Job Seekers Warned Of Fake Job Ad

ATLANTA — A midtown Atlanta medical office is issuing a warning for job seekers: Beware of a suspicious help-wanted ad that promises you can work at home for big money.

The catch is you have to pay big money first.

The medical practice said it has nothing to do with the ad, and said that its name has been hijacked.

"I was on monster.com and I saw a job for medical records associate and it was at Laureate Medical Center," recalled job seeker Marcia Boyd of Lilburn.

Laureate CEO Heba Adkins showed Channel 2's Jim Strickland a more generic version of the ad which ran in the paper.

"Using our name; my gut was we've got to stop this and get the information out to people not to fall for this," Adkins said.

Adkins said her office doesn't have any openings. They even do their own billing and record keeping in house.

So what's the deal with the work-at-home ad?

Callers hear a recording that says in part: "You must cover the cost of your software. It's $199. If it works out, all the better. You can do as many claims in a week as you think you can handle."

"It was pretty evident to us that this is just people trying to get $199," said Adkins.

Several job seekers called Laueate directly and got the truth.

"You can hear the disappointment in their voices. And that's heartbreaking. These people are really looking for jobs and the fact that I am the person that's the bearer of bad news is not very fun," said human resources assistant Amy Bronston.

Strickland found the ad running in papers and on websites across the country. Medical practices in Tennessee, Colorado, Massachusetts and Florida told Channel 2 that their names had been hijacked too.

"I would never pay for a job. If you have to pay for the job, you don't need the job," said Boyd.

Strickland found the same recording on a phone line with a 310 area code, indicating a phone in California. He could not reach the man on the recording.

WSBTV