One of my companies recently experienced a new type of scam on Craigslist.

The company was advertising jobs on a variety of job boards (including Craigslist).

However, someone else (the scam artist), purchased a job listing on Craigslist and re-posted a version of the job. There were some significant differences, but only noticeable by the employer, not the job seeker. Things such as the hourly wage, corporate boilerplate and other items were not fully accurate.

What’s more, the e-mail address to apply was obviously not one affiliated with the employer. Instead, it was that of the scam artist who claimed they were an agency and that to apply for the job you had to purchase a credit report from their site.

Can you believe this?

The most frustrating thing is Craigslist’s inability to respond to our phone calls and e-mails. We’ve been trying for days to contact them with little success. The postings were flagged enough times that they were removed, but then reappeared a few days later.

I’m beginning to think the Craigslist model is no longer viable in today’s evolution of the Internet.