Indie publisher Salt targeted by US scammers

Salt has been targeted by an employment scam involving a US-based group impersonating company employees, director Christopher Hamilton-Emery has told The Bookseller.

The scammers approach jobseekers, supposedly to recruit them as transcriptionists. The candidates are invited to virtual interviews, and sent contracts and employment documentation “convincingly branded with Salt’s identity”. They are also given the contact details of Hamilton-Emery and the company’s HR department.

When a candidate is told they have been successful, the scammers will occasionally offer them laptops and payments. They are also asked to give up their personal details. “We think that this is the heart of the scam, to obtain financial information and social security numbers as some form of ID theft,” said Hamilton-Emery.

When the Salt team first noticed the scam, they assumed that it was only their company being targeted. However they soon realised real job-seekers were being affected too. The director added: “We put out notices on our website and on LinkedIn and approached LinkedIn about the matter – they were quite helpful in providing some guidance to what we now understand is a common crime. But nothing stopped the flow.

“The people involved in the scam had registered a domain name similar to Salt’s […] I tried to trace the registrant who was anonymised, and then wrote directly to the company who has sold the domain – they took it down.”

Hamilton-Emery has been receiving fewer emails since he took steps to address the issue. This could indicate that the scam has been resolved, but the effects continue to be felt. “It’s been rather distressing, especially for those who have been cruelly duped,” he said.

Advice for dealing with employment scams can be found at the Citizens Advice Bureau and Safer Jobs.