Local teens received direct mail recruitment letters from Vector Marketing offering for summer jobs. Some connected these marketing efforts to sex trafficking schemes.Local teen girls recently took to social media to express their concern regarding the marketing efforts of a company, who they feared was a front for a sex trafficking ring.
According to the Better Business Bureau, Vector Marketing, who manufactures and sells cutlery and kitchen accessories, is a legitimate business that recruits recent graduates and college students to work in sales and marketing.
Following an investigation, the Bureau determined that the Riverside, California-based company was the victim of an Internet hoax last month.
Teens posted claims that the company would attempt to schedule interviews for summer jobs, which would lead to their kidnapping and sale to human traffickers.
“The company has a summer work program for college students in sales and customer service; the company uses direct mail to advertise these summer work positions,” a BBB spokesperson posted on their website. “Concerned citizens were seeing the letters and began posting them alongside the warning posts about human trafficking on Facebook, on Tumblr, and on Twitter without fact-checking or any substantiation.”
The Prince William County Police Department received no warnings or alerts about the company, spokesperson Officer Jonathan Perok said.
The company, which has an A+ rating from the BBB, could not identify why they were targeted. However, the hoax has recently emerged locally.
“I scheduled an interview and then canceled because I thought it was a scam,” Arion Pierre, 18, of Haymarket said. “I was afraid it was like sex trafficking.”
The FBI, which calls human sex trafficking “modern-day slavery,” estimates millions of domestic and international victims, who are mostly female and children.
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