NATIONAL NEWS - A Pietermaritzburg woman thought she had found her dream job at MSC Cruises only to realise that she had been scammed.
Saundra Seibler said she was offered a guest services supervisor position after she had registered for jobs through what she thought was a genuine MSC Cruises website.
It turned out the website was fake. Seibler said she had been unemployed since December and was excited when she received a job offer.
She also sold her car in order to be able to cover all the expenses related to her “new job”, in the process she lost close to R50 000.
I created a profile for any jobs and on May 6 received an e-mail confirming I got the job and the next day I was invited [to a] Skype interview, which never happened. A week after, they contacted me on Skype for an interview and later I received my contract which looked legit.
She said she never suspected she was being scammed and paid them just over R8 000 in U.S. dollars for a company to sort out her visa and other required documentation.
This amount was followed by almost R15 000 in dollars which she was told was for a courier company that was shipping documents to South Africa.
I paid the second amount after they had confirmed that I got the job and had sent me my flight ticket in July. I became suspicious when I Googled the courier company and learnt it was a scam, but they assured me it wasn’t a scam.
Seibler said those documents never reached her and while tracking them through the courier company, they disappeared between Spain and Namibia.
She said after she suspected she had been scammed, she started looking into other details related to her trip and that’s when she discovered that the flight ticket had been cancelled the day it was booked.
My father called MSC Cruises and they said I wasn’t even on their system and had probably used the fake website. Sadly, they [scammers] had already withdrawn the first payment. I have stopped the second payment and hoping to get the money back.
She said she had worked overseas before on a short contract and she was happy that this job was permanent. She has advised others to ensure they use the correct websites when applying for jobs overseas and do more research.
“These people are so clever that everything looks legit. I don’t know if they are involved in trafficking or not but people need to be very careful,” said Seibler.
Attempts to get hold of MSC Cruises were unsuccessful.
