The UC Santa Cruz Police Department has been notified of a scam being perpetrated on students through Slug Quest, the employment opportunity website managed by the campus Career Center.
Through the Slug Quest website, third-party businesses and employers can post job openings for eligible students seeking employment. The Career Center has attempted to notify Slug Quest users as well.
In the scam, a person identifying himself as John Seth is posing as a hiring manager/employer and encouraging students to contract with him for employment opportunities. These scam "job opportunities" often take the form of "personal or office assistants" and frequently ask a student to purchase items for the business, deposit checks for the business, or negotiate sales between a vendor and a business.
The aim of the scam is to get students to deposit a fraudulent checks (that will bounce in a few days/weeks) and purchase items or send personal checks with their own money. The perpetrator of the scam is also attempting to collect personal information that could be used in future identity theft (address, Social Security Numbers, bank information, etc.).
Members of the campus community are advised to not cash checks from unfamiliar companies.
Additionally, the UC Santa Cruz Police Department cautions against making payments or revealing personal information over the phone or online to anyone you do not know.
If anyone has been victim to this scam, please contact our dispatch center to file a report at (831) 459-2231 x1. If you have doubts about the authenticity of a call initiated from law enforcement, you can always hang up and call us at our dispatch center to verify.
Safety tips
Victims are not responsible for being victimized, regardless of any action or inaction on their part. Perpetrators are responsible for crimes and their effects.
Don't open files, click links, or call numbers in unsolicited emails, text messages, IMs, Facebook postings, tweets, etc.
Always verify the identity of a person asking you for information, money, or access to your accounts, computer, etc.
If you can't verify something is legitimate, ignore, delete it, or ask the person who supposedly sent it.
Never ever reveal a password!
Report crimes and criminal activity to the Police Department at (831) 459- 2231 or provide anonymous tips at police.ucsc.edu.
More information about scams can be found at http://police.ucsc.edu/, http://its.ucsc.edu/security/scams.html, and http://ftc.gov/.
This bulletin is in compliance with 20 U.S.C. Section 1092 (f), the "Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act" ("Clery Act"), and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).
