Craigslist Employment Scam

I have never been on this site before, nor am I familiar with scams. THIS, however, seems like one to me.
I scoured Craigslist yesterday and applied to many jobs. I got this email this afternoon from "Lyson Corp & Associates:


Thanks again for your recent interest in applying to work for Lyson Corp & Associates. I apologize if you recieved any repeat or duplicate emails from me yesterterday or today, my emailing program went a little crazy and I am sorry about that. Also, the email you recieved from me last may have containted a non-working link for our identity verification or not link at all. Below is the correct link:
www.newhireresearch.lyson-corp.com

If you are recieving this email, we are still very interested in having you come in for an interview. The positions are still available and we are still interested in scheduling an interview with you. We need somebody in these positions immediately and we are very serious about having you fill one of them. If you have already completed the identity verification process, we will be calling you 10/01 or 10/02 to schedule interviews.

Once again, as part of our company HR guidelines we require that you complete the identity verification process before we can schedule and interview. I apologize if that might be a bit of an inconvenience, but that is the way we are required to do things. If you have already completed the identity verification process, please wait and we will contact you to schedule an interview.

If by chance you are already a member of the website given in the previous email or have already received your free report recently, the company will not allow the report to be transferred to us at this point. I have provided below a different link to another company which we also have Experian accounts with, all of which are also very reputable companies, you can use any of the links below. I know this may seem a bit cumbersome, but the credit check verified through our end is the only way we can schedule an interview.
www.companycheck.lyson-corp.com

Why do we have our identity verification process setup this way? - As required by law, when we hire an employee the very first thing we need to do is verify a person's identity. Well, we've realized that a lot of people are uncomfortable handing over personal information up front before they even have the job. We have this particular setup for our identity verification specifically for your safety. With this setup we have now, we can skip toward the end part of the hiring process without even taking personal info, while also saving valuable time of yours and mine. Again, we are not asking for any personal info up front. By completing the identity verification process you will not be giving us personal/sensitive information. With the account we have with Equifax, they will only give use your first and last name and an "Ok" on your identity, nothing else.

Also, I am required by law to inform you that you can also obtain your free credit score from Annual Credit Report. Annual Credit Report report is a site that was setup by the US Federal Government to allow any US citizen to receive a free credit score once per calender year. However, this service will not allow us to have an identity verification account with them like some of the other credit reporting companies we have accounts with as described above. So for the purposes of your loan application, you will need to follow the link given above for the background check/credit report.

As soon as you have completed the background check/credit report through the link given, please let us know and we will proceed from there with the other steps. It can sometimes take 18-24 hours for us to receive the results on our end, usually within 10 hours though.

Also, please note that we have over 22 manufacturing and/or shipping facilities in 20 cities in the US. Our main headquarters are in Manhattan NY, which is also the headquarters for our HR department. So don't be alarmed if this email is from our NY location, as our NY HR is who recieves your initial resume.

Respectfully,
Geraldine M. Moon
Lyson Corp & Associates
335 8TH AVE # 201 MANHATTAN NY 10001

Definitely a scam. I'm glad you realized it before becoming ensnared. Obviously these scammers are getting very sophisticated.

This sentence was significant:

Also, the email you recieved from me last may have containted a non-working link for our identity verification

The reason the link in his older formats is non-working is that our site killers have already gotten it taken down as fraudulent. The sites he's listing now will not be up much longer.

This is a simple credit report affiliate scam. We have seen many of these. Odds are extremely high that this will once again lead to creditreport.com - that is where every one I have seen in the past has led.

How it works is simple:
-The scammer signs up as an affiliate of a credit report monitoring company, so far it has always been creditreport.com
-scammer creates bogus website that ultimately redirects to the credit company.
-scammer posts fake job ads, or housing for sale/rent ads.
-scammer tells victim to get a credit report, and directs him/her to fake site.
-victim clicks on fake site and follows link to creditreport.com The scammer has set up the site so that if the victim clicks through that fake site, he gets credit for referring the victim.
-victim signs up for free credit report. What victim may or may not realize is that going for the free credit report automatically signs him/her up for credit monitoring at a monthly fee.
-victim gives report or score to scammer. Scammer stalls a bit or then tells victim that job/apartment is no longer available. (Theoretically, if the victim has given the report to the scammer, he can then move on to identity theft, though so far we haven't seen this happen.)
-If victim doesn't cancel credit monitoring service (and many have reported that creditreport.com makes it difficult to successfully cancel)--company starts charging victim's credit card for monitoring service.
-if victim's credit card is successfully charged, scammer gets an affiliate fee from creditreport.com - last I checked, it was $24 per person. This is what scammer is after.

So the scammer posts the ads in dozens of advertising sites, then simply sends out scripted responses--and ultimately pulls in thousands of dollars for very little work.