It has been said, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” So, I guess we should be flattered at Soaring Eagle. At Soaring Eagle, we have been minding our own business, trying to maintain stability and maybe dare I say grow during this COVID Economy.
Then one day we get a call. The call was a person asking us when we are going provide her a start date for her data entry job. She had responded to a job posting on LinkedIn, for a company with a suspiciously similar name. She attended interviews on Google Hangouts, conversed through email with a person we will name Person Nasty @junkemail.com. Here is the kicker, she received an offer letter on letterhead from OUR COMPANY, Soaring Eagle Consulting. Person Nasty used a job posting from a company of a similar name, then collected information, ran interviews, and then hired the people in our Company’s name including signing the letter with our CEO’s name in the signature. The letterhead does not match our official letterhead; they had snipped our logo off our website, then crudely pasted it in a word document. One of the applicants claimed that they received a check from us and that it bounced. However, they failed to produce the evidence.
About once or twice a week we get these
calls. We have talked with the company with a similar name and they have now
taken down the job posting. We believe that they are also an injured party in
this ruse. On our website and social media pages, we have noted that we are not
involved with the other company and that we are not hiring Data Entry
Clerks. We do not have a legal avenue; we have not been able to
infiltrate the culprits through applying for the job. We cannot quantify
the injury. The applicants are generally not eager to share the information,
such as email addresses, phone numbers nor a copy of the checks, so it is hard
to make a case for the FBI.
What I do want to share is that this did happen
to us, and maybe you will read this blog and know you are not alone, stupid
things are happening to good people/companies, and maybe if we share we
can all come up with strategies to protect ourselves from these and other
scams.
I write this because we are a growing company
with a large footprint in the world possibly because our owners have written
several books and speak at conferences often. If this can happen to a business
like ours that it hardly seems worth the effort to build a conspiracy around
our name to either collect data from applicants or harm our reputation. Then
guess what? No business is too small nor too large for this type of
crime. I urge you to review any odd circumstances or calls that your
admin team may come across. I urge you to try to report the crimes and to share
the instances with your security and management team. I also hope that
this does not happen to you. Stay Safe, stay healthy, and I wish for your
company to grow despite these crazy times.
