adam Murawski corresponded with the seafarers from the company's corporate email address. Information about this crewing manager can also be found on the Seacross website.
The seafarers were asked for recommendations from the previous job place, and informed of the date of the interview with the superintendent, but later the crewing manager reported (by the way, in rather poor English) that the superintendent was ill, the interview was canceled, and that the seafarers needed to urgently apply for a visa to Taiwan and pay $290 fees each. They were asked to transfer the money for the visa to the Alfa-Bank card of a certain Sergei from the Russian Federation (this information is easy to get on the Internet by searching the first six digits of the fraudster's card number on special resources).
When checking the company's website using the who.is resource, it turned out that the website was created on January 4, 2021. Google search results for Adam Murawski's image finds several pages of sites using the same photo, most likely taken from some kind of photo hosting.
We remind - forewarned is forearmed. We strongly recommend seafarers to carefully check all job offers, especially from unknown sources.
Remember that you can always contact the Trade Union and check a particular ship where you are offered a job.
