Cautionary Notice of Fraudulent Employment Communications, Offers and Recruitment
Fraudulent Recruitment Scheme
APCER Life Sciences, Inc. (“APCER”) has become aware of fraudulent employment communications, job offers and other recruitment efforts by websites and/or individuals pretending to be APCER’s employees. Such scheme generally involves, but is not limited to, fraudulently impersonating APCER’s legitimate employees to offer fake job opportunities through unsolicited emails, online recruitment services or job boards (even through facially legitimate networking platforms, such as LinkedIn), phishing websites and text-messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, Facebook, iChat, etc.
The fraudster’s ultimate goal is, among other things, to obtain the recipient’s sensitive and personal identifying information to steal the recipient’s identity, apply for credit as the recipient, engage in unlawful conduct in the recipient’s name, and/or process false employment applications supposedly on APCER’s behalf in exchange for monetary payments, whether through cash, credit card, online payments or digital assets, such as cryptocurrencies.
Fraudulent communications may appear legitimate. The fraudsters may use APCER’s trademarks, tradenames and logos. The email address may facially appear from an APCER-related domain or may contain the word “APCER” in its name. They may identify a false affiliation or relationship with APCER and/or any of its employees.
APCER cautions recipients of such communications to remain vigilant and take precautionary measures when dealing with any employment or recruiting efforts. Please also review the Consumer Advice from the Federal Trade Commission on “Job Scams”: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/job-scams.
Identifying Recruitment Fraud
Please use common sense when considering communications from potential employment sources that look and sound too good to be true. For example, if you did not independently initiate an application with a potential employment source, yet you received a recruitment outreach therefrom, you should take appropriate steps to independently verify the substance of such communication. You should also seek professional advice on the reasonableness of relying on such communications to take adverse employment actions, such as quitting your existing employment relationship. All legitimate APCER recruiting communication will originate from an *@apcerls.com email address – but please be careful in confirming the email address as they may nonetheless appear to originate from our domain, but may nonetheless be from a spoofed email domain, including domains appearing to be similar to @apcerls.com but, instead, replacing the ‘L’ with a capital “i”.
You should avoid disclosing personal and banking information or sending money if you are unsure of the authenticity of an email or other communication in the name of APCER. For example, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation has stated that cyber criminals executing a recruitment scam request the same information as legitimate employers, making it difficult to identify a hiring scam until it is too late, some indications of which may include:
- Interviews are not conducted in-person or through a secure video call.
- Interviews are conducted via teleconference applications that use email addresses instead of phone numbers.
- Potential employers contact victims through non-company email domains and teleconference applications.
- Potential employers require employees to purchase start-up equipment from the company.
- Potential employers require employees to pay upfront for background investigations or screenings.
- Potential employers request credit card information.
- Potential employers send an employment contract to physically sign asking for PII.
- Job postings appear on job boards, but not on the companies’ websites.
- Recruiters or managers do not have profiles on the job board, or the profiles do not seem to fit their roles.
Financial loss and identity theft could result from the sending of money or personal information to those issuing such fraudulent correspondence.
APCER’s Practices
APCER advertises its employment opportunities only on its website, https://www.apcerls.com/careers/. APCER may utilizes bona fide and established recruiters, media, as well as online professional platforms and job boards to disseminate its vacancies. All job offers are made by APCER human resources personnel following a competitive process. However, just because an employment opportunity is on our website does not necessarily mean the individual with whom a recipient received a communication is legitimate. If you are contacted about a job that does not also appear on that site, no such opening exists.
APCER cautions you against:
- Responding to unsolicited business propositions and/or offers of employment from people with whom you are unfamiliar.
- Sending any money; APCER does not ask for money transfers or payments from applicants to secure an application, interview or a job, either as an employee or as a contractor.
- Engaging in further communication or disclosing your personal or financial information, if the communication has any signs of fraud.
APCER will never ask you to submit your personal information unless you have first applied to a position on our career site. APCER bears no responsibility for fraudulent offers. When in doubt, please reach out to careers@apcerls.com, use the subject “Recruitment Fraud.”