Possible Tampa predator using craigslist to find victims

I received the following e-mail from reader Dawn in Florida. She relayed to me the tale of a possible predator using a craigslist employment ad to lure potential victims. Dawn almost became one of those victims. Here is her tale…

A predator on CL in the Tampa area has been posting ads for a cleaning lady (see one of the posts below) and has been harassing the applicants who respond. How I fell into this was that I sent my resume for an Excel Data Input position only to find a few weeks later that he was harvesting email addresses. I contacted him and politely requested he remove my information
from his database and apologized (more than once) if the information I received was incorrect. In response, I was verbally attacked and threatened for two days.

I reported my experience to CL, who obviously did NOTHING, so I started searching for other postings from him to flag them all. During my search I found the cleaning lady positions requiring a “young cleaning lady with a photo required” posted by him (same email - harleyrev54@yahoo.com) over and over again for months. At this point when I realized he was harvesting more than emails but victims, I contacted the police because he had my address from my resume and was afraid for my safety. I also contacted (and continue to) CL to warn them and remind them of their liability and negligence and they still give me the standard reply, “sorry for the hassle”….even as I remind them of the MN incident, they still have done NOTHING. Not to mention it is a violation of Federal Employment Laws to discriminate against age and
gender!

The poster/predator changed his email to rev.harley@yahoo.com (oh, that will fool anyone who is on to you…) but finally wised up and masked his email under the “reply to” CL job posting email. Needless-to-say, it is not up to job seekers to police CL and if they don’t get it together, they are going to find themselves with a similar situation to the MN incident last year.They were able to “skirt” the negative publicity from the incident last time
but the next time they might not be so lucky and neither will the victim.These predators find ways around the system and are relentless. Don’t give up your life for a job - be aware and do your homework!

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Cleaning Lady Needed (New Port Richey)

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Reply to: rev.harley@yahoo.com
Date: 2008-04-19, 5:59PM EDT

I am in need of an energetic, neat, female to do a one-time good cleaning at
my home, and then some touch-up visits as needed. Perhaps some light cooking
and organizing also. One master bedroom, bath, kitchen, living, dining.

Requirements:
Female
College Age To 40
Clean Either Weekdays- 8 am - 12 noon
Saturday Or Sunday - Any Time
Include Basic Pricing
Must Respond With Current Photo Of Yourself

I guess this is what craigslist means when they say that the users police the site. That is unacceptable. I guess it will take a few more people getting killed before craigslist changes their policy.

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