Woman sounds alarm after losing thousands in fake job scam
Anastasia Pleasant thought she'd found a dream job working remotely.
Pleasant found a job opening online at , a legitimate job posting website that says it removes tens of millions of job listings each month that do not meet its quality guidelines.
The posting was for an executive assistant at a company supposedly called Guaranteed Finance Pro.
"And like I told you, I worked in journalism and I just I can't believe this happened to me," Pleasant said.
They offered to hire Pleasant right away 鈥� no interview required, which she thought was odd.
"And they said on the phone that this is a legitimate job and then emailed me, 'this is a legitimate job.' So I thought, 'well, OK, let's just go for it,'" Pleasant said.
Her supposed boss sent a check for $500 to buy supplies, but then he asked her to wire some payments to software vendors, which he said he would reimburse.
"So that should have been the first red flag that I ignored. And after that then they were sending me more checks and asking me to deposit them," Pleasant said.
Pleasant kept depositing the company鈥檚 checks, but her boss also kept asking her to wire money to more vendors.
Within days, Guaranteed Finance Pro鈥檚 checks started bouncing.
A panicked Pleasant learned her checking and savings accounts were empty, and she had a negative $25,000 balance.
Her boss texted back, 鈥淏e calm okay, do not panic.鈥�
"And they just kept lying. And one of the checks that I have, they sent me a check for $34,000 to make up for everything. But then that bounced," Pleasant said.
Pleasant reported the scam to the Martin County Sheriff鈥檚 Office, the State Attorney General and the FBI.
No one answered the company phone, the website had no information and Pleasant's money has vanished.
"I feel really stupid and embarrassed and I don't want that to happen to anybody else," she said.
Indeed released the following statement:
"Indeed puts job seekers at the heart of everything we do. We have a dedicated search quality team who goes to extraordinary lengths deploying a variety of techniques to assess the suitability and validity of job listings. Indeed removes tens of millions of job listings each month that do not meet our quality guidelines. In addition, Indeed will not do business with an employer if their job listings do not pass our stringent quality guidelines. We encourage job seekers to report any suspicious job advertisements to us, or if they feel it necessary, to make a report to the police. We encourage all job seekers to review our ."