This modus operandi is fresh. Scamsters want to meet 'candidates' in person at Mumbai to demand money for a job in UK's Marriott Hotel

The scamsters are on the prowl again, this time sending emails to offer overseas jobs. A few days back, companies like Samsung, Siemens, Videocon and Wipro were forced to issue clarifications that they do not ask candidates to pay money for jobs.

Now a new email doing the rounds is offering an opportunity for work with UK's Marriott Hotel. However, this time around, the modus operandi of these scamsters is quite different.

These fraudsters-who may have been using data procured from job sites like Monster and Naukri-send out an email asking the 'candidate' to submit his/her resume. The moment the candidate sends it, these scamsters reply with an application form asking various personal details.

The candidate also has to fill an interview form, which checks his/her 'motivation level', 'interest' and 'anxiousness' to join the company.

After receiving the mail, some representative, pretending to be an official from Marriott Hotel, UK, meets the candidate in Mumbai. He asks the candidate to cough up some money, under the pretext of some fees and as soon as the candidate hands over the money, the 'official' simply vanishes.

According to Moneylife reader Adi Daruwalla, even the telephone numbers given in the advertisement or email do not match with that of the Marriott Hotel. The telephone number of the hotel, according to its site, is 44-151-476-8000, where '44' is the country code for UK and '151' is the code for Liverpool area.

However, the scamsters have given 00447017014954/+447017901084/+447010039024/ +447010038304 as the telephone numbers of the hotel.

In addition, the email ID used in these mails is not what the Marriott Hotel would use. According to 419scam.org, the email IDs 'marriotthotel@live.co.uk' or 'marriotthotel@hotmail.co.uk' have been used in a known fraud and it should put you on alert.

According to people familiar with the recruitment process in such large companies, nobody selects candidates by simply looking at email IDs. There is a process, which includes a written test, an interview, and only then are appropriate candidates selected.

Further, as per our information, no company asks you to pay money for any job. Unfortunately, most people ignore the procedure, while not wanting to miss a lucrative opportunity.

How to identify a fake job offer

1.    First, there are bound to be spelling and grammatical mistakes. For example, in the fake Marriott Hotel job offer, the scamsters have written 'permanent' as 'permanet' with the 'n' missing. Usually, the date of birth and age comes before place of birth, but here in the fake application it is the reverse.

2.    In addition, all application forms follow the same pattern across the fields. However, here, some things are in plain font, some are in 'bold' lettering and some are even in decorative fonts.

2. Always check the e-mail ID from where the mail was sent. The email address in this case is marriotthotel@hotmail.co.uk. This should ring an alarm bell, as to why a well-known company would have an email address taken from a free email service provider, Hotmail in this case.

3. Do check the signature at the end of the email. In this email, it is signed off as "Regards, Marriott Hotel, JOSHUA MOORE, Human Relation / Recruit Manager". This is obviously wrong. In any professional letters, the name of the sender appears after 'regards' and not the company/organisation name. In addition, it is Manager-Human Relations and Recruitment and not like what has been mentioned above.

4. If you still have doubts about the email, visit the company's website. Contact and check with them if any such recruitment is going on or not. Better, forward the email to the company's HRD or corporate communications department, informing them that you want to know if they have sent any such mails.

5. Finally, do not pay any heed to such messages; simply mark them as "spam" and click delete.