Description

Aust Manufacturing advertised for a data analyst job via Zip Recruiter to which the family member applied. He was sent a questionnaire to fill out about technical skills which he did. Immediately after, Mark Ritchie from Aust Manufacturing reached out via e-mail with a preliminary job offer and a contract which my family member signed and sent back. Then Mark sent an electronic check to deposit and said it was to be wired to an individual named Joshua Prince who is supposed to ship the office equipment necessary for the data analyst job. The check was deposited with USAA bank which initially cleared per the bank's policy. The bank was unable to locate a Joshua Prince and refused to wire the funds. We believed the funds were now in our account. However, Mark Ritchie kept insisting wiring the money to Joshua. Then we realized this is becoming a nightmare and given the money was added to our account, we ended up sending the money back to Mark and turned down the job. Few days later, USAA informed that the check was not good and we lost our money by being honest individuals and returning the money to Aust Manufacturing. We reached out to Aust Manufacturing and Mark Ritchie with no response. While this appears immediately as a scam now, it was not so at the beginning and seemed like an honest transaction. However, it is clear that this company is running a scam because they do not have an HR department or job postings. We have reported the entire incident to the FBI and other scam reportable agencies. This is the second time this is reported via BBB. The objective is to prevent any other victims from falling for this job scam.