Summer Internship Scam Hits GC Campus

By JD Davern and Emma Nortje

A n unidentified company recently came onto campus and collected students information to contact them about an internship opportunity.

“I was in my management class a couple weeks ago and… this guy came in,” Julia Weinrich, senior biology major, said. “He said, ‘Hey, I want to tell you guys about this really great internship opportunity’… He wasn’t really specific about what the company was… but he said students get paid on average $10,000 every summer.”

Many students were later contacted by the company and scheduled for interviews.

“I went to the interview and… it just kind of seemed sketchy. They couldn’t tell me how much you get paid, they couldn’t tell me when you would start,” Laura Farris, junior marketing major, said. “So I was like, ‘Well this doesn’t seem right.’ So I posted it on Bobcat exchange… and just figured I’d let people know because they [the company] had a ton of interviews set up.”

Farris was then contacted by the Career Center who did a background check on the company. The investigation revealed the company to be legitimate painting company. In terms of the internship, from what the Career Center could gather it was just a scam the company used to get people to paint houses for them.

Mary Roberts, Career Center director, offered advice for students future internship searches, saying, “As a lot of questions before hand… If it send up a red flag for you, you need to trust your gut.”