Gulf Coast Electric Cooperative (GCEC) is warning the public of a telephone-based employment scam.
Within the past couple of weeks, the cooperative has received numerous phone calls and private Facebook messages from people – some as far away as the Philippines – who have received a phone call from someone claiming to be affiliated with GCEC. Although the caller has used a different alias each time, the message is the same: the scammer is offering the person the opportunity to work from home for Gulf Coast Electric Cooperative.
“Those who were offered a job said that the offer sounded legitimate,” GCEC Human Resources Manager Mindy Maddox said. “That is, until the caller requested money in order to ship a computer.”
“The caller even went as far as to send one woman a fake employment contract,” Maddox said. “When she was reviewing the contract, she noticed that it had the name of the CEO on it. She decided to visit our website, and that is when she realized that the name on the fake contract did not match the staff information online.”
Gulf Coast Electric Cooperative is not recruiting employees to work from home. Any open positions will be listed on the cooperative website on our careers page.