MALDEN, MASS. (WHDH) - Police issued a warning to students and parents in Malden, saying scammers are targeting local teenagers by sending out fake job applications.
Yaw Boadi-Acheampong, a recent graduate of Malden High School, recently received an email offering a remote, part-time job paying $400 per week. The message appeared to come from a teacher.
“It just looks like it comes from a legitimate person because it’s coming from an ‘@maldenps.org’ email,” Boadi-Acheampong said.
Similar emails went out to a wide swath of Malden teenagers between 16 and 18 years old, and police said they were all scams.
“Staff members did not author or send the emails; another party gained access to their individual email accounts and sent the messages,” Malden Public Schools Superintendent Timothy Sippel said in a statement.
When a student would respond to the email, personal information was requested — including banking details.
“You send out all your information, your email, your phone number, your card number, whatever they need from you, and then you lose it all,” said Matthew Goroshko, another fraudulent email recipient.
Investigators said one of the teenagers followed instructions to buy gift cards and forward the code information. They lost $900 in the scam, police said.
“They’re sending out these fake emails that are trying to trick people,” Goroshko said.
When some of the students realized the emails were fake and stopped contact, they received intimidating messages.
“Some of them did get some threatening texts and videos from the suspects or hackers, and some were pretty violent and gory. At this time, we are investigating where they came from,” said Malden Police Captain Marc Gatcomb.
The Malden High School administration alerted students and now police and the school’s IT staff are investigating.
Boadi-Acheampong, a soon-to-be college computer engineer major, said he saw red flags in the fraudulent email and is warning others to look out for them.
“They don’t actually give a company name or anything. They just say that you’re going to be working with staff. It’s all vague details, nothing specific. It seems like almost too good to be true kind of,” he said.
Police said they do not believe there was a data breach or that the scammers were local.
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