POEA News Advisory: Job scammers target medical workers (plus 1 more posts)

POEA News Advisory: Job scammers target medical workers

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 06:48 PM PST

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) released a news advisory dated December 7, 2010, about job scammers targeting medical workers.

POEA
News Advisory
December 7, 2010

Job scammers target medical workers

Medical students, graduates, and practitioners seem to be the favorite targets of employment scammers, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration revealed yesterday.

Administrator Jennifer Jardin-Manalili said her office has received various reports regarding the illegal recruitment of medical professionals and skilled workers.

The Philippine Embassy in Berne has verified that a certain "Semino Private Hospital", which claims to have a student program and offers internship jobs in Switzerland does not exist. Some applicants reported that Semino recruits medical students through e-mail and offers substantial allowances to lure its victims.

According to the Philippine Embassy, Semino Private hospital is not in the list of hospitals of the Canton of Vaud and is not even heard of in the area according to Swiss officials.

Semino Private Hospital has a mock website, seminohospital.com that is hosted in Nigeria, the report said. In its website, Semino claims that it shares the same address with Clinique Cecil, a prestigious hospital at Avenue Ruchonnet 53, CH -1003 Lausanne, Switzerland. The hospital also has no listed telephone number in Switzerland.

In Israel, Labor Attache Merriam C. Cuasay reported that unscrupulous recruiters are offering nursing jobs for "Jordan Valley Medical Center".

The jobs were found to be fictitious as no such hospital exists. Israel has job openings for home-based caregivers but not for nurses.

The Consul General in Agana has also alerted the POEA of a fake hospital in Guam, the "Guam General Hospital" which has a website www.guamgeneralhospital.com that is soliciting applications for employment as nurses.

Another website, www.westernpacifichospital.com was recently discovered and has the same content as that of www.guamgeneralhospital.com.

This online scam is now being investigated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The POEA stressed that there is only one hospital in Guam, the Guam Memorial Hospital (GMH).

POEA News Advisory December 7, 2010

Source: http://www.poea.gov.ph/news/2010/PR_Dec2010_MedicalScam.pdf

About the Contributor:
Tricia Casas (Tricia RN) is a graduate of St. Paul University. She recently passed the nursing board exam and is interested in the field of nursing informatics.