Fraudulent Organizations and my experience with them

Note: Picture has nothing to do with post

So a while back in September/October of 2007, I was unemployed. And if you have been unemployed recently you know how hard it is to find a job that pays over $10 an hour and that’s 9-5. Not being able to find said job to accommodate my needs I got desperate and turned to the internet.

Monster.com, Chicagojobfinder.com, and Careerbuilder.com were all my desperation attempts to find a job. While looking through their sites I found a link to a tech site called TechProsGroup. I clicked and found something that sounded too good to be true.

Apparently this group was looking for young college students with experience in the IT field to take their courses to become LAN/WAN professionals. You take their courses that they pay for and they set you up with an internship and start you off making $60,000 to $100,000. So being desperate I applied at that moment and despite not having any LAN/WAN experience I thought to give it a shot.

So I get a call the next day and I have been accepted into the first stage of the selection process. For step two I needed to fill out their application and provide $20 for a background check. Well why not? It was only $20 that I could easily afford. So I give said money and get a call back 3 days later saying that I was accepted and needed one final interview.

When the lady asked me if I had any questions I asked about when the courses started and if it would be in conflict with my school schedule if the time came. She then responded "Well if you would have read the PDF we sent you, you would know that if you are selected you are to take 2 weeks of courses in our Chicago based camp and then go to our San Diego camp and take the rest of the 4-6 months there."

Now the hamster wheel started to turn in my head. "Something doesn't seem right" I thought. So I went back to my computer and read over the PDF I was sent. Apparently all that info was in there and a little more. Although the training is free, they stated, you have to pay for your materials which comes out to about 2 grand and when you get your internship they will deduct fees from your paycheck to compensate for the training.

Now it all made sense but I had to look into this a bit more. So I turned to google and google'd their name. In return I got plenty of forum links to people who got scammed by these guys. Turns out they just hand you the books when the time comes and just hope you learn the info on your own. Hell even for the initial examination the examiner gives you the answer so that you can get accepted to their "Scam" program. From there you learn on your own 2 years worth of material in 4 months and take their certification test (which everyone seems to pass) and then you are done.

And that internship they promise? Apparently all they guarantee is that you get an interview for an internship, and if you don't get hired they start billing you for the training.

And then the icing on the cake was the Better Business Bureau website. Turns out plenty of people have been scammed by these frauds and have taken them to court to reimburse for tuition and other fees accumulated. The site even rates them at an F, which I have really never seen before on the BBB site.

Lucky for me I was smart enough to look into this even though I am still a bit embarrassed that they got $20 from me.

Anyways, just thought I'd put it out just in case anyone might run into this situation in the future.