MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Federal Emergency Management Agency is dispelling a rumor that is being widely shared on social media.
The post claims FEMA is looking to hire more than 1,000 people to help cleanup after the devastation of Hurricane Harvey.
The post in question reads, “FEMA is looking to hire help! $2,000 per week plus exspenses. 90 days or longer they need more than 1000 people. Can not have any felonies. 888 776 1296. Mr. Adrian Davis.”
It then instructs interested applicants to apply on the FEMA website.
“The website is a legitimate hiring website for FEMA,” a spokesperson told WREG. “However, the remaining details of this post including the phone number and contact person listed are part of a scam. Unfortunately, natural disasters often bring out fraudsters looking for personal information of both hurricane survivors and others in the community.”
So, how can you tell if a job is a fake?
Look for obvious signs like misspellings, incomplete sentences and slang. In the FEMA post, “expenses” has an extra letter which is a red flag, experts say. Real job postings also have a lot of information about the job itself including the number of hours, responsibilities and the skills required.
Searching the internet can also be helpful. A quick search using the phrases “888 776 1296”, “Adrian Davis” or “FEMA Job scams” provides results stating the post is a scam. You can also search for the agency’s real phone number to get a comparison.
If a post guarantees high pay for either low effort or in a short time frame, chances are it’s a scam. For example, the FEMA post guarantees $2,000 a week. That comes out to be roughly $8,000 a month and $24,000 for three months work. Plus, they’re going to pay expenses for more than 1,000 employees when their funding is running low? Very unlikely from the get go.
When in doubt, the best thing to do is simply check out the website for yourself. In this case, the job is not listed on FEMA’s website — another good indication it’s a scam.
For real FEMA jobs, click here.